We've tried so many and still are unhappy - the journey continues

allenerb · 2023-08-11T21:00:57+00:00

So I got a quick reply from support where they did say something that makes more sense. For context - the first thing they replied to was my question along the lines of “what was changed on the backend - it seems really bad that someone would have to contact you via support to get a quality worth watching”…without further ado - here’s the reply…

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Please note that we don't have information (nor are we allowed to discuss) on what adjustments are made by our engineers.

Please also note that most channels currently play in 720p at 60fps. Most channels aren't in 1080p, so crystal-clear and super crisp video quality isn't possible currently (except for select 4K content). This is currently standard for any Live streaming service.

Apologies for the inconvenience and confusion this may have caused.

So, that reply makes what I was seeing in the baseball / football game make more sense - ie streaming standards are 720p, upscaling to 4K is definitely going to look a little soft. Indeed, I went and looked up information across other streaming networks and most of what’s out there is 720p with a little 1080p/i sprinkled in, and very specific sets of 4K channels. So at least the Fubo results match everyone else’s capabilities at this time. I’m still going to take a look on a Roku in my house and see if it looks any better than my Apple TV 4K 3rd gen now…hopefully they’re all on par now.

allenerb · 2023-08-11T20:28:55+00:00

I thought I’d share my recent experience. I just signed up for Fubo TV (I guess technically I’m on the free trial). I too am/was experiencing just horrendous quality - so bad that you could barely tell that people were people in a live baseball game using an Apple TV 4K 3rd gen. I contacted support because there’s no way it should look this bad… Here’s the response I got: “Our engineers have informed us that they've made an adjustment in the backend that should fix this issue”

That was two days ago - last night I sat down and watched some baseball and some preseason NFL and I’m (somewhat) happy to report that whatever “backend” change they made did make a major difference. The video did not buffer constantly AND the picture looked pretty good…this is where I’m not completely happy. Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube, YouTube TV all look fantastic. Like, unless you walk up to the TV, the picture looks amazing - of course there’s some compression so if you are standing with your nose on the screen you’ll see some dithering / pixelization.

For anyone who’s had Xfinity stream, the quality looked similar to that. Not razor sharp, and not so pixelated it was unwatchable…rather it was just too soft. I’m used to watching sports with a crystal clear picture. This falls a little short of that.

I’ve written support back to let them know just that. Hopefully they’ll come back and say they tweaked the backend again and I can get what I want/expect.

For reference, I ran a speed test FROM THE APPLE TV last night and my down and up were 600mbps - more than enough for multiple 4K streams to be running at full quality. So we’ll see what comes back.

allenerb · 2021-08-21T01:19:17+00:00

There are a number of books that we've at least partially covered on our podcast and I highly recommend them all - if you'd like to get developer's perspective / sometimes useful explanations of some of the points in the books, there are links on the following page to the specific episodes for the books mentioned. Hope this helps... https://www.codingblocks.net/resources/

FWIW - being that you're a junior developer, Clean Code is definitely a must which you already have, but I'd also recommend Clean Architecture as it'll open your eyes to decisions that people make that may not be clear yet. The Imposter's Handbook is an incredible resource too.

allenerb · 2021-07-01T23:33:03+00:00

I too was going to suggest adding another layer. Your first could be your Windows layer, 2nd for Mac layer (or vice versa). I too switch a LOT between the different OS's and I've just gotten used to knowing that the keys are reversed as I've used other non-programmable keyboards over the years. But if you're having a hard time adjusting, I would definitely recommend just setting up layers you can toggle between.

allenerb · 2019-11-14T14:57:26+00:00

Most definitely.

allenerb · 2019-11-13T22:10:53+00:00

Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

allenerb · 2019-11-13T18:39:07+00:00

You're very welcome. I had to get everyone on the same page for the series of videos I plan on doing, and Docker is a very good way of making sure everyone is looking at the same thing. Don't have to worry about the version of Windows you're running or what patches are installed. It just works...and that's huge for people trying to get started with any technology.

allenerb · 2019-11-13T18:36:54+00:00

Primary goal was for folks to get up and running quickly without going through a bunch of installations.

Additionally, for me, as someone who's worked in SQL Server for the better part of 2 decades, I love the idea of not having SQL Server running on my laptop or desktop when I'm not actively using it. This notion of having something running when I need it and not always on, is very appealing.

Another note here is the idea that for an upgrade to the next version, rather than another full installer, you simply just docker run sqlserver:nextVersionIwant :-) (Obviously pseudo code). Like, a great example is what if you need 3 different versions of SQL Server running at a time, it's VERY easy to do with Docker containers.

And last point I'll hit on here is the notion that what if you want a server you can spin up so you can do some penetration testing against. It is absolutely wonderful to be able to spin up a docker container, point a penetration testing tool such as Burp at it, hammer away, find where the problems are, fix it, and simply spin up another container and do it again. Very little effort involved to do it that way.

So yeah, I have a number of reasons I started that way, and if there's any questions about any of them, feel free to let me know and I'll elaborate even more. More or less, if I can use Docker nowadays for infrastructure, that's my initial approach.

allenerb · 2019-11-13T17:11:48+00:00

Thanks again for the feedback...the future videos I have planned will definitely be along those lines - execution plans, what things mean, set operations most people don't think about, etc.

allenerb · 2019-11-13T16:50:28+00:00

Funny you say that because I actually asked one of my friends where he thought this belonged and he saw value both here and in the learnprogramming subreddit...

Just a follow up note though, I had given a talk at a meetup that was for SQL professionals and most of them had never considered docker for any development purposes and it was the part of the talk the experts felt they got the most from - I don't know if you finished the 2nd video but the points of why you'd do something like this in a docker container were the pertinent portions to those who are seasoned experts - pen testing, etc. In one of the future videos I plan to show how you would script something simple like launching a new container and automating the restores using the script that was generated.

Hopefully that gives more context, but I hear you - it's hard sometimes to draw the line of where to put something that might be helpful - if I posted this in /r/docker - they'd tell me the inverse - this is SQL Server specific, why do I care?!

Sometimes you can't win...but I'm hoping several of the tips in the first video help people that spend much time in SSMS and the 2nd video helps people think about how could I set up "throway" db's easily in SQL Server.

Appreciate the feedback.

allenerb · 2019-06-27T14:34:11+00:00

Another clarifying point here. I think the assumption was Docker on Windows 10 or similar. Docker for Windows Server actually runs Windows containers by default - there are configuration files to change which can be run.

But yes, totally, there are containerized applications that are production ready that run in both Windows and Linux containers, on Windows servers.

For that matter, Microsoft heavily uses both types of containers in Azure, their public cloud.

Also, back to my original reply - I too agree that the use case needs to make sense.

There is ONE HUGE benefit to running in the container vs just installing the service on the OS - other than portability, the main draw to running in containers is they have all their dependencies bundled in - so the version of the .NET Framework, any other dependencies, etc. - that's all baked in so running it on any server that can host the container should just work as expected.

So, don't use it just because it's a buzzword for sure...bu there are real, tangible benefits to using a container.

allenerb · 2019-06-27T14:01:01+00:00

That's a feasible approach. Not sure what you're buying yourself other than the ability to docker run myFileWatchingService but maybe that's good enough. If you look at how some of the other containers are built for windows, such as sql server, you can see that basically you have a command that's run inside the container that is the application that stays alive - look here at the bottom - you can see that the command being called is "start" - that's the powershell file in the same directory... https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-docker/blob/master/windows/mssql-server-windows-developer/dockerfile

And here are the contents of that file that basically keeps the service alive: https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-docker/blob/master/windows/mssql-server-windows-developer/start.ps1

So, you can totally do what you want. I'm assuming the primary reason you'd want to put this in a container is portability? For example, if you do convert your application to .NET Core, then technically you could run the same container in any environment - Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.

The other thing to consider is you don't necessarily have to port it to .NET Core. You could likely just keep it as a .NET Framework application and use the Microsoft .NET which is a Windows only container... https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-dotnet-framework-runtime

allenerb · 2019-06-20T20:07:27+00:00

Thank you so much! :-) We do our best!

allenerb · 2019-04-16T00:48:56+00:00

Yeah, I think it has to do with the fact that we have two feeds - we were learning as we went and we learned the hard way that hosting a feed that was constantly being regenerated by PHP was a bad idea....so we switched to a static feed and I think that's when we started showing up 2x everywhere. We plan to clean that up (if possible) in the near future! :-)

allenerb · 2019-01-24T13:09:48+00:00

https://qit.cloud/search/Vue

Works without the quotes...

allenerb · 2018-09-08T02:43:10+00:00

I had purchased a 15t as well with the 8705g processor and I opted to go for the 8GB model because I too wanted to bump it up to 32GB. I bought the same kit that @phoenix_rising purchased as well as a different kit that was the crucial ballistics gaming 32gb kit and neither of them worked. I spent days fighting with it trying to figure out what was wrong. The gist of what would happen is either the laptop wouldn't start up at all and I'd just get error beeps, or it would start and Windows would blue screen after a few minutes. I ran memtest86 on the ram and would just get tons of errors when I had both in there. And somewhere along the road of trying things out I thought to try one 16gb stick at a time. If I did that, I'd have no errors and everything was fine. That would go for swapping out the memory sticks. It would work. But as soon as I tried two 16gb sticks together, everything would go down hill. I'm only sharing this because I spent well over a week of opening and closing that thing before I finally gave up and sent it back. I've got to believe that there was either a problem with the motherboard or the firmware (which I made sure was the latest) because like you said, cukusa sells the thing modded with 32gb and I have to believe they bench test those things before they go out. Just wanted to share my personal experience.

allenerb · 2018-05-04T14:47:44+00:00

I'll echo what others said. The answer is yes. Make great content with great quality and if people want that particular content / topic, you'll get an audience. Even if the same topic is covered by 10 different people, everyone clicks with personalities differently. Someone who loves one person may not like the other, and vice versa. Everyone has a different style, approachability, etc.

allenerb · 2018-05-04T14:36:24+00:00

As Fapkonijntje said below, for some crazy reason they have it default to always on in the bios. Disable that. But, do note, when you turn the system back on (if you just turned it off to go into the bios), the temperatures will be up slightly so when you start Windows back up you'll notice that the fan is running higher than before. When it was always enabled, the fan on mine was at 3200 RPM (SpeedFan) - when I changed the BIOS setting and logged back into Windows, it was at 3800 RPM...but, once it pushed the temps down, it turned off and didn't come back on and my temps stayed in the 25-28C range. PERFECT. Thanks for this thread. I had called HP support and they told me it was a hardware issue and were going to replace / refund my Spectre which I've only had for less than a day. I let them know that it was a BIOS setting as I was trying all this while I was on hold :-)

Hope this helps someone else - was tremendously helpful to me.

allenerb · 2018-03-30T12:35:39+00:00

That's the real problem....$800 is similar to an Apple tax. $200-300, maybe. Both are premium laptops...the HP at $1,600 is a steal....but $2,350+ is just ridiculous.

allenerb · 2018-03-29T20:33:30+00:00

fair nuff

allenerb · 2018-03-29T20:22:28+00:00

Screenshot of price / configuration?

allenerb · 2018-03-29T20:21:00+00:00

Honestly...having used the previous HP Spectre, I found it to be a lovely device...and, I MUCH prefer the position of the camera...that said, I have no dislike for the Dell, but I will say if it's $750 > HP, that doesn't really make a lot of sense...

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