{"id":1148,"date":"2019-08-04T23:59:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-04T23:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tutavo.com\/Kachina\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2019-08-06T00:07:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T00:07:27","slug":"update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tutavo.com\/Kachina\/update\/","title":{"rendered":"TV :: 2016 Q2 :: Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: September 2016<\/h1>\n
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A lot has happened over the past year.\u00a0 Some of it good, and some of it bad.<\/p>\n

On the bad\u2026 no good\u2026 no, just OK, but evil\u2026\u00a0 We\u2019ve gone back to COX.\u00a0 Unfortunately out of necessity.\u00a0 We are now living in an HOA townhouse that precludes us putting up an external digital antennae.\u00a0 For some reason, Dish Network is OK, but they don\u2019t like the antennae \u2013 go figure.<\/p>\n

Because of our other viewing options, we need COX digital cable, so the BASIC COX package raised our monthly bill by only $7.\u00a0 I think we can afford that.\u00a0 This gives us channels 2 through 22, which brings us all of the local channels.\u00a0 Not such a bad thing.\u00a0 That is piped into a TiVo Series 3 box. With the new shift to the MINI-BOX it now requires a card, which COX provides for free.\u00a0 You WOULD NOT need this card if you had a digital antennae.\u00a0 Read on for more about that.<\/p>\n

TiVo Series 1 boxes are COMPLETELY incompatible with digital signals, so if you have a Series 1 box you will need a DVD player with an RCA output as a COX digital buffer in order to record anything on your TiVo Series 1 box.\u00a0 With the new MINI-BOX configuration, I don\u2019t even think this would work anymore.<\/p>\n

TiVo Series 2 is a bit more forgiving, but still is incompatible with the COX MINI-BOX.\u00a0 These will work only with an external antennae \u2013 and then again, using a DVD player with an RCA output as a converter.<\/p>\n

My recommendation: Keep your eyes open at Goodwill for a TiVo Series 3 box.\u00a0 It will run you about $30.<\/a><\/p>\n

If you can afford it, a better option is the TiVo Romio.\u00a0 This not only allows you to record your COX programming (with the card inserted) but allows you to stream anything it records to your iPad or other bluetooth device.<\/p>\n

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS BECAUSE OF OUR LEASE, which ends November 2017.\u00a0 After that here is the plan, which is based on about 4 years of trying to minimize how much we have to pay COX.<\/p>\n

First of all, you have to understand download speeds.\u00a0 That is what it is all about.\u00a0 Click on the chart to the right, and notice something very surprising.\u00a0 The top download speed in the WORLD belongs to South Korea.\u00a0 Surprisingly the United States is a distant twelfth place.\u00a0 This is from a few years ago, but is still probably somewhat true today.\u00a0 Four Mbps (megabytes per second) is fine for most viewing.\u00a0 As the connection\/download speed decreases you get that staggering and reloading that makes viewing videos so obnoxious.\u00a0 Speeds have done nothing but increase in recent years.<\/p>\n

COX offers several packages:<\/p>\n