blacklion1725

I’ve got freeview and freesat going in to my stb – mainly because it was more aggro to remove the ex-sky dish and cables than to leave it there! Channel line-ups are similar – the biggest difference for me is the lack of HD channels on freesat, particularly Ch4 and Ch4+1 for me.

Completely agree about the iPlayer 4K streaming – it is superb.

The aerial, connections and cabling can make a huge difference to the number of channels you can pick up. I did a thread on here a year or so ago – got a new aerial installed as I lost some of the Freeview HD channels after they did a channel reorganisation. Not only did I get the lost channels back, also got around 40 more in total.

I did a job…[Read more]

The remaining advantages I can see of an STB (I use a Linux Enigma2 STB) are:

1. Distribution (if you need it) – you can split the output of an STB to multiple TVs (my house is like a Sports Bar when football or cricket is on)
2. Multiple tuners – record and watch different channels
3. Often a faster UI than a TV (certainly the case with my Sony…

[Read more]

I could be wrong but for HDMI-HDMI (so maybe for HDMI to DP) to cable specs are a reflection of the quality of the cable and in terms of their connectivity they are all the same. For higher bandwidth and refresh rates I THINK a decent quality cable should work AOK – I have several old HDMI cables (pre-4K) that are running 4K without issue.

I’d…[Read more]

I’m not an expert – but it seems very expensive – especially given the freeview-play or youview features that are built in to a lot of TVs. I get the need for a recording option – I know it is less important given the ease of catchup, but not everything is on catchup and old-skool recording still lets you wizz through adverts. The high price may…[Read more]

I think if you “up arrow” till you go past the top row of the on-screen keyboard and in to the text-entry row on the screen, then the left/right cursor arrows should behave as you want. From memory it is not obvious but seem to recall it works.

thanks Ed it was more that I was under the impression the Fire was fussy what you could pair with it – be it remotes, keyboards or whatever. A mate has had mine for a while so been a while since I had a play.

sorry didn’t realise they were bluetooth – not seen a fire-compatible bluetooth keyboard before – all the ones I’ve seen on Amazon are RF.  If there are then happy days.

Only issue with wireless keyboards is they need to use a usb dongle via OTG, and since the usb on the fire is also the power input this means another device is needed like a usb hub. It is a common niggle on all the sticks (Roku, NowTV too).

You can get the Fire App on your phone John – makes typing/input a lot easier.

Thanks Ed

Interesting – I used to use VNC a lot, but for Windows now the Remote desktop is my weapon of choice. I only have Linux on a Pi at the moment and for its limited purposes (it runs headless) Putty is enough. Is there a Linux alternative to VNC that is more secure?

PM – welcome mate – hadn’t considered Chromebook but makes absolute sense

Drez – I don’t think get_iplayer will work in this environment – youtube-dl will. It works as quick as it does on my laptop – I don’t think there is much of an overhead. ffmpeg has to do more work for sure (for converting and editing ) – but it works. I wouldn’t use it…[Read more]

Bob we are all the product of our circumstances.  As I posted when I was young you left school and went to work – and I’m sure your circumstances were harsher than mine and at an earlier age. We are also restricted in practical experience to what has happened in our lifetime which again makes us all different in outlook. For me education has been…[Read more]

That surprises me mate – I got my first mortgage at 20 – in greater London – and was a telephone engineer. They lent me WAY more than my 3x my wages at the time (John Charcoal Mortgage Brokers) on the strength of overtime. I was even encouraged to borrow 105% (I did 95%) so that I could get on with “making the place my own”.

Universities are…[Read more]

As a counter Dave, in my opinion there are too many students – way too many – all funnelled in to University by default, may leaving with (as you say) debts and not (my opinion) much useful by way of a qualification. For me that has stifled the work ethic in a lot of them. I’m 53 and on leaving school was under no illusions that I had to work and…[Read more]

Good stuff – you should also be able to set is as the dafault app – if you go to the place you saved the file on the tablet (e.g. “download” or wherever) in your file manager, click on the file and then it will ask you what app to use. Tick the “always” box and select Quickedit and you are set. Its just another way of opening the file.

Did you definitely save the file as a text (.txt file)? If so then any of the text editors in the Play Store should be able to open it (e.g. this one) ES File Explorer contains a good text editor – it has been removed from the Play Store, but can be found from other sources (look for “ES File Explorer apk”). It might just be that the “Notepad”…[Read more]

Fair enough – never tried one Dave – and since I’ve been “Type C” am less concerned about b*ggering the socket by forcing the micro usb in the wrong way (which is what made me look at the magnetic option in the first place).