The Solid Signal Blog

Like many of you, I had a few extra days last month to relax. I chose to dive into something I’d been tinkering with for several months but never quite had enough time to really enjoy: retro gaming. I don’t play a lot of video games today and when I do, they tend to be the light, casual fare you’ll get on a phone as opposed to the life-altering, hours-long pursuits of modern console games. So, retro gaming seemed quite up my alley. What is retro gaming? Retro gaming is, simply, using modern hardware to emulate old game consoles and arcade games. There are a number of excellent pieces of software that will allow you to do this, and many of them have been around for a long time. I’ve dipped my toe into this world a few times over the...

Network technology and digital marketing are two essential components of any effective online campaign. Both have advanced significantly in recent years, changing the way businesses and organizations contact their target consumers online. It goes without saying that having well-executed computer networking and digital marketing strategies will contribute to your online efforts, but combining them to produce an effective approach can be challenging. In this blog post, we’ll look at how integrating strategies can help you achieve better levels of engagement with more targeted audiences. Role of Computer Networking in Online Campaigns Computer networking has created new avenues for participation, growth, and accessibility, as well as...

Commercial installers love to bamboozle you with terminology. It’s just part of the appeal I guess. It seems like hardly a week goes by when I don’t hear of some term I feel like novices ought to know more about. This week, it’s all about cellular signal boosters, and the term is “server antenna.” Broadcast antenna? Broadcast antenna is just another term for the indoor cellular antenna. It is the antenna that actually transmits the boosted signal from the amplifier and receives the signals from your cell phone. Without it, the whole system wouldn’t function. That doesn’t completely explain why they call it a “server antenna” but they do. The outside antenna is sometimes called the “donor antenna.” I’ll be honest, I’ve heard quite a...

Back in early 2019, I started thinking about ringtones. You can read all about my thoughts here. A decade earlier, I’d spent quite a bit of time customizing ringtones for my most important contacts. Like most of you, I was also pretty obsessed with making sure my phone didn’t sound like everyone else’s. I employed a (possibly too expensive and complex) set of editing programs to make sure I got exactly what I wanted. By the late 2010s, it seemed the tide was turning away from ringtones. The whole idea of a ringtone was that you’d know when someone called you. At this point there were two problems with that kind of thinking. The first was that due to the huge volume of spam calls, fewer people were answering their phones at all. The...

I really believe that 2024 is going to be all about adding value to the TV experience. After a year where we saw gigantic price increases in streaming, pay TV now looks like a much more economical solution. The folks at DISH agree with me, and that’s why they’ve added a curated selection of advertiser-supported channels available to subscribers with Hopper 3. It’s called “FAST” Free advertiser-supported television, or FAST, was another big story to emerge in 2023. You’re familiar with FAST whether you watch Pluto, Tubi, The Roku Channels, or any of the dozens of free streaming channels available on most smart TVs. FAST channels tend to be hyper-focused unlike traditional pay-TV channels. They’ll carry only one genre of show or movies...

This little device is kind of neat. ZeeVee’s Pro 820 takes in signals from an HDMI cable and modulates them to a TV channel. Think of the old-school RF modulator you might remember, and it’s not far off. The only difference is that it works with high definition and digital TV. Oh, and the price is a lot more than you’d expect. Unfortunately it takes a lot more technology to properly modulate a high-definition signal, and there are licensing fees to be paid to the people who own the patents on that technology. Still, if you’re looking for a way to send the signal from your cable or satellite box all around the house it might be worth it. Except it probably won’t work. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here. Almost all content that...

The other day I was talking to someone who said, “The bluetooth on the printer isn’t working.” I wasn’t sure what they meant, because the printer didn’t have Bluetooth. Most printers don’t, actually. Reading between the lines I figured out what they meant was, the blue light on the printer near the Wi-Fi icon wasn’t on. And it wasn’t on… because apparently the printer was broken. But, that’s a story for another day. What’s more important was realizing that average customers didn’t understand the difference between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And that’s where I get ideas for the best articles. First, Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a “personal area network” standard. It’s designed specifically to work in very close range. Generally we talk about...

There’s an easy way to see what’s on and what’s coming up, and it always surprises people when I tell them about it. Believe it or not it’s been part of DIRECTV’s DVRs since the beginnings in the mid-2000s. The look has changed with the times, though, and if you have a Genie or Gemini, you’ll find that this capability is there and better than ever! The mini guide You can get a quick, one or two line guide on screen if you want. This is a great way to look at what’s on and still see all the action. It’s easy to pull up and easy to close when you’re done. Genie clients and Geminis Genie clients (non-Gemini) To get a mini-guide like the one you see above on your Genie client press the ENTER button at the bottom right of your remote...

It’s a beautiful, sunny day and the temperature is just perfect. You’ve been lucky in life; you’ve done well. You may not be as rich as a Silicon Valley billionaire but you have a small cabin cruiser and this is a perfect day to go out on the water. You want everything to go perfectly. Don’t let your electronics ruin your buzz One of the worst things that can happen on a marine trip, short of total disaster, is a failure of something electronic. You may pride yourself on being able to get home using nothing but a compass but it’s always safer and easier to use the tools available to you. You put that radio on the boat for a reason. Same with the various transducers and sensors. Everything on your boat should serve you and your goal of...

This week Ken welcomes esteemed, accomplished director and author of the field guide/memoir “Adventures in the B-Movie Trade”, Brian Trenchard-Smith to the show. Ken and Brian discuss the weather in Portland, Brian’s travels around the world, his appreciation for everything he’s gotten to do, visiting Soviet Russian in 1968, falling in love with cinema after seeing a Hitchcock film, how you should see a local movie in the native language in every country you visit, developing your taste in film, how the world is smaller, but not as substantive in many ways, forgetting your Italian accent, strange double features, taking acting classes with Barry Manilow, being only able to play a British Army Officer, knowing from age 13 you want to...

Technology can help aging adults manage their physical health and financial assets. It can even bring new income opportunities to life for retirees. However, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of tools and applications available. The key is to assess which ones suit your needs and how to use them safely. Software, hardware, and other devices must make sense in your home and play well with your existing tech. By planning specific goals ahead of time, you can find the best options to support your lifestyle. When used wisely, these can benefit your health and wellness and help you strategically manage finances. Use Technology to Support Health and Wellness Technology offers many options to support your physical health. This is...

This podcast goes into detail on the subject of channel blackouts. Once almost extinct, they’ve roared back in recent years. The best way to avoid one is to get an antenna from Solid Signal - Signal Solutions including HDTV Antennas, DIRECTV and DISH Network satellite equipment and home entertainment supplies and accessories or by calling Signal Connect at 888-233-7563. Listen to the podcast your way! Just choose one of the following: Option 1: Click on the image above to stream the podcast in your browser. If you use the YouTube player above, be sure to subscribe to get future videos delivered to you! Option 2: The Solid Signal Podcast is available on several podcast aggregators. Search for us, or tap on the links below on your...

By now you’ve probably read our tutorial on combining two antennas. It’s one of the most popular articles in our history. Is it really the better way to go, though? Or, will a simple antenna amplifier do a better job for you? Let’s take a look. What’s the point? Whether it’s amplifying or adding hardware, the reason is the same: more signal. Specifically, more gain. We want better reception, we want to be able to pick up signals we couldn’t pick up before. In order to do that, we need more of something. I like to tell people that RF signals are like butterflies and an antenna is like a net. The easiest way to catch more of them is with a bigger net. I admit that’s not a perfect analogy because it’s not enough to make an antenna...

A customer came to us asking if they could put their antenna 1600 feet from their television. It seems they live down in a valley and want to put the antenna up at the top of the highest hill. So, what are the options? Trying to use amplifiers The first thing you’ll want to do is amplify that antenna signal at the point of reception. You will lose about 110dB of signal over a run that long if you do it all with RG6. You’ll need a strong amplifier to overcome as much of that as possible. In most cases I’d recommend a preamplifier, but the strongest ones tend to only be about 20dB. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you’ll lose. You can add a 30dB launch amplifier instead, but those tend to add more noise than a quality...

If you have a pleasure craft, you know everything is twice as hard on the water as it is on land. Certainly satellite TV is no exception here. If you have a satellite TV system, you know it is larger and more expensive. No one goes out to sea just to watch TV. That’s true but most folks enjoy a little entertainment before bed. That’s why marine satellite TV systems are so popular. Cell service peters out after a few miles and internet service can be just as expensive as TV. While a lot of folks with marine satellite TV have made do with standard definition, there are a few brave souls who have asked us: is it possible to get 4K on a boat? It’s quite possible If you have a multi-satellite dish like the KVH UHD7 or the Intellian s6HD...