Sunday March 31, 2019; 9:25 AM EDT
It's not often that open standards resist the power of BigCo's to usurp them, but one of them has, and it's made a lot of fun things possible. It's the wonderful ubiquitous international Wi-Fi.#- I have a story to tell about that today. #
- I'm setting up the entertainment system at the country house. It's fun to start over in 2019, because so much has changed for the better since the last time I did it in 2010. #
- When I went to the Spectrum store in Kingston, I realized I had a problem. The place that the cable entered the house was far from the TV room. I mentioned this to the guy behind the counter and he said no worries, don't use the cable set-top box. Use Roku over Wi-Fi. Ohhh. Of course I had Roku, and was coming to use it more and more over time. I said what about all the channels I'm paying Spectrum for. Use the Spectrum app on the Roku. I wondered if the quality would be as good as the hard wire coming straight from Spectrum. He said it would be better and said that's how he does it at home. #
- Well I have it set up now, and the quality is great. And I also set up my Apple TV on the same wifi network as the Roku, and that's when it hit me. They're compatible. I'm sure the two companies wish they weren't but the power of Wi-Fi as a standard is impossible to resist.#