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Magnavox HDD DVR and DVD Recorder w/ Digital Tuner

DVRs For Cord Cutters

Many consumers, exasperated with the high fees and poor customer service common to cable TV subscriptions, have become ‘cord cutters’. They’ve ditched the subscription model. With millions of people using mobile devices for nearly all communications, and with internet video streaming becoming more practical, the cord cutting trend is now irreversible.

Though cord cutting saves money, it comes with drawbacks. Free over-the-air TV is limited to live broadcasts: little other than local news, sports, and award shows. An over-the-air (OTA) DVR can help expand expand your viewing options. Most DVRs have been dedicated boxes available only with cable or satellite TV subscriptions. In the last three years, though, several manufacturers have built OTA DVRs that don’t require subscriptions: TiVo, Tablo, SiliconDust, and Channel Master, among others.

The Channel Master DVR is among the best of them. It sports dual tuners, so you can watch one show while recording another, and its on-screen electronic programming guide is free.  TiVo, probably the best OTA DVR on the market in features and function, requires an annual $150.00 service fee in addition to its $300.00 purchase price.

The most surprising new entries into the OTA DVR market are by Magnavox. Once one of the dominant electronics brands, Magnavox has been a minor player in the industry for the last two decades.

In last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, though, Magnavox unveiled three new DVR models. Each one has at least two tuners and 1 TB of storage capacity; one has six tuners and 3 TB. All are due for release in the last quarter of 2016. Each has  a free on-screen EPG. Each has a built-in WiFi router, so you can stream live or recorded video to iOS or Android devices. Magnavox says its DVRs will also download content for viewing offline, and one model will burn video into an integrated DVD recorder.

(For streaming video, you need the right internet service. To find the one that works best for you, talk to us. It takes just one phone call.)

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PRIVACY AND THE WEB

The internet has been a huge benefit for most of us. It opens up nearly the entire store of the world’s knowledge to us, and it enables easier and faster communication. It comes at a huge cost, though: loss of privacy.

Your browser tracks your website visits in order to help advertisers identify your interests, so they can more easily identify the pitches you will respond to. Your posts on social media, and tags by others about you on social media, can live on forever, despite your best efforts to suppress them.

Some of the more prominent browser operators and social media sites have attempted to limit damage to personal privacy. There is only so much they can do, though. Parties determined enough to find and publicize the information can usually do so.  When Google attempted to comply with the European Union’s 2014 “Right to Be Forgotten” law, the British Broadcasting Company aggregated and reposted the links to its own stories that the search engine had delisted. The State of California enacted an “eraser button” law for minor children. Under its terms, minors are guaranteed a means to erase their social media posts, but the law can’t keep others from disseminating the information in them.

Any technical fixes may reduce our vulnerability, but they don’t eliminate it. Last June, Google expunged links to revenge porn from its search engine, and deleted the information in them. This makes revenge porn much more difficult, but not impossible. YouTube’s “face-blurring” tool can prevent being tagged by facial recognition apps. This is especially useful for participants in public gatherings, such as political demonstrations. It won’t prevent publication on other social media sites, though. And a person whose face has been blurred can still be identified by clothing, posture, or other distinctive features.

It would be unrealistic to expect to be forgotten on the internet. The best we can hope for is obscurity. Once your information is online, whether posted by you or others, you can’t control who sees it. With some prudence and a few technical fixes, though, you can shield yourself from casual spies. Only the most motivated, persistent, and technically savvy can find what you’re hiding.

To some, this will be cold comfort. For most of us, though, it will be enough. Take a few simple steps to guard your online privacy, and you probably will be fine. Use complex passwords that will be difficult to break. Disable tracking cookies on your browser. Be careful about the websites you visit. Above all else, remember your mother’s advice: avoid doing anything in a public venue you don’t want the whole world to know about. Be especially wary where cameras are likely to be present.

If you have ever been online, your privacy won’t be absolute. With a few basic precautions, though, you should be able to avoid serious problems.

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SAVING DATA: MY OWN EXPERIENCE

Every internet service provider rations the amount of data each customer can use per month at the standard speed. If you break your data cap, your download speeds will be cut drastically. Knowing how frustrating this can be, you can benefit from learning how to economize on data without hampering function.

You might find it helpful to know my own experience with data caps, and with my efforts to get the most out of my data allotment.

Needing to research a high volume of material, and being pressed for time, I use Google Chrome for browsing. Chrome is faster than competing browsers, but it comes with a significant drawback: it consumes more data. I needed to find ways to get the most out of what I had.

My data saving program began with disabling auto-play video. Not only is such video advertising annoying, it eats a huge amount of data.

First,  I disabled Adobe Flash, which most- though not all- auto-play ads run on. This required opening my computer’s control panel and hitting the ‘settings’ tab. From there, I scrolled scroll down to the ‘advanced settings’ tab at the bottom of the ‘settings’ window. On the second page of ‘advanced settings’, I found the ‘privacy’ tab. Under ‘privacy’ I found the ‘plug-ins’ tab. One of the options there is ‘manage individual exceptions’. Hitting this tab revealed a list of several optional apps, and Adobe Flash was the last one listed.  I hit ‘disable’ for Flash.

Disabling Adobe Flash doesn’t mean you can never use it again. If you want to watch a video that requires Flash, you can enable it as needed, then disable it again when you’re finished.

If you’re a typical web-surfer, disabling auto-play video and audio should reduce your data consumption by about 20%.

My second major step in saving data was enabling Chrome’s data saver extension. This app compresses picture, video, and sound files.

After hearing about the data saver extension, I looked it up through the browser. It told me the extension was available through the Chrome Web Store. Visiting the store, and searching under ‘apps’, I brought up ‘extensions’.  ‘Data Saver’ was the first extension listed. I chose the ‘download’ option.

Downloading the Chrome Data Saver extension takes only a few seconds. If you want to disable it later, you can easily do so.

Google says that use of this extension will reduce data consumption by up to 70% on some devices. In my own experience, it actually averages 15% to 20%. Every bit adds up, though.

Other browsers feature their own  data saving extensions and means to disable auto-play video. The procedures for them may differ slightly from the Chrome process, but they follow the same general outline.

There are other means of saving data. You can, for example, limit the number of tabs you keep open at a time. Downloading your data saver extension and disabling auto-play video will produce the bulk of your saving, though.

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GETTING THE BEST DEAL IN INTERNET SERVICE

How can you be sure you’re getting the best deal in internet service? There are a few questions you should ask about any web service offered.

First, make sure you understand all charges. Many internet service providers offer low monthly rates for a promotional period, usually three months to one year. After the promotional periods, though, the rates increase sharply. Some providers offer ‘free’ equipment and installation, but they add the equipment and installation charges to the monthly fees, and they require long term contracts, with fines for early termination.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being cheated. Make sure you’re getting a complete list of all charges before you sign a contract, though. Before you agree to installation, be sure you understand the total you pay in advance, the total monthly fees, including taxes and other surcharges, and the total you will pay after any promotions end.

Second, assess your needs. Consider how many people in your household are likely to be connected at any one time, what kinds of devices you connect to the internet, and what functions you want. If you will connect only one or two devices, and your web use is chiefly e-mail and light web surfing, then you might get by with fairly low speed and a low data cap. If you intend to connect multiple devices, though, or if you want to download music or video, then you will need a higher download speed and more data capacity.

Conduct a speed test of your present internet service, and monitor how much data you use. This will tell you how much speed or data capacity you will need from a new provider. If your present service is too slow or too limited, these steps will still give you a rough idea of how much extra speed or capacity you will need.

If you’re paying a low rate for your internet service, but it’s inadequate for your needs, then you’re not getting a bargain.

Finally, to be sure you’re getting the best deal in internet service, talk to us.