The Solid Signal Blog

A headend. It’s not for everyone. It’s a system that takes a bunch of different TV receivers and combines all their signals so they can travel on a single wire. You’ve seen headends before. You’ll find them in hotels, hospitals, sometimes even corporate offices. Maybe you didn’t think about them. Maybe you were unimpressed. It’s time to take another look. What a headend does A headend makes it possible to send a lot of TV signals over one wire without a lot of expense. Let’s say you had a hotel or hospital. You could put a satellite TV or cable TV box in each room. This is done with DIRECTV, for example. However, there’s a cost to get receivers in every room and the cost of wiring is fairly high. Using a headend, all the equipment...

Signal Connect is the number one dealer for boats and RV satellite television service! We’ve been helping customers get live TV away from home for over 20 years and we’ve gotten every award there is, including DIRECTV’s prestigious Dealer of the Year award. Watching satellite TV on your boat or in your RV can be pretty different from watching at home. Most DIRECTV customers at home use Genie technology. You can’t blame them, of course, because the Genie system is so awesome. You get the ability to record up to 7 programs, watch in 4K, and pause live TV in every room. However, DIRECTV’s Genie isn’t always compatible with RV and marine satellite systems. Here are some reasons you might not have a Genie system on your boat: If you are...

Generally speaking, if someone gives you a choice between two things you want, isn’t it better to have both? Chocolate AND vanilla, baseball AND football, happiness AND prosperity? That sounds good to me and it probably sounds good to you as well. That’s why when people ask me, should I get DIRECTV for Internet or DIRECTV Satellite? I say, why not have both? The secret is, you can get the benefit of both services and you don’t have to pay double the price. And, I’m going to show you how it’s done. DIRECTV for Internet vs. DIRECTV Satellite Generally when people hear the word DIRECTV, they think satellite TV. And why wouldn’t they? DIRECTV’s been the market leader in satellite television for the last 30 years. They’re still the...

We’re all friends here. We can be honest with each other. The fact is, internet service isn’t just a “nice thing to have” anymore. It’s the way we connect with pretty much everything in life. It gives us letters, connections, videos… and if you’re in a business it’s as important or more important than your physical building. Internet is, simply, life — especially when you need to connect with customers. Losing your internet connection is no fun if it’s just for a few minutes, but if you’re out of touch longer than that, it becomes a real problem. That’s so true that practically everyone needs some sort of backup plan for if internet service is lost. For some, it’s as easy as using their phones instead of home internet. That’s great if...

Psst… want to know a secret? The hottest new product for boats isn’t what you think it is. Yes, there’s some new tech out there that’s getting snapped up. But believe it or not, the big seller at Solid Signal this year isn’t internet for your boat. That’s great and you absolutely consider it. But, more and more people are going back to good old satellite television. Why? Because internet plans for boats aren’t unlimited. You could use up your entire data allotment in 4 days or less if you stream a lot of video. Live satellite TV gives you everything you want for one low price, and it’s incredibly reliable. The real question That’s what’s led you to this article. You’re probably looking for a new satellite TV system for your boat and...

After years of wondering if anyone had any interest in ATSC 3.0, the so-called next generation of television broadcasting, I’m finally seeing some interest. Customers have told us our new ADTH NextGen TV converter box is a bona fide hit. It lets you watch all over-the-air broadcasts, even the ones that use the new ATSC 3.0 system. Over 75% of the country now has at least one ATSC 3.0 broadcast, and this inexpensive box gives you the opportunity to see what they’re all about. Why would someone want to watch NextGen TV? NextGen TV is the marketing term for the technology known as ATSC 3.0. It could potentially be the next broadcast standard in the United States. If approved, it would replace the current system just like the current...

If you own an apartment building, senior living center, or any large multi-dwelling unit, you know that providing television service to your tenants is important. Yes, streaming is important too, but there are still a lot of people of all ages who like traditional live television. It’s more reliable and doesn’t have problems in the evening when everyone wants to watch at the same time. So what can you do to make sure your tenants have what they want? You could just let the cable company in to handle it, but that might be too expensive for your residents, or maybe the cable company just in your area isn’t able to do that for you. So, what can you do? Here are your options Really, unless you want those cable guys involved, you have two...

Does this sound like you? You watch a lot of TV, but you’re rarely in the living room. You catch what you want on your schedule. Sure, you like network TV but you don’t even know what time your favorite shows are on. In fact you don’t even know what date they’re on. You watch what you want, when you want, and you watch on your phone. In other words, you’re like a lot of people today. And this will probably blow your mind. Most people only think they’re watching high definition on their phones. Your phone probably has a resolution that’s better than your TV. Don’t believe me? Most phones today have close to the same resolution as a 4K television. 4K is 3840×2160. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is 2796×1290, and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is...

It is, right? We’re just coming off of some sizzling NBA finals. Baseball is heating up. NFL Pre-season time is coming up fast, and don’t forget the Olympics! The summer games are in Paris this year and the games are always exciting for Team USA. Not only is the summer great for sports, this summer looks like one of the most exciting ever. But, I’m going to tell you what’s absolutely not the most exciting thing ever: buffering. Internet service isn’t up to the challenge. Satellite and over-the-air TV is. It’s pretty common for people to say that they don’t need traditional pay-TV anymore. And then, it’s also pretty common for them to get frustrated when everyone in the neighborhood is trying to stream in 4K at the same time. There...

This question came in through our tech support lines and I can certainly understand the concern. There are a lot of sellers out there who supply DIRECTV equipment even though they don’t have the right to. You have to be very careful when you buy to make sure you’ll even be able to use the equipment! Even if it works, it could be attached to someone else’s account or the seller might not have the right to even sell it. No need to worry here Solid Signal is a DIRECTV dealer and we’ve been dealers for over 20 years. As a matter of fact we’ve been rewarded over and over again for the quality of our customer service. DIRECTV even awarded us Dealer of the Year. So when you get DIRECTV equipment from SolidSignal.com, you can feel comfortable...

We’re about a month away from the Paris Olympics and they hype machine is definitely kicking into gear. NBC has steadily improved their Olympics coverage since I railed about it a dozen years ago. I certainly admit that. They’ve largely solved the bandwidth issues that hampered their early streaming attempts, and they’ve created web sites and apps that help you find what you want. A lot of the action will still be on pay-TV and local NBC affiliates, but as before it’s looking like you’ll want Peacock if you really want to immerse yourself in the action. A reminder that the Olympics are also there to make money If you’re like me, you think of the Olympics as this high-minded ideal where it’s all about the purity of sport and coming...

Commercial installers are familiar with DIRECTV’s SWM-30 multiswitch. It’s been the go-to multiswitch for DIRECTV systems for close to a decade now. Yet, there are always new questions that pop up, and in order to answer this one, I need to take you on a little journey. What is cascading? I go into more detail here, but essentially cascading is connecting something to another one of the same thing. It’s a well-used practice in certain kinds of installs, especially satellite multiswitches. Let’s say you needed 32 satellite outputs for your international (non-DIRECTV, non-DISH) TV system. You could connect two of these Televes NevoSwitches together by going from the output of one into the input of the other. It’s easier than using...

About six months ago, I wrote an article on this blog about putting a TV antenna on your boat. Even though it hasn’t been that long, I thought I should revisit the topic because a lot of boat owners are starting to take their boats out on the water now and it’s a good time to be talking about antennas. TV antenna for your boat – a smart idea now more than ever Live TV on your boat is a real pleasure to have. If you already have satellite TV equipment on the boat, it’s a great way to get that entertainment you crave. Last year, a lot of folks thought that they could move away from satellite TV to an all-streaming solution. Then they found out the hard way that their streaming plan wasn’t unlimited. Without an unlimited data plan for...

Does everyone remember Cingular? If you were looking to buy a cell phone in the early aughties, you probably shopped with them. They were one of the first nearly-national cell phone companies. Back then, there were dozens of local providers, but very few that reached across a large area of the country. There was Cingular and there was AT&T Wireless. Cingular was the name given in 2000 to a joint venture between two former AT&T companies. SBC Communications was the parent company of Pacific Bell, serving the West Coast. BellSouth served Florida and adjoining states. When they decided to join forces to serve a large number of national customers, it was big news. Cingular was so named because back then it was important to have a name...

Sometimes, advances in technology make things more confusing. Let’s go back to the early days of multichannel TV systems. I’m talking about the 1990s, folks. Back then, getting a commercial TV system together meant huge racks filled with all sorts of different boxes. It was easy to say, this box does this and that box does that. Flash forward to today, and miniaturization lets us put an entire 150-channel headend in a device not much bigger than an A/V receiver. With just a few wires in and one wire out, it’s not so clear what’s going on. Let’s look. What is a modulator? I covered this pretty extensively a few weeks ago, but let’s recap and let’s talk about just the actual modulator part. When video or audio travel over a wire...