home theater, cord cutting, video streaming, a/v tech, and more!

[DigitalGypsy66]

I turned QoS off in my house, after my wife complained about buffering during one of her Gossip Girl binges. YMMV

My kids like to stream Twitch while playing video games, so I limit the bandwidth on their tablets in the Asus app. iPads download speeds are all over the place with streaming video, so a limit smooths out the peaks and valleys a little bit.

[NTP66]

I forget what you currently have, but you could give an AC1900 (RT-AC68U) a try, and if you need more coverage, add a second. I don’t know a single person who has or needs multiple APs.

So I did a little reading and the ASUS RT-AC86U AC2900 comes up for better range, but I don't see much difference between the specs. Any idea on this one?

The 86U is another excellent alternative if you can get it for a decent price.

So I'm all setup and everything is working great. In the Asus app, they have a QoS feature to what I'm guessing is prioritize your devices connected to WiFi? Do you use this?

I don’t use QoS, no. In fact, I don’t believe the onboard software is worth enabling. Now, if you went with Merlin’s custom firmware, there is a guy who developed a custom QoS add on for it that would work much better. If you search back in this thread, I mentioned this to DG66 in the past.

That said, I think you’d be fine leaving it disabled entirely.

[eddy]

Thanks for all the help fellas

[eddy]

I turned QoS off in my house, after my wife complained about buffering during one of her Gossip Girl binges. YMMV

My kids like to stream Twitch while playing video games, so I limit the bandwidth on their tablets in the Asus app. iPads download speeds are all over the place with streaming video, so a limit smooths out the peaks and valleys a little bit.

My kids have echo dots or whatever in their room for listening to music, I know they are always connected to wifi, but I'm assuming they really aren't using up much unless they are being played. Should I do the bandwidth limiter for these?

[eddy]

And another question, do you gets let the router do the auto smart detect or do you manually assign your devices a signal?

[NTP66]

I don’t limit anything on my router.

And another question, do you gets let the router do the auto smart detect or do you manually assign your devices a signal?

I’m not sure what you mean here?

[eddy]

I don’t limit anything on my router.

And another question, do you gets let the router do the auto smart detect or do you manually assign your devices a signal?

I’m not sure what you mean here?

There is an option for dual band smart connect. I'm guessing that automatically assigns the device either 2.4 or 5ghz compared to manually assigning each device to use a specific network?

[NTP66]

Ahh, gotcha. Give it a try and see how well it works. Most of my wireless devices downstairs are 2.4, though the ones upstairs are on 5.

[DigitalGypsy66]

I wouldn't limit the echo dots. They won't use the bandwidth streaming iPads use.

[NTP66]

I don’t see a reason to limit bandwidth on anything unless you have a slow internet connection. All it does is add overhead to the router. Perhaps if you want to punish your kids, limit their devices.

[LITT]

looking to get a new personal laptop. they always **** the bed and stop working after 2 or 3 years. really only use it for basic microsoft office use, web browsing, taxes, photo storage. i am thinking about getting a mac book. my historical experience with mac is that the office integration is very clumsy and looks amateurish. has office 365 helped at all with this?

[nocera]

Office 365 is really good. I use it daily for work on both an iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro. It's far better than Office for Mac, although you'll find a few things here and there that are missing from the PC versions.

[LITT]

Excellent thanks. This could be incorrect but i feel like Apple computers last sigifnicantly longer than everything else

[NTP66]

Source of the post This could be incorrect

Context is key here. This is incorrect if we're comparing apples to apples. If you compare a $3k Macbook to a $500 Windows laptop, it's a different story. I would not hesitate to recommend a Windows laptop to anyone not wanting to overpay for a Macbook.

[nocera]

This is true. I go with Apple because I prefer the OS and the ecosystem. But you can’t really compare you **** economy PC laptop dying in 2 years to the life of a MacBook.

[LITT]

interesting. In terms of similar budget what would you recommend

[tifosi77]

Macs suck. Boo, Apple. I still watch the Hunter Cressall "Crash Different" parody video once a month to validate my opinion.

[DigitalGypsy66]

So what's the current opinion of YouTube TV? I'm thinking about getting it for a month or so for local news and entertainment while we're probably all going to be home.

[dodint]

YoutubeTV is pretty great, I was surprised by it.

@Spangler mentioned it in another thread, but Pluto TV is free and has a ton of content. It's ad supported by commercials, like old style TV, but the selection is pretty robust. It has a channel that is nothing but MST3k, what more could you want?

[Lemon Berry Lobster]

A channel of only MST3K? Perfect time for a quarantine

[tifosi77]

So what's the current opinion of YouTube TV? I'm thinking about getting it for a month or so for local news and entertainment while we're probably all going to be home.

It's fine. Not quite as good as Vue was, imo, and the guide UI is truly awful. But it gets the job done.

[dodint]

My impressions are the exact opposite of tif's. But he uses PS4 and I use FireStick so that could be why.

[tifosi77]

The big issue I have with the guide is it appears there's no rhyme or reason to the order in which the channels are presented. For example, it goes NatGeo, Animal Planet, Discovery, Smithsonian. On Vue, the listing was straight alphabetical.

[dodint]

But with YoutubeTV you can order them however you want. I am not sure what the issue is. I put all the useless college sports channels at the bottom, whereas with Vue I had to scroll past the BIG TEN NETWORK and it's 15 alt channels every....single....time.

You can edit the channel lineup on a computer and it reflects in the apps. It's nice.

[dodint]

Not to mention the fact that Vue had that horrendous vertical guide. I liked Vue but am much happier now.