Chris Hamady

Over the past few weeks we have been taking an ever increasing look at web resources that we can share regarding Internet safety. Here are some of the best ones and a brief description of the contents of each link:

“Finstas,” are "alias" accounts created and used by teens to hide more provocative behavior from parents, educators, and potential future employers. See: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/instagram-finsta-rinsta-ramona-pringle-1.4279550

"Vault apps" are apps that appear to be one thing, but actually have a hidden, secret function: https://www.bark.us/blog/find-hidden-apps/

http://www.netsmartz.org is a good resource for internet safety training, especially for younger students.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/privacy-and-internet-safety and http://www.connectsafely.org are both fantastic resources for students and parents regarding Internet safety.

This website, found on commonsensemedia.org, has done a great job putting together a list of the top 17 apps that students might be involved in: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/16-apps-and-websites-kids-are-heading-to-after-facebook

CH

If you are an Anthony Wayne employee and are interested in seeing the slides from today's session on creating a personal learning network (PLN), please click here:

Twitter Slides

A huge THANK YOU to my wife Carrie, and her co-worker Mary-Jon for allowing me to modify their existing presentation.

Chris

Thank you to all of you that attended our presentation at the 2017 OETC Conference. You can find a copy of our presentation here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1g2vrkd_b85ACnTz1POy-mS1SSxScJCGgjp-kXW3nSMw/edit?usp=sharing

Here is a copy of the document that details how to evaluate privacy policies and terms of service:

TOS_Guidance Doc

Here is the tool at commonsense.org that Becky Shiring shared with us. It can be used to get a quick assessment of online web services with respect to their privacy policies and terms of service:

https://privacy.commonsense.org/

Thanks again!

Chris

About a year ago, I bought a flush mount micro SD card adapter for my MacBook Air as well as a 128 gig micro SD card for it. I leave the SD card in the laptop 24/7 so that I can essentially have an additional 128 gigs of storage when I need it.

Soon after installing it, I noticed that occassionally (more like regularly), when attempting to copy data to the SD card, I would receive an error and the copy would fail. Nothing I tried would correct the issue and I ended up having to reformat the SD card in another computer numerous times. I looked all over the internet and could not locate a fix for this, which is why I'm writing it up.

I finally came up with a fix not requiring a reformat of the SD card. On your Mac, open Disk Utility. Select the SD card's mounted volume, NOT the root of the SD card partition. Once the mounted volume is selected, you can now click the "unmount" button and unmount the volume. Next, select the SD card's unmounted volume and "Repair Disk." Once completed, mount the volume again using the "mount" button in Disk Utility. The volume should once again be writable.

If the above doesn't work for you, try repairing both the volume and the root partition prior to mounting the volume again.

Chris

Part I

Free Broadcast High-Definition Television

If your family is like our family, over the past few years you have probably noticed that your media consumption habits have been dramatically changing. My wife and I began to watch less and less cable television content, and we began watching more online content such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and iTunes movies. Our children were watching a little bit of Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, but were mostly watching content found on YouTube. It was around this time that I began to read about digital HDTV broadcast television, how many people were adopting it, and other new ways to minimize their monthly media bills while maximizing their viewing options.

First off, let's begin with cable television. In order to leave cable TV behind, you will probably want some way to watch your live local television stations. This can easily be done by using an antenna. After doing some research, ok...ridiculous amounts of research, I decided to purchase the Mohu Leaf 50 Amplified indoor HDTV antenna. You can currently pick this antenna up for about $50.00 on Amazon.com, but it can frequently be found on sale for less.

See:

http://www.amazon.com/Mohu-Paper-thin-Reversible-Performance-MH-110584/dp/B00APPDX86?ie=UTF8&keywords=moho%20leaf%20amplified&qid=1465352452&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

Now that I had an antenna, where would I mount it? How would I get the antenna’s signal to the rest of my televisions? Since we live in a suburb on the west side of the Toledo area, I chose to mount the antenna in a second floor window on the east side of the house. I did this because all of the local television stations have their broadcasting antennas located east of our home.

Once the antenna was mounted, I needed a way to distribute the signal to the TVs throughout the home. One of the issues with sending video over coaxial cabling is signal loss. Connecting the antenna directly to a TV using a short run of coaxial cable resulted in a crystal clear high definition image. Running a string of coaxial cable from the second floor window to a TV in the other end of our home resulted in video anomalies and horrible artifacts on the screen.

I solved this by buying a coaxial signal amplifier and splitter. It is currently selling on Amazon for around $33.00.

See:

http://www.amazon.com/Bi-Directional-Amplifier-Splitter-Booster-Passive/dp/B000WDR94U?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00

A string of coaxial cable runs from the antenna into this amplified splitter by connecting to the splitter's input labeled, RF IN, and the rest of the home's coaxial cabling that runs to the various TVs will plug into the splitter's multiple outputs labeled, OUT. Once everything is connected, and you tell your TV to scan for available channels in your area, this setup should result in crystal clear HD television of any local stations within the range of your antenna. A side benefit of this is that you might be surprised to find that in some cases, the picture quality of digital HDTV broadcasts can actually be better than what your cable company delivers.

You have now successfully replaced the cable TV functionality of delivering live local television broadcasts to your home for $83.00 or less. The total cost of ownership goes down the longer you use this system. The total cost of renting cable goes up the longer you continue to “rent” your TV content. Since you are forced to watch advertising regardless of the distribution method, why would you pay to watch local broadcast television?

In part 2 of this series, we will look at the different products that can be used to inexpensively stream live, internet-delivered television content that you normally won't find being broadcast over the air in your area (ESPN, HGTV, Travel Channel, etc).

Part II

Live Streaming Content via the Internet

In part I, we covered the bases to deliver local broadcast television content to your home for free (after purchasing an antenna and signal amplifier). Now let’s see what kind of options we have to internet stream live television channels that would normally only be found on cable television.

Sling TV

In January of 2015, Sling TV was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show. This product allows a subscriber to live stream the following 26 channels over the internet for $19.99 a month with no contract:

ESPN, AMC, CNN, HGTV, Cartoon Network, HISTORY, Disney Channel, ESPN2, TNT, Food Network, TBS, Freeform, Adult Swim, IFC, A&E, El Rey, Viceland, Lifetime, Travel Channel, Newsy, Bloomberg Television, Local Now, Polaris+, Maker, Flama, Galavisión.

See:

https://www.sling.com/service

A number of optional “packs” can be purchased to augment these channel offerings for a reasonable cost of only $5 per pack for approximately 5 additional channels.

Sling TV can be used on Roku devices, Amazon Fire TV devices, Macs, PCs, Apple iOS devices, Android, and others. I have found that the best interface for Sling TV to use is a Mac computer connected to the TV and controlled with an Apple Magic Trackpad. The quality of the video is extremely good, but occassionally some channels seem to stream well, while other channels lag or stutter. ESPN and ESPN2 have been nearly flawless for us if the ability to reliably stream that content is a big deciding factor for you.

See:

https://www.sling.com/devices

One of the best things about Sling TV is that in addition to the availability of a channel's live stream, some channels include access to content that has been recently broadcasted. In some examples, a channel might have the past week’s worth of content available for viewing on demand. Any fans of Andrew Zimmern will love having access to all of that week’s Bizarre Food episodes on the Travel Channel.

Moving your premium live TV needs to Sling means that you can now take your TV content with you wherever you go. Want to watch some content at the doctor’s office while you wait to get in? It is as easy as taking out your phone and launching the Sling app for Android or iPhone and watching your choice of live, or archived television content from whatever channels you subscribe to.

Playstation Vue

If you have a Playstation in your home, another option for streaming live TV is to sign up for Sony’s Playstation Vue service. For $29.99, you will have access to the 55 channels listed on this page:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/vue/#1

There are other plans available that include even more channels/content for additional money. Playstation Vue is also compatible with a number of different set top boxes and mobile devices.

See:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/vue/faq/

DirectTV Now

In March, AT&T announced DirectTV Now. This service will provide customers with 100 channels of streaming TV content for only $35 dollars. A recent leak provided more details on this yet unavailable service.

http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/directv-now-channel-list-leak-1201909846/

Pay-Per-View

Content does not need to be limited to only the included TV shows with your streaming packages. Just like pay-per-view content available on cable TV, a number of solutions are available to watch premium on-demand TV content as well as on-demand movies over the internet. Sling TV now includes the capability for customers to order select content on a pay-per-view basis. This option is built directly into the standard Sling TV app and interface, and any content selected and viewed will be automatically charged to the customer’s credit card on file with Sling. Pay-per-view movies from Sling start at $3.99 for standard definition and $4.99 for high definition.

Apple iTunes also has a wide selection of movie and television content that can be rented and viewed. This content can only be purchased and viewed on Apple devices, with the exception being iTunes on Windows personal computers. Most movies start at $3.99 to rent and $9.99 to purchase.

Movie Subscriptions

Amazon

Those of you that shop at Amazon.com are probably aware of the 2 day Amazon Prime shipping service. Another benefit of Amazon Prime is that subscribers to Prime have access to Amazon Prime music and videos, although some might find the video selection a bit limited. Amazon Prime includes both TV and movie content and is accessible from a number of devices.

See:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/devices?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

In addition to the included free Amazon Prime selections, Amazon also has additional movies and television content that can be rented or purchased. Prices for that content start at $2.99 and up.

Netflix

The most popular provider of streaming movies in the world is currently Netflix. While Netflix does have a large collection of movies for viewing online at http://netflix.com, a much more comprehensive and attractive collection of their content is still only available via DVDs. If you are a movie buff, you might consider subscribing to a DVD+Streaming plan. I think it is worth it. You can check out the DVD service here:

See:

http://dvd.netflix.com

It should also be mentioned that Netflix now has the largest selection of original content available by any streaming service. Titles like Stranger Things, DareDevil, and The Flash are extremely popular and incredibly well-done video entertainment that you might want to check out. Netflix is also compatible with the largest array of devices.

See:

https://devices.netflix.com/en/

or

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Netflix-compatible_devices

As you can see, access to both live and on-demand video content over the internet is possible, but depending upon what services you subscribe to, certain concessions might need to be made. Your best bet is to determine what your specific needs are, and figure out which services will best fit those criteria. Regardless of which services you decide to use, you should be able to create a video solution that will not only provide you with exceptional choices for content, but save you a significant amount of money over cable TV as well.

Data Usage

It should be noted that using all of the above streaming solutions will affect your data caps, both broadband, as well as cellular. The amount of data use depends upon the quality of the streams that you choose to receive. Some of the these services allow you to choose the quality of the streaming video, while others automatically adjust their quality depending upon the detected speed of your data connection. Every service that I have tried has excellent video quality when streaming at their highest setting.

That being said, you will need to carefully plan for necessary bandwidth speed and any data caps. My recommendation would be to plan on upgrading your internet package if you are cutting cable TV from your home media viewing habits. Our family looked at all of the options and decided to go with Buckeye Broadband's product, Buckeye 1 and BEX 50+. This product provides us with sufficient internet connection speed so that all five family members can stream content simultaneously, and also provided us with a significant bump in our bandwidth cap. That bandwidth cap works fine during months when school is always in session. But during spring break, when our children were home each day, we went over that bandwidth cap substantially. It would be nice if Buckeye would follow Comcast's lead and double the bandwidth cap to 1 terabyte. Overall Buckeye 1 is a great product, supported locally, with excellent customer service.

https://www.buckeyebroadband.com/data_plans/

Another way that you can maximize the potential of your decision to cut the cord, and positively affect your finances in the process, might be to consider switching your cellular service provider to T-Mobile. Although, as I'm sure most of you are already aware, switching to any cellular provider requires that their service coverage is suitable for your cellular needs.

T-Mobile currently has a program called Binge On. This program allows you to stream unlimited content from all of the services mentioned above without counting against your cellular data cap. Once you, and potentially any family members that you might have, realize that all of your video content is now available to you anywhere, the use of these products on cellular devices will in all likelihood increase. Binge On and T-Mobile will allow you to access all of this content, as much quantity as you like, without negatively affecting your cell phone bill, ever. An added benefit is the fact that switching to T-Mobile dropped our cellphone bill substantially.

See:

http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html

In part III of this series, we will look at television, audio, and streaming component selection.

Part III

Parts 1 and 2 in this series looked at different methods of streaming television and movie content into your home. Now let's look at the various hardware components that you can use to interact with that content.

Set-top boxes

For the purposes of this article, a set-top box refers to any device that sits next to a television (or plugs into it), connects to a network resource for video content, and displays that video content on the television by way of an HDMI port or other digital connector. Further narrowing down our investigation, we will look at various set-top boxes that connect to the internet and stream video content to your television.

If you are serious about streaming television to your home, there really are many different devices that you should consider. Roku devices, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV devices, and others. These devices stream content from all of the major sources of streaming video. Both Fire TV and Roku stream: SlingTV, Amazon Video, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and much more. Amazon Video is strangely absent from Apple TV.

Apple TV

Apple TV is by far the most intuitive of the set-top box offerings. Anyone with even the slightest bit of technology skill will be able to easily navigate the interface of Apple TV, and be up and watching streaming content in no time at all. One of the capabilities of Apple TV that the other solutions do not have is the ability to stream any Apple iTunes content from a shared iTunes library in your home. More on this in a moment. A limitation of Apple TV is the fact that it currently does not support Ultra High-Definition 4K television content.

Apple TV does, however, have a unique and compelling feature- Single Sign-on. In the past, you had to authenticate to Netflix, then authenticate to Hulu, then authenticate to HBO, etc. With Single Sign-on, Apple hopes to have you authenticate to your Apple TV with your Apple ID, and any services to which you subscribe will automatically be associated to that Apple ID. You can then instantly interact with any of their content. It remains to be seen if this will work with services for which you have subscribed outside of Apple’s eco-system, but the concept looks promising.

Roku

Roku devices come in a number of form factors. Prices start at $39.99 for a small streaming stick that plugs directly into your television's HDMI port, to hundreds of dollars for a television with Roku capability built directly into the TV.

See:

https://www.roku.com/

Depending upon your needs, you are sure to be able to find a Roku device that satisfies your viewing habits. One thing to consider is whether or not you will need 4k streaming. 4k video is double the resolution of regular high definition video resulting in even better clarity and detail. We will discuss this in greater lengths later on in this article.

See:

https://www.roku.com/4k-ultra-hd

Setup is fairly simple. You plug the Roku device into your television, provide power to it, and connect it to your wireless network. Once that is done, you can navigate the onscreen prompts to whatever service you want to watch, Netflix, Hulu, etc., and enter your username and password for that service.
During my testing of Roku devices, I found them to be reliable and functional. In my opinion, they lack the intuitive finesse that Apple devices used to be famous for. The only negatives that I should mention are that they do not play any Apple iTunes content from a shared iTunes library, and the interface on the Roku Streaming Stick is a bit slow and laggy due to its minimally powered system. If you want a fast, fluid experience navigating your Roku device, you might want to consider the Roku Streaming Player or 4k UHD Player.

Amazon Fire TV

Amazon Fire TV products are similar in design to the Roku devices. They come in different form factors from streaming sticks that, again, plug directly into the HDMI port, to full size set-top boxes. The biggest differentiating factor between the various Fire TV devices and the previously discussed Roku devices is the newly integrated Alexa voice control on some of the Fire TV models. Using Amazon's assistant Alexa, you can speak to the Fire TV and navigate some of the device's features using your voice. Prices for Amazon Fire TV systems range from $39.99 for a Fire TV Stick, to $49.99 for a Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote, to $99.99 for a Fire TV that supports voice and 4K streaming.

See:

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Fire-TV-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B00U3FPN4U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465673353&sr=8-1&keywords=fire+tv

Both Roku and Amazon Fire TV products do an excellent job of streaming online content to your home for a small up front investment. If voice navigation is important to you, Amazon Fire TV is your best bet. It should be noted, however, that depending upon the type of television you buy, you may not need to invest in one of these set-top box devices. More on this in a moment.

Televisions

There is a huge myth out there that you need to buy a gigantic television to have a good HDTV experience. The size of the TV alone is not the final ingredient for creating a superior visual experience. Let's do an experiment. Assuming that your cellphone has a retina-class screen, a screen where you can't see any individual pixels, hold up your cellphone and watch a video on your phone at arms length between you and your TV. Now slowly bring your cellphone closer and closer toward your face. At some point, that little cellphone will provide a pretty good viewable image, larger than your television, whatever size it is.

While size is not the only issue, it does play a part in creating the overall optimal solution. The distance from your HDTV as well as the size of the TV combine to create your experience. Depending upon the size of your TV, you need to carefully arrange your viewing area so that you are sitting at an optimal distance from the television, one that has the television taking up a good-sized field of view for you as the viewer, but not so close that you are seeing the individual pixels of the television screen. Full disclosure: if your wife won't let you re-arrange the furniture so that you can sit closer to the TV, you might want to buy a larger television. :)

Here is a page that details what distance you should be sitting from your TV with respect to its size and resolution.

See:

http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship

Formats and Manufacturers

If you are looking to purchase an HDTV, in my opinion now is the perfect time to do that. There are no less than 4 different types of TVs currently being sold, and this in turn drives down the prices of the bottom three. You can find the TVs in the following formats: 720p HDTV, 1080p HDTV, Ultra HD 4k at 2160p, Ultra HD 4k with High Dynamic Range (HDR).

Unlike the short-lived 3D TV standard, 4k Ultra HD television seems to be here to stay. My recommendation is to buy a 4k TV, although any decent 1080p HDTV will do an excellent job entertaining you and your family. I would steer clear of 720p sets as those TVs tend to be made with lower quality components, have less features, and usually have inferior LED edge-lit backlight designs.

At this time, there is a modest, but growing amount of 4k video content. Netflix has a selection of 4k titles, as does Amazon. Unless the 4k television that you purchase has built in Smart TV apps, specifically for Netflix and/or Amazon 4k streaming, your ability to take advantage of the televisions 4k capabilities will be diminished. Purchasing a Roku or Amazon set-top box with 4k streaming capability can solve that problem.

Brands

Today, one particular company seems to really be shaking things up in the television industry. That company is Vizio. At one point, they were a very small manufacturer, but since 2010, they are frequently the first or second manufacturer in terms of marketshare. After months of research, our family settled on the Vizio M Series of 4k TVs. The Vizio M series was chosen by multiple technology blogs as the Editor's Choice.

See:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2493854,00.asp

and

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/vizio-m-series,review-3271.html

Without getting too technical, the big feature that sets apart the Vizio M series from other televisions found in its price range is the inclusion of LED array backlighting. This feature is normally only found on more expensive 4k sets such as those made by Samsung. The end result of LED array backlighting is an image that is crisp, clear, with details and highlights evenly dispersed across the entire screen, and with excellent black levels and contrast.

The Vizio M series also has Smart Television features meaning that a number of apps are built directly into the television giving the viewer one button access to Netflix and Amazon Video, as well as a menu of other apps providing access to even more online services such as YouTube, Hulu, Flickr, and more.
If you are looking for something newer, the Vizio P series has received good reviews, but personally, the included tablet remote control would be less than ideal.

See:

http://www.cnet.com/topics/tvs/best-tvs/best-4k-tvs/

If money isn't a concern, Samsung TVs are the gold standard in LCD televisions and you would be hard pressed to purchase a bad one.

The last thing I will say regarding purchasing a TV is where I believe you should purchase one. My choice is Costco. Something as large as a TV is not something that I would want to order from an online vendor and have it shipped to my home. If something goes wrong, you will have to go through the hassle of boxing it up and shipping it back. More importantly, Costo provides purchasers of electronics with a 90-day full money back guarantee for any reason...period. They also extend the manufacturer warranty on televisions to a full 2 years.

See:

http://www.costco.com/concierge.html

Audio

Exciting audio can make or break your HDTV experience. To emphasize this point, turn on your favorite movie that in your opinion, contains the most exciting action scene you have ever experienced. While watching your favorite scene, completely turn off the audio. This should quickly drive the point home as to how much audio dramatically affects the overall impact of a movie.

With respect to audio hardware, I really don't want to get into a big discussion of brands and models. Any discussion of audio gear will certainly create some emotions in the comment section of this blog. The one thing I will say about audio component selection is that you probably want to steer clear of those tiny little speakers that can be mounted up in the corners of a room.

Big sound cannot be accurately delivered, and certain frequencies cannot be reproduced, using small speakers. While small satellite speakers can certainly deliver audio that sounds ok (this is highly subjective- ok to some is unacceptable to others), those speakers cannot accurately reproduce the total aural frequencies and soundscape as created by a film's audio engineers. Here is my recommendation for a minimum setup of surround sound speakers and an AV surround sound receiver:

Front Channels: http://www.polkaudio.com/t50/d/1259C3672
Center Channel: http://www.polkaudio.com/t30/d/1258C3669
Rear Channels: http://www.polkaudio.com/t15/d/1257C3666
Sub-woofer: http://www.polkaudio.com/psw108/d/1176C3282
Receiver: https://www.amazon.com/Harman-Kardon-AVR-1610-5-1-Channel/dp/B00CMNZHEC/ref=pd_sim_23_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=31p0C64YcQL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=6R3S6K77VJXF98YYTNGC

These components will do a pretty good job of delivering an accurately reproduced sound stage that will dramatically enhance any video experience that you may want to create. If you want an even better experience, in my opinion you can't go wrong with anything made by Klipsch.

See:

http://www.klipsch.com/home-theater-systems

In part 4, we will look at delivering your personally owned audio and video content throughout your home to the various speakers and televisions that you might have.

Part IV

You Own It!

In part 1 of this article, we investigated bringing in local television high definition broadcasts to your home using over-the-air antennas. In part 2, we looked at different subscription products to which you can stream cable TV and movie content over the internet. Part 3 looked at different hardware components enabling us to interact with that content: set-top-boxes, televisions, and audio gear. For this fourth and final segment, let's see what we can do to distribute our personally owned audio and video media throughout our homes.

There are a number of solutions available to implement this type of functionality, but I have found that, by far, the easiest solution is using iTunes as your media hub. iTunes supports the sharing of both audio and video files, and can send them not only to computing devices, but also to certain types of speakers and speaker systems specifically designed for this purpose.

Airplay

One of the things that has always attracted me to Apple products, is the additional value that they provide on top of the basic functionality for which they are purchased. Over the past 12 years, Apple has developed their wireless audio and video technology to the point where we can now share our AV content from a dedicated computer’s iTunes library to any Macintosh computer, Apple TV, iOS device such as an iPhones and iPad, as well as to Airplay speakers throughout our homes which are connected to the data network. For the sake of a name, we will call this dedicated computer and central iTunes library a media center.

Media Center

The concept is simple. You create a shared iTunes library on a computer in your home that you dedicate as your media center. This computer will need to always be connected to your home network, always be turned on and awake, and logged into the account hosting the shared iTunes library if you want to be able to access your iTunes content quickly and easily. To enable iTunes sharing, go under the iTunes menu and choose Preferences, and then Sharing. Click the box next to, “Share my library on my local network.”

Next, you’ll want to turn on Home Sharing. Go to the File menu-Home Sharing and turn on Home Sharing. Enter your iTunes Store credentials. That’s it. You are done setting up your media center. Now you will be able to stream any videos or audio content that you have stored in the media center’s iTunes library to any other Apple devices in your home that support Home Sharing and it is enabled on those devices as well. More info on enabling Home Sharing on different types of devices can be accessed here:

See:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202190

Note: In order to guarantee that your media is available to you 24/7 in your home, you might want to go into System Preferences and set the energy saver settings on this dedicated computer to “never sleep” or “ never power down” the computer. You also have the ability to customize the computer to sleep at say, 1:00 AM, and wake at 8:00 AM.

See:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18583?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

What types of content can you store in iTunes? In addition to music, movies, and TV shows that you purchase from Apple, you can also convert audio CDs and DVDs that you own to digital files that can then be streamed. For audio CD conversion see:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20501?locale=en_US

For DVDs see:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1157590/how_to_rip_dvd_handbrake.html

Please note that the law isn’t entirely clear on the legality of converting DVDs that you own to files that you can stream. Please consider this before you decide one way or the other.

Streaming Audio and Video

Audio and video have different parameters when streaming. Audio streaming in iTunes allows you to create a “Sonos-like” system where you can send music from the media center’s iTunes to any and all Airplay-compatible speaker devices on your home network, simultaneously and fully synchronized throughout your home. Do you want some audio out on your deck? Purchase one of these (or any Airplay compatible speaker) and simply connect it to your wireless network:

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Speaker-980-000625-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B005JW6WQU/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465911752&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=logitec+airplay

That Airplay speaker will then automatically show up in the media center’s iTunes app and you can now stream audio to that speaker, or any other Airplay speakers in your home independently or simultaneously. More info on that can be found here:

https://gigaom.com/2014/01/18/how-to-set-up-multiroom-audio-with-airplay-speakers-and-itunes/

If you have an Airport Express in your home, you can connect any powered speaker to the audio output of that device and turn that speaker into an Airplay speaker as well.

See:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202192

Video

With video, you are limited to one independent stream to one device at a time, but multiple devices simultaneously, although asynchronously. What this means is that although you can watch a video on more than one TV, unlike audio, the playback is not synchronized on each device. I’m not sure why you would want to do this, I’m just pointing it out. :)

To play a video from your media center, make sure that Home Sharing is turned on in whatever device you want to watch the video on (iPad, Mac, iPhone, Apple TV, etc.), make sure that device is connected to your network, and follow the instructions to access the media.

See:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202190

I suppose you can look at the differences between Airplay audio and video this way: you can PUSH audio to any speaker devices simultaneously that support Airplay, while any Apple device with a screen can individually PULL a video from the media center to it. It should also be noted that a Windows computer running iTunes can participate in Home Sharing playing music and videos hosted on the media center. Here is another Apple support article that does a good job explaining the different sharing configurations for Macs and Windows computers:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201779

Conclusion

Finally, when I started this article, I had no idea that it would turn out to be as long as it has. In the interest of keeping it as short as possible, I have certainly left some minor details out, details which should be covered in the many pages that I have linked to. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding the content covered in this blog post. If you do decide to move forward with some of what was discussed here, you will most certainly do more than just cut the cord to cable TV. By getting rid of our home phone, removing cable TV, converting all of our family member’s cellphones over to T-Mobile, and purchasing some online content along with a Buckeye 1 Internet package, our family has cut our monthly costs for telecommunications and media consumption by over $160.00 a month! I am sure that you too, will cut more than just the cord.

CH