How To Watch TV Anywhere With Place Shifting WiFi Boxes or Wireless Extenders - Updated

Can you really watch TV anywhere?  Well, Dish Network offers "The Hopper" so you can watch TV in any room with just one room actually connected to your dish.  AT&T has wireless receivers that allow you to go anywhere there is a plug.  So why can't everyone do this no matter what service they choose?

Fo my current house I selected Verizon FiOS for the internet speed, TV was just a secondary consideration.  My main TV is in my "Great Room" and I didn't want to run a wire all the way around my house.   Where I placed the TV and where the wires went were very different places.

My house was built in the late 60's and remodeled in the late 80's.  Sadly it is a victim of predatory practices in the satellite and cable business.  The original cable TV wiring that is built into the house was cut so short in the box by a satellite installer, it is now useless without ripping up stucco.  A subsequent re-installation of cable tv left wires stapled all along the garage.

The DirecTV installation which occurred most recently was the laziest of them all with wires stapled to the stucco.   The staples are only about every 8 feet so the wires have a very happy droop to them.  Best of all they are stapled in plain site.  The installer must have forgot his ladder.

Don't let installers mislead you.  90% of the time your existing wiring is more than adequate for solid signal strength.  There are two basic types of cable, the thinner RG59 and thicker RG-6.  While the satellite companies prefer RG6, I have seen many installations work just fine with older RG59.  Seeing the graveyard of wire at my house is just depressing.   I just didn't want any more unnecessary wire and that is why I set off on this quest.

So is there a way to watch TV in a room without a wire?  Better yet, without a big set top box?

Yes  you can.

There are two ways to do it.  One is a "Wireless Extender", the other is a "Place shifter".  The funny thing is only Place Shifters are on the shelves in stores.  Three different Big Box AV store technicians told me it couldn't be done and wanted to schedule wiring installation appointments.  A local high end AV dealer said the same thing.  Being a former high end AV dealer myself,  I agree that when you can wiring is always better, but I also knew the technology was there, I just had to find it.

Place Shifting Boxes

The most common method is Place Shifting.  This adds a box to your system like the Slingbox, Vulcano Monsoon or the Belkin @TV.  I chose to try the Belkin @TV and use Mac Mini's since I didn't know anything about wireless extenders yet.

Using a Mac Mini and the @TV app which was free, I was able to watch and control the Verizon FiOS box in my bedroom quite nicely.  It looked great on my iPad, and I opted to not pay for the iPhone version of the app.  Watching TV on my Mac Mini though was another story.  I have dual 32" screens and the video quality was maybe 480i at best.  While it was smooth it was quite pixelated.  Still this was better than wiring the house, and for $199 I could get older Mac Mini's for every TV in the house.

Wireless Extender

Not 100% satisfied with the video quality, I started researching the other two place shift boxes and only then did I stumble on a forum at Verizon that mentioned Wireless Extenders.  I couldn't believe that I had over thought my search terms and never found this.  More importantly I couldn't believe how many people claimed ignorance when asked about it.  This is exactly what I was looking for.  A small box at my set top box, and another behind my TV and Viola!  I have HD in my living room on my giant flat panel.

Once I knew the difference in keywords for the search I found over a dozen wireless extenders with HDMI capability including the Belkin Screencast that allowed up to 4 HDMI inputs.  This is great if you want to hide all of your gear in a closet and don't want to run all the wires to the TV.

There are several less expensive brands that the Belkin, many with only one or two HDMI inputs, some with less range according to reviews.  I ended up returning the Belkin Screencast even though it is a nearly perfect solution.  Why?  Well I don't have a home theater any longer and I didn't need 4 HDMI inputs.

What I did end up with is the iOGear which allowed me to connect a TV in my bedroom where the box is and send the HDMI signal wirelessly to my Living Room TV.  This makes a lot more sense for two people using two rooms with one box.  The Belkin didn't have the pass through port.

4000 miles and My Chevy Volt Goes Stupid, Or at Least It Made Me Look Stupid

So here we are at month four in my life with my Chevy Volt Plug in car.  I was on track to set a record month of zero gas usage.  I had found electric charging everywhere I went for the month, and had hoped to post a picture of the dash reading 1000 miles 0.0 gal gas.  No Dice.

It all began when I attempted to outsmart myself by installing a Level 2 240v charger.  The faster charge rate of the Level 2 240v PEV charger allowed me to switch my electric plan to a plan with really cheap night rates for charging the car.  Just .09 per KWH.  Well below my lowest "Tier 1" rate on the old plan.

After programming the car with the rates and what time I depart my house, I put the car to bed and sure enough the next morning it was charged and ready to go.  The display said it started at 12:00 am and was complete at 3:48.  Charging at these hours cuts my charge cost in half at home.  So far it was a great start.

Then like many days, I headed off to Wally Park at LAX.  Normally the Valet's do a great job of parking the car, and using the portable charger in the car to plug it in.  When I return the car is charged for the trip home, and I don't feel bad paying the extra money to valet park.  When I got back this time,  the car had a range of 8 miles.  Exactly what it had when I dropped it off.  The Valet's insisted they had it plugged in.

Arriving in my garage after getting 44 mpg on the way home using gas, I realized that the valet didn't know to change the mode from delay charge to instant charge.  I felt pretty stupid for arguing with them about the car not charging.

Note to you Chevy Volt software guys-

Please add a line of code - If Location not equal "HOME", then Charge Instantly "YES".

This should be a no brainer, but I guess they didn't plan on me driving 30-40 miles each way.

The next day, I don't know what happened, no body does, not the Volt people, not OnStar, and maybe not even the Volt itself.  I got home plugged it in and the little lights started blinking green, indicating that it was plugged in and not charging.  This is what I expected since it was programmed to delay charge at 12:00 am.

Much to my surprise when I jumped in at 9:00 am, the car was not charged.  It still had a range of zero since I had driven home from LAX on the gas generator.  At midnight for whatever reason it didn't charge.

Last night I didn't quite trust it, so I went ahead and manually started it charging at 10:30 pm.  Tonight I will try and let it charge on it's own again since I am not going anywhere on Tuesday that I am aware of.

I'll let you know how it goes.  For now I am pulling the Volt out of its third place position on my list of my favorite cars for making me look stupid and being stupid all in the same week.

Leap Motion Controller, Revolutionary Tracking Device or Nice Toy?

This week my Leap Motion Controller finally arrived.  When I first saw it a year ago I thought what a great idea, and put in my pre-order.  For a year I bragged about how great it would be to wave your hands in the air, and not have to use a mouse or a touchpad.  Theoretically it is a great idea.  So how is it really?

Out of the box it is a very cool little device.  Leap Motion was smart enough to include two USB cables, one short, one long.  A very nice touch.

When you plug it in though nothing happens.  You have to read the little protective plastic to learn that you must build an account on the Leap Motion Site and download your software.  That part wasn't so bad but it downloaded five different programs.  I just wanted a mouse replacement.

After doing the setup and the training, I was impressed with the graphics as it shows you on the screen what the little device "sees".  That part was amazing.  The problem was the demo software took over my computer so it couldn't multi task.  If you are expecting an important skype or email, don't set up your Leap Controller.

After the training was all finished with my Leap, I couldn't get any mouse or touchpad functions to work.  After digging around I found that I had to download more software.  Touchless.

The part I don't get it that the App isn't at the apple store where it should be.  It is downloaded into the Leaps proprietary app on your Mac.  I don't know how it works on a PC.

With "Touchless" installed and running I started the training.  When nothing happened, it was back to the support website.  It turned out I have too much "light" in my office.  So I closed the blinds, and it finally let me set it up.

After doing some training I got used to waiving my hands in the air without touching the screen, and it worked ok as a mouse.  That is about it.  A lot of reviews complained about it being "jumpy".  I didn't have that problem once I stopped moving forward and backwards as I made motions with my hands.

The next test was to put a keynote up on my big screen and control it using my wands over my Macbook air.  This worked pretty cool.  I felt like a magician waiving my hands over the hat and magically the next slide appeared.  To bad it won't work with an iPad.

Moving back to my desktop Mac, I tried to control the browser window opened on my second screen.  Here is where I hit the wall.  The Leap only will let you work on one screen.  Back in the box it goes.

If you are looking for a cool toy to do some simple screen controls, this is a huge winner.  My biggest problem is humans are very tactile animals, we need to have feedback.  Even the conductor has the weight of the baton to help guide his hands through the air.  Poking the air just isn't accurate enough for me.

After having several HP Touchscreens before I got my Mac, I might have been setting the bar too high for the Leap.  The problem is the touch motions are so good on the iPad, I just want dual 32" touchscreens on my desk.

My ending thoughts are that the Leap Controller is still a year away from being really usable and it is both, a revolutionary tracking device and a nice toy.  As an addition to my trackball, if I could just point at the second screen to get the cursor to jump over there, it would be really a nice addition.  For now, it isn't for me, and more likely that voice control will remain my secondary cursor controller.

Final Note - Leap Motion returned the controller no questions asked.  Great Service.

Bosch Dishwasher - Super Energy Saver - Super Quiet - Super Annoying Buzzer

If you read my blog, it shouldn't be of any surprise to you that we have the latest and greatest energy star appliances in our house.  For the most part these appliances are quieter, clean better and save energy.  All good right?  Well It's all good until the Bosch dishwasher buzzer won't turn off.

Now that we have a Chevy Volt in the house, and have changed our electric plan from the standard to the "Home and Auto" plan.  The Home and Auto plan allows us to charge the Volt at night at very very low rates.  The tradeoff is higher than normal mid peak and peak rates.  Our Bosch Dishwasher is prepared for just such a plan with delayed start.  

The delayed start feature lets us load the dishwasher, go to bed and it will start when electricity is cheap.  If you notice the time of this post you'll see that I am up quite early for a Monday morning, even for me.  That is because the engineers at Bosch thought it would be nice to let people know when the dishes are done with a very annoying beep.

Being a pilot, when things beep in the airplane, we are trained to fix them.  My wife can ignore this beeper, I can not.  Our lives are full of warning beepers.  My Volt warns me if I get to close to another car, and chastises me for changing lanes without signaling.  It thinks I am "wandering" out of my lane so it beeps.  This might come in handy tonight when I am tired from getting up so early.

Apparently no one at Bosch thought that if you delay start the dishwasher that you might not want to hear the beeper at 3:31 am.  The manual says to hold the power button and the delay start button at the same time until the display says "0" to turn off the beeper on the Bosch Dishwasher.  The problem is you have to power off and on every time.  Another "feature" I can't figure out.

So if you don't want to hear the the load finished buzzer or beeper or whatever you want to call it, starting your dishes becomes a binary programming exercise.

First you must power off your dishwasher.  This is required every time of our model.

Second you must hold the power and delay start buttons to turn off the buzzer beeper warning system.

Third you must select the delay time to start at the lower power rates

Fourth and finally you have to select the wash cycle.

The next dishwasher will require some method to skip the first and second steps.  Some friends have the Fisher Paykel drawer style dishwashers, and the beeper is way quieter and is simple to turn off via the display.  Maybe that is the trick, Bosch wants to annoy me into spending more money.

For now if you want to turn off the beeper on your Bosch Dishwasher, there you have it.  Power off, then hold the power and delay buttons at start, and select "0" for no buzzer.  Do this everytime you don't want the buzzer on.

Things I would change if I were King....

As a society, sometimes we do a great job helping those in need and other times we make their lives worse with good intentions.  One of the most important tools we can give people is an education.  Regrettably, our system is a failure.

Electricity is just one place where we do some very funny things to “help” people.  My recent acquisition of an electric car highlights the problem.   In order to encourage people who have an electric car to use electricity right, my local utility has a plan where the night rates of electricity are 25% of the day rates.  If I charge at night, I can get 40 miles out of my car for about 64 cents.

Lets put that into gas price terms.  My record is 60 miles per gallon and I have averaged 40 miles per gallon, and 40 miles per electric charge.  I can pay 64 cents for electricity by charging at night or $4.10 cents for premium gas.  I have a Chevy Volt which can use electricity or gas.

Very quickly I have learned how to program everything in my house that uses electricity from 6pm to 6am when my rates are dirt cheap.  The the day rates are three or four times higher than the night rates so I adjusted everything.  My home is 100% CFL and LED lighting, all of our appliances are the newer energy star and we can program them to run between 6 pm and 6 am.

Out of curiosity I did a little research and found that my rates more closely resemble the way utilities pay for electricity.   So my question is, why doesn’t everyone pay for electricity this way?  If we want to train people to use electricity smarter, we should charge them in accordance with costs and educate them to use electricity smarter.

Why don’t we?  My guess is the people who work less have more time to argue with the politicians.  The politicians make the rules to appease the “vocal minority” and stay in office, nothing more.  

The people who really want to use electricity more in the day time can add solar panels that can create power during the high cost hours.   I work from home so I would still benefit from solar panels, and I am planning to add them next with my new roof.

At the end of the day, I would set electric rates based on the costs to the utilities.   Instead of taking the easy way out and subsidizing day time use with higher night rates, the rules should encourage smarter use and to reduce day time generation costs by increasing the number of commercial buildings that have solar power.  Looking down across the country I see acres of flat roofs that look like great candidates for solar panles.

When the demand is highest for Air Conditioning it is also the best time for solar panels to generate power.  If I were king, I would start by aligning the costs of using electricity with the real costs of generating it.  This alone should be a major influence to getting commercial interests to support solar and create an overall greater benefit to everyone.

What would you do?

Have You Ordered Your Free Car?

Well Have You?  Did you know you could get a free car?  I did.

Would you like to know how?

Like many things, the answer is simple, but not easy.  

Currently auto companies are under legal mandates to sell a number of zero emissions cars.  Electric and Natural Gas are the two energy sources that fit this bill in California.  There is also a mandate on Electric car sales.

Tesla, as a 100% electric car manufacturer, isn't making money selling cars, rather they are about to announce a profit because they sell electric car credits to manufacturers who don't yet make electric cars or who don't sell enough on their own.  

So how does this help you get a free car?

Chevy needs to sell Volts.  Honda needs to sell electric Fits, and Nissan needs to sell the Leaf.  For whatever reason people aren't buying so rebates are flowing.

With the rebates you can lease a base model of any of these cars for $0 down and $299 a month for 36 months.  That is a total of $10,764 to drive the car for three years.  If you have the income, Uncle Sam will give you a $7500 tax credit.  That leaves $3264 out of your pocket over 36 months.  The state of California will rebate $1500, and you can get another $1500 to add a charger to your house.  Now you are down to $264 plus the charger.  

Honda is now including the charger, and the dealer kicked back the $264 to make the deal work when I picked up my Volt.  

There you have it, a car for three years that doesn't cost me anything.

It gets better.  Charging at home the Volt runs about $2.00 for 40 miles, half the price of gasoline if you get the 38-40 mpg most are getting when they run gas.  My record is 60 mpg on gas, and my monthly savings on "energy", that is my new combined gas and electric bill are $300 a month less than they were before I got the Volt.

My Volt is money in my pocket.  What are you driving?

Follow up note: You have to be careful when you lease a Volt, the dealer can take the $7500 Federal Tax credit and build it into the lease without telling you.  When you lease a car, the leasing agency is the first owner and normally gets the tax credit.  Electric Cars can have the Tax credit assigned in certain circumstances.  So watch your paperwork and talk to your tax advisor.

Finish One Thing At A Time To Succeed

This week has proven quite interesting in all areas of my work.  Like most entrepreneurs, I am a little ADD or ADHD or something like that.  My mind is always spinning at all hours of the day and night.  I got up at 3am this morning with ideas just pouring out.

I met two different business owners who had the exact same problem.  They had major projects somewhere between 70 and 80% complete and we already looking to the next project.  The problem was they weren't finishing the ones they already started.  Do you know anyone who has trouble finishing a project?

If this is you or someone you know, you might like to know why this happens.  To begin with we start projects for a couple of reasons.  One of them is to prove we can do it.  The problem here is that you don't actually need to finish the project to see that you can.  When this happens, you get bored, realizing that there is no question that you can finish, and you start looking elsewhere.

The problem I have with this is that you can't win until you finish.  This is true in life, racing and projects.  Imagine if you got on my flight to Dallas and we went 80% of the way and got on the PA and said "OK folks, you have seen that we made it this far, and we are sure you all believe we can make it the rest of the way so we are stopping in Austin so we can go do something else."  Crazy right?  And yet we do it every day.

Following through on a project or task until it is completed isn't easy. Anyone can enter the race, and many can run a lot of laps.  Only a few will finish, and only one will win.  

When these business owners come to me short on patience, money, time and focus while looking at the next project, it is easy to see why they are right where they are.

Imagine if I were a real estate investor and I kept buying property.  First I bought a condo, cleaned it up, got it ready to rent, and said "See, I can be a condo landlord" without ever actually renting it.  Then I went and bought a house, cleaned it up, got it ready to flip and said "See I can flip a house" without ever selling it.  I would go broke doing this, and this is exactly what I see business owner after business owner do over and over.

I must admit, I have done it too.

So what is the solution?  The simple solution is not to start a new project until the old project is truly complete.  Simple yes, obvious yes, easy, no.  If it were easy, everyone would do it.  

One of the keys to success is knowing what you want to do before you start, and then finishing it before you start something else.  I can't fly a jet while I am still racing a car.  Why do we try to start one business when the first one still isn't complete?

If you start, commit to finishing before moving on, and you will see your success sooner than you think possible.