Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I'm about 20 miles away from the towers but I'm on a hill
works well, most of the time
cheap model from Amazon

It's becoming a thing these days, for people to go back to using those large aerial antennas that sit up over the house.  I think it's awesome.

The problem with over the air is you have to watch commercials.  The only thing I watch live is Sports and CNBC while the market is open

If I did have something like that, I'd probably just cut on Sling Orange during football season and be done with it.  I think Sling Orange is still a pretty decent price.  YTTV and Hulu Live TV have both really climbed in the last 5-7 years, as I expected they would.

this is my understanding of it all... take it for what it's worth: 

it's a bit of a slight of hand... public would indeed be described as a lock, and private would be a key in the same analogy.  the slight of hand is the agreement... basically, you tell the secure source what question to ask you and that question doesn't have to be stored securely... you also tell it what the password/key is... the secure source didn't generate the question nor the passcode... you did... or, in the case most often, a device such as a smart phone, bluetooth, or RFID device did- and they can generate "questions" a mile long that require answers equally long but which can be parsed in the blink of an eye by the devices.  all that happens when using a smart device without requiring user input...  to further enhance, the public (the lock; the public key) can be accompanied by a script injected by the private key that informs the lock the combination has changed for the next challenge and will require XXX for the next iteration both in question and response.... akin to how blutooth pairs... it establishes a frequency to communicate on and injects a algorithm about which frequency to hop to next- once the devices are paired, they begin bouncing frequencies rapidly and in unison... a blip may be distinguishable to a listener/eavesdropper, but that is all- and you have no clue what the next frequency will be to intercept the next blip... the public/private keys can do the same thing, changing every time access is requested based on an agreement arranged in the answer/private key.... 

then, there is challenge and persistent... challenge asks you once or maybe once and then at an event what your password is... persistent asks you every time you lift a foot off the ground and before you plop it back down.  you could see where that would be a problem for user experience.  it comes down to 'just how secure you want this to be?".     

my questions are "how much does this matter?" as with quantum computing, these measures are things of the past.  sha-256? it takes a quantum computer less than a millisecond to crack it wide open.  if there are no keys? it'll find a crease in the application or network in the same amount of time.  I watched a podcast a few weeks ago and the guy said "it's not coming; it' here".  the defense right now is we know where the quantum computers are and who's operating them.  if a hack happens that is inexplicable any other way, we'll just look to see what computers were doing what when it occurred.  my question is relevant because, at some point, there are going to be a lot of quantum computers around running various AI systems and singularity will be just up the street, and all of that means our ideas of security are tossed. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOwTWpODuwW/


maybe a better way:  "Hey you, I'm me"... "yeah? Prove it..." ... "Okay, ask me anything".   [and it goes looking for questions only you or your connecting device, would know the answer to, and asks it.]  The public non encrypted key is the challenge- anyone sniffing can see it... the private key is the response - the answer is either right or wrong, but destroyed nonetheless after use.  there is no 'real' answer and it certainly isn't a static password.  

if you unlock a network or a door with NFP or RFID, you're doing the same thing except the response is static. the question or the answer isn't static with passkeys.  there is nothing to sniff out via router intercept, collect, and try to use later as that key no longer works. 

again, this is my understanding... i've been staring at it for a while as a tool on this very server, but don't know how to implement it.  i'm hoping someone else finds success, works the bugs out, and makes a plugin i can just load up and use. 

Not really so much a tech nerd thing, as a consumer electronics thing, and also probably a grumpy old man thing, but...

I'm looking at getting a new home theater A/V amplifier-receiver, and I'm finding that it's more difficult than it was, say, ten years ago, the last time I upgraded a home theater system.

What I'm looking for is pretty simple-- I'd like an A/V amplifier-receiver with a decent amount of power, probably 400-500W, since it's driving all of the speakers in my great room which has our main family TV and entertainment system.  I want it to have a couple of HDMI inputs for the Bluray and maybe a gaming console, and one HDMI-ARC port to get the SmartTV sound back down to the amp.  I also would like to have RCA stereo monitor outputs since I also use that amp to daisy-chain to another amp that drives my outdoor speakers all around the pool, spa, and firepit.

I already have all of the surround sound speakers I need, several sets actually, from various previous entertainment systems.

I don't need 5 or 6 HDMI inputs like many of the new ones seem to have.  

And they all seem to come with Bluetooth which is fine, I might or might not use that functionality.

But the challenges I'm finding are:

1) Almost all of the modern A/V amps are designed to run a powered subwoofer.  I get it, this type of setup is usually superior since the amp is located withn the sub and there's no need to use a significant portion of the amp-receiver's power to drive the sub, nor do you face the other challenges with that kind of remote passive setup.  But my problem here is that the main amp-reciever driving the passive sub used to be the standard, and I already have several old and decent-quality passive subs that rely on the amp-receiver to drive them.  I don't love the idea of buying a new powered sub that increases the new system price by anywhere from $100 for a super cheap one, to $400-$500 for a (presumably) good one.

2) There really aren't a lot of options for these amp-receivers.  There used to be a dozen brands that made these things, and now I'm pretty much limited to Yamaha, Denon, or a few Sony models. I don't have anything against those brands, but the limited options lead me to the next problem...

3) Everything is just way more expensive than it used to be.  "Entry level" aplifier-receivers are now in the $400 range, when they used to be in the $200 range.  Now I get inflation, but I think this problem is actually rooted in something else. I think it's an issue of very limited demand.  Because I see all kinds of super-cheap but decent soundbar and satellite systems out there, and the price/features on those are actually coming down in many cases, not going up.  With limited research, if I had to guess, I'd say that the market has shifted largely to those kinds of systems, and away from the "component audio" type of sound system, which has resulted in two things-- less competition and less innovation in the component audio which leads to higher prices, and also, component audio has become the audiophile option with the accompanying price premium, while the soundbar/satellite is the common solution for the masses, with economies of scale on its side.

So anyway, that's where I'm at.  Feeling frustrated and a little bit grumpy about the whole thing.

Why can't it just be cheap and easy like it was "back in my day?"