Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss North Carolina officials warning against navigation apps, Apple announcements, Nest video doorbell, and more.

 

Eddy in Charlotte, North Carolina asked: I'm a truck driver, and I usually have good cell signal, but when I try to use mobile data, especially around outlying truck stops, I find the data "bitrate" for surfing the web and watching videos isn't effective and I get a lot of skipping. I'm curious whether products like the "Wemo" (I think he means weBoost) or some of the other repeaters have gotten better at that technology. I used one years ago and it didn't seem to make a difference with data. Curious if some of these newer ones have resolved the bandwidth with mobile data.

 

Eddy, signal boosters can be effective, you should probably look at the professional line, the ones meant for large vehicles like RVs, those tend to have larger and better antennas.

You should also look into buying the most appropriate one for your use, if you’re going place where LTE is not common, you may actually get better speeds by letting LTE drop and using sturdier 4G instead.

Ultimately, it always comes down to whether or not there’s anything around you to repeat. It is possible for you to have voice service and not data service, or to have EDGE service which you wouldn’t notice while making phone calls but certainly would when trying to stream video.

There are some services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video that will let you download some of its content to view offline, you should take a look at those too and see if those options are available to you. No one bothers with live TV these days anyway.

Michael in Shreveport, Louisiana listens on NewsRadio 710 KEEL asked: I was wondering about bluetooth headphones. I recently got a transmitter for my TV to connect to my bluetooth earphones. But the latency between the time they say something and I actually hear it in my headphones is about a second. What can I do to make this not happen? Is there a better product I can buy or anything like that?

 

Mike, Bluetooth is a standard and it has gone through different versions. Like WiFi has 802.11b and 802.11ac and they’re very far apart in speeds, the same is true of Bluetooth. Buying headphones that adhere to a newer version of the standard will probably improve your experience.

Your transmitter could be the issue too. Something is the bottleneck and it may not necessarily be your headphones - but your transmitter. Lag with Bluetooth devices is not unheard of, but it shouldn’t be an issue with the newer ones.

Alternatively, you can buy wireless headphones meant for TV, they wouldn’t be Bluetooth, but they’d likely cost you less and they’re meant for the use you’re giving yours now, so you shouldn’t expect any delay from them.

 

 

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