The Solid Signal Blog

Closed captioning has been with you most (or all) of your life. You may not have realized it but closed captioning began all the way back in 1972. It became mandatory along with the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Originally intended to help those with hearing problems, a generation of TV viewers grew to enjoy the captions as a way to watch TV while someone else in the room was making noise, vacuuming, on the phone, or what have you. Closed captioning works, except when it doesn’t Closed captioning was doing great at first. The closed caption stream was built into the standard definition connections on every TV. That meant TV makers could (and did) set their TVs up so captions would appear whenever you muted the volume. This...

About 18 months ago I got my first TV with Dolby Vision. It’s not that I wanted to wait so long (it’s been around since 2014) but I tend to keep my TVs a while. The last time I replaced a big one, Dolby Vision was still expensive and largely unsupported. It took me a while to wrap my head around the technology, and when I did, I complained about it. You can read that complaint here. My biggest complaint is that it didn’t seem very well implemented. Most Dolby Vision content works best in a darkened room but most people watch TV in a decently lit room. An update to Dolby Vision, called Dolby Vision IQ, helps with that problem but it’s not very common as I write this in 2023. The biggest problem with Dolby Vision, and other HDR formats...

It seems to me that getting over-the-air television is really not that hard. You put up an antenna, aim it roughly toward the largest city, scan for channels on your TV, and that’s it. But for some folks, they want it even easier. That’s why omnidirectional antennas exist. What is an omnidirectional antenna? An omnidirectional antenna, or omni antenna, is an antenna that picks up signals from all directions at once. The science behind it is absurdly simple. Look inside an omni antenna and you’ll see somewhere between 4 and 8 individual antennas arranged in a circle. There’s no real magic to it. By combining all these antennas so they work on one cable, you get signal from all directions. After a long search, I think I’ve found the...

This article is inspired by a conversation I had over at the Satellite Guys forums. Satellite Guys is a great place to ask questions from people with a variety of differing experiences. You’ll get certified installers, long-term DIYers, and everything in between. I would love to say that you could get all the support you need from reading this blog, but if you can’t, it’s another resource to look at. Over the years, the staff at Satellite Guys have been very friendly to this blog as well. But enough of the introductions. Let’s get down to business Voltage loss in RG6 cable It’s important to know that compared to the wires in your walls, RG6 cable isn’t terribly good at carrying current. The center conductor is very thin — typically...

You’re a business owner. You naturally want to avoid anything with the word “fail” in it. Just getting past the first five years in a small business is practically impossible. If you’ve done that, you really should pat yourself on the back. But as you continue, you’re going to need solutions that keep you in business. I don’t mean part-time, I mean all the time. And that includes something to deal with failover. What is failover? Failover may sound like something scary, but it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a safety net for the most important way you communicate with your customers. Here’s something to think about that’s going to give you nightmares: your business’s internet connection is a thin glass line about the width of a human...

Friends, let’s be clear here. I’m talking about DIRECTV for Internet, the streaming-only version of DIRECTV. This is the package that, during various times in its life, has been called DIRECTV NOW, AT&T TV NOW, AT&T TV, and DIRECTV Stream. It’s popular with folks who don’t want, or can’t have, a satellite dish where they live. It’s the same DIRECTV programming, but it’s delivered over the internet. Local channels on DIRECTV for Internet Roughly 90% of the country can now get local channels delivered through DIRECTV for Internet. However, even the best-covered markets only have the “major networks” and don’t carry the independent stations or subchannels. Most areas have over 30 channels available over the air and DIRECTV only lets you...

There’s an old parable about a dog who always chased cars as they passed. One day, a car stopped in front of him. Faced with the prospect that he actually had caught a car, the dog didn’t know what to do. It had spent so much time wanting this to happen that he didn’t know what to do when it did. I think about this fable when I think about the 2023 season of NFL Sunday Ticket. Sunday Ticket, was, of course, exclusive to DIRECTV for close to 30 years. As of this season, regular customers will only be able to get NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube TV, and that means it’s only available through streaming. Note: Commercial customers can still get NFL Sunday Ticket from DIRECTV. As of this writing, DIRECTV is the only company offering NFL...

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DIRECTV’s SWM-30 multiswitch was rolled out to the public for the first time in 2017. In tech terms, that’s a lifetime ago. At that time, the SWM-8 and SWM-16 were classified as “deprecated,” meaning they were still supported but no longer made. In those past six years, Solid Signal has cornered the market on those older multiswitches, helping our customers replace old equipment or stay compatible with existing systems. Unfortunately, it seems our supplies have run out. We are constantly working to bring in additional SWM-8s and SWM-16s for our customers but it’s now impossible to guarantee that we’ll have stock on those old parts. They just don’t exist anymore, and any ones out there are now over 10 years old. In most cases...

Simple answer: no, and you haven’t needed two dishes for a while. Want to know why? A little bit about getting DIRECTV in Alaska and Hawaii Obviously, Alaska and Hawaii are far away from the continental US. Most of DIRECTV signals are focused on the continental US. Expanding the focus area through all that open sea would be a waste, and allowing US signals over a lot of Canadian soil would actually be against several laws from several countries. But yet, DIRECTV wants to serve customers in the 49th and 50th states. So what can be done? The answer is a specially-designed larger dish. The dish used in Alaska and Hawaii is about 20% larger than a regular DIRECTV dish and it is round. It’s not much more useful for people outside those...

Yes, this is an antenna. I know it looks like a broken umbrella in the picture, but it’s an antenna. It’s probably not one you’d need but trust me, it’s an antenna. This particular antenna is optimized to receive three very specific frequencies that are used by public and governmental agencies (first responders and the like.) The frequencies it picks up can only be received by something like a police scanner. This isn’t the kind of antenna you’d pick up just to get ham radio, television, or something else. Why does this antenna look so weird? This particular antenna, like many antennas designed for government and first responder use, has what’s called a ground plane. That’s the part that makes it look like a broken umbrella. It acts...

See the image at the top of this article? It is an antenna. For most of you, it may not be interesting. You may not even realize it’s an antenna when you look at it. But yes, it’s an antenna. This particular antenna specializes in picking up frequencies from 138-174 megahertz, which is right in the middle of the VHF television band. It’s set up to receive vertically polarized signals, which is why it’s tall instead of wide, which is the way that TV antennas are. It’s also quite a bit more expensive than your average TV antenna. There’s a reason for that. Here’s the story of this antenna This antenna is actually used for first-responder radios and other really specialized reception, so it’s the sort of thing you’d find on a tower...

You don’t often hear of an app shutting down. Although I’ve forecast that it would happen in 2023, it’s still a little shocking. Fox has made its mark here, announcing that they have shut down the FOXNOW app. It could be the first of a stream of app shutdowns, and that could be a problem for traditional pay-TV customers. Defining “provider apps” In order to understand the concept of provider apps, you need to set your mental clock back to the early 2010s. Back then, most folks got their TV from cable or satellite. Streaming was in its infancy. Networks like ABC, Discovery, and others made their money mostly from the fees they got from pay-TV companies. They realized, though, that they could potentially get even more money by...

It’s one of life’s little annoyances, and I’m going to help you get rid of it. The latest version of Microsoft Outlook desktop has gained an annoying habit. Even if you have Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or something else set as your default browser for Windows, links within Outlook messages will still open on Microsoft Edge. This means a separate browser window opening up and a different experience than you’re used to. It’s not the biggest problem you face all day, but if you’re like me you’ll find it’s one of those little things that just grates on you. Have we learned nothing? I guess not It’s been almost 30 years since Microsoft barely survived being broken up. I guess that’s long enough for a new generation to come in, and try the...

Let me start by answering the question as best I can. There’s not much on DIRECTV’s 119 satellite. After a hold caused by the events of the early 2020s, the satellite at that location is on track to be taken out of service as soon as possible. So, let’s take one last look at what’s still broadcasting there. First a shoutout I’d like to thank the team of volunteers at SatelliteGuys who have been maintaining a comprehensive database of DIRECTV channel assignments for over ten years. This is the same team you might have encountered at other web sites. SatelliteGuys is their new home and I hope they keep doing this good work for many years to come. About the satellite The satellite at the 119 location is properly called DIRECTV 8...