The Solid Signal Blog

January 29 – February 4, 2000 This week Ken welcomes fantastic fellow New England Comedian Connor McGrath (GET HIS NEW ALBUM! “KIND, BEARDED, WEIRD” OUT NOW!) to the show. Ken and Connor discuss Vacationland, Maine, growing up in Portland, The Fine Arts “Adult Theater”/Rock Club, Chyna, Pro Wrestling, human garbage Triple H, the awful sack of pus that is Vince McMahon, Wrestlemania, The Dark Ages of American Culture (Nu Metal, Monster Energy Drinks, etc), Mankind, Mick Foley, The Rock, The Decade of Jeers, why Lemmy from Motorhead was a bad guy, celebrities being injured on film, the age of Divorce, Jerry Seinfeld creepily dating a high schooler, Pat Buchanan, Pets dot com, the dot com boom, Super Bowl Ads, Blast from the Past...

There’s nothing so incredibly sexy about enclosures. Or at least that’s probably what you’re thinking. But I want to tell you about Altelix enclosures. They’re one of our biggest sellers at Solid Signal, and there’s a reason: Altelix enclosures are that good. What’s the big deal about enclosures? An enclosure is, at its heart, a box. That’s all it is. But it’s a special kind of box, customized for what you need. And if you didn’t have such a box, most of modern life would just stop working. Because, there are two facts about our modern world that conflict with each other, and an enclosure is the way to reconcile them. Fact 1: Electronics work best in very specific situations. Today’s modern world is made possible by computer chips...

Here’s another questions that comes from you, our satellite-loving public. A YouTuber who saw my review video for the Gemini asked if they could take it with them on a trip to Canada. At least that’s what they were asking, although I think the real question was a little different. Why? Let’s take a deeper dive Can you use DIRECTV at all in Canada? The official answer is “no, you are not allowed to.” The DIRECTV satellite service is only available to US customers. You must have a valid US address to even activate the service. Canada has its own satellite providers and has not certified any US DIRECTV equipment for use in Canada. But let’s say you were within 50 miles of the US border, as a lot of Canadians are. Let’s say you somehow...

Take a look at the image above. If you have an RV or boat, or even if you have a friend that does, it’s probably a familiar sight. You find these things all over the place on RVs and boats. Some boats even have three or four of them attached. But here’s a silly question, what is it called? I mean, if you listen to different people talk about marine satellite dishes, you’ll hear a lot of confusing words. You might hear the system pictured above described as a dome, an antenna, or a dish. What’s the right way to talk about it? Is it a dome? While some people will call this thing a dome, that’s only about half true. The “dome” is the white gumdrop-shaped outer shell of this system. To be very specific, it’s a “radome,” which is a sort...

More signal is better signal, right? For those of us who grew up in a world filled with analog signals, that’s definitely true. But satellite TV is digital. Does that still hold up? It’s an important question to ask if you’re dissatisfied with the picture quality that you’re seeing. It’s really a pretty complex question and there’s a lot to discuss before I can really give you a yes or no answer. What is picture quality, anyway? With digital signals, picture quality can be a little hard to explain? Why? Because there’s no one single measure. A high-definition picture can be 1920×1080 or 1280×720, and right there you can see that there are two different quality levels. But that’s just scratching the surface. The best way to measure...

DIRECTV’s latest move just might be sheer genius. Want to find out more? Listen, then call 888-233-7563 to sign up for DIRECTV for Business. 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 mobile device. If you want us to add another aggregator leave a comment below. Amazon iTunes Google Podcasts Overcast TuneIn Spreaker Stitcher Player.fm Spotify Option 3: Download the podcast in MP3 format. Option 4: Paste the...

The new DIRECTV Gemini is here, and it’s creating a lot of buzz. That makes sense, because it’s a first for DIRECTV. It’s one box that gives you live satellite TV and apps all at once. There’s one remote, no changing inputs, and everything just works great. But, even though it’s so new, people are asking questions as if it’s been on the market for a while. I get it folks, you’re planning ahead. Makes sense to me. This is the right power supply. Like pretty much every receiver and Genie client made in the last decade, the Gemini uses the venerable EPS10 power supply. You can get one now at Solid Signal. This one adapter has been in use since the H25 came out in 2011. In that time, it’s been redesigned to be a little smaller, but the...

So, let’s say you’ve tried out over-the-air antenna TV and you’re hooked. I don’t blame you. In most cities, there are over 100 different programs you can get live. You can get them all no matter the weather, and they don’t cut out because the internet gets congested. But I don’t need to tell you that. You’ve already figured it out. The only thing you can’t figure out is how to get really good reception, when your property is surrounded by trees. The answer is: get an antenna tower. Yeah, I know. You never imagined yourself as the sort of person who would spend thousands of dollars on an antenna tower just so you could stop paying the cable company hundreds of dollars a month. But really the return on investment is pretty quick once...

Solid Signal is closed today but of course our online ordering is still open. Our shipping and fulfillment centers, as well as our customer service department, are all closed for the day so our team members can spend time with their families. (That, and our shipping partners are closed too.) A time to remember Memorial Day is a time to remember that freedom isn’t free, that our way of life didn’t just happen. Real people — people who may only be as old as your kids or grandkids — went to faraway lands and did tons of things they didn’t want to do so that here at home we are free to play games on our phones. Someone actually died for that. Personally, I’m lucky enough that none of my direct relatives died in war that I know of, and I...

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The receiver you see above you is KVH’s M10 marine receiver. Take a good look at it, and if it doesn’t look familiar to you, thank your lucky stars. If it does, it’s time to say goodbye. The story of the M10 Satellite television for mobile and marine was pretty new in 2005 when this receiver was created. In many ways, it was still the “wild wild west” of mobile satellite. Different companies were trying new things, figuring out what worked and what didn’t. Then, as now, most satellite systems used a separate antenna control unit that did the work of controlling the dish. This is the way that practically every mobile satellite antenna has worked since. (The exceptions, like KING’s satellite systems, have the antenna control hardware...

in the big picture, there are two kinds of DIRECTV customers: residential and commercial. Which are you? Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure. After all the equipment all looks the same and acts the same. The prices for the programming are about the same. So does it really matter? Here’s why it really does matter Commercial customers and residential customers are different, not because DIRECTV wants them to be, but because they have no choice. It comes down to copyright. We’ve all seen that slide at one point or another that says something like, “The broadcast is the property of the National Football League and is licensed for private use only.” Or something like that. It’s not just the NFL. It’s all content providers, whether they...

The RV community is finally getting wise to cell phone signal boosters. It used to be that an RV was designed for “getting away from it all,” but that term doesn’t mean what it once did. We don’t want to get away from the internet, as much as we say we do. We want to stay connected. Sometimes it’s even a requirement. People who work remotely are free to do their work in an RV, but only if they have an internet connection. The problem with RVs is, they’re almost perfectly designed to block cell signals. From the fiberglass on the outside, the metal frame, the wiring, and even the hardwood cabinets, it’s a wonder that any cell signals get in at all, honestly. But that’s where cell phone signal boosters come in. They take signals from...

This week, I’d like to dive back into the archives and talk about a movie that you’ve either forgotten or never heard of. It’s streaming on the Roku channel, which is why I’m talking about it today. Note: This film isn’t new, so I’m going to be a little loose with spoilers here. Looker, written and directed by Michael Crichton, is a fairly stock standard tech-adventure tale. The story is fairly straightforward: a plastic surgeon turns detective when he discovers that an evil corporation is making young women get plastic surgery and then killing them. Along the way, there’s all the typical shenanigans of this sort of film, from exaggerated special effects to evil henchmen to scantily clad women falling from buildings. Talking about...

When it comes to home entertainment, streaming is extremely popular. No matter what someone’s primary source of TV entertainment is, almost everyone invites a streaming service into their home. People who like original movies and series tend to get Netflix and/or Amazon Prime, while TV show and second-run movie junkies flock to Hulu, etc. As popular as streaming is, have you ever wondered why you never see these services in bars, pubs, or restaurants? There are a few reasons for this, which Signal Connect is happy to share with bar owners. Commercial Streaming Isn’t a Thing… Yet There’s a lot of technology that goes into making streaming happen. There are also plenty of laws, rules, and contracts, and the lawyers to enforce them...