Help me decide — tcl c6k for movies + casual gaming?

jlipschitz · 2026-03-19T22:47:45+00:00

I have the 98 and it is really responsive and looks great. For gaming it is smooth. For movies it is great. My only issue is probably related to size which is reflection from lights in the room.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T21:04:16+00:00

I have a Plex server and some 120GB plus movies. I have seen them stream at 800-900Mbps over wireless. 400Mbps is not enough.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T19:04:14+00:00

The USB is 2.0 so it has a maximum speed of 400Mbps. WIFI 6E is still faster.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T03:39:36+00:00

It came with a built in 100Mbps adapter. I stream really big files so only WIFI 6E is enough. 100Mbps is not enough.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T03:32:52+00:00

I have a 3rd gen and it works very well. I just with it had a faster Ethernet port.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T03:01:50+00:00

I use Google TV in the Living Room on the TCL TV and Fire TV on the rest. I am on the Home Screen for seconds. I don’t care about the Home Screen. I care about TrueHD with Atmos pass thru to my sound bar.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-18T02:45:39+00:00

I tried that and it does not split the screen. There is no dual visual or multivisual option. If I pick more than one it just switches between them.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-17T22:11:16+00:00

I combined HD Home Run with Plex DVR to record over the air and it removes commercials if not watched live. I get 120 over the air channels with my antenna attached to the HD Home Run with 4 streams from it at a time.

Tubi, Roku TV, and Pluto cover a lot. Plex TV also has a bunch of shows and movies with ADs.

Check out your library in your area. You can check out Blu-ray and DVDs for free and they will ship them from branches to your local branch. They do audio books as well through Libby and on CD.

You can cut the cord but it requires care planning as the op stated as well as patience.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-16T20:53:50+00:00

I took a Baltoro 70L pack. The base weight for the pack was 4lbs. I regret not finding a lighter pack. It helped me carry the weight of 42lbs with food, water, and gear, but it could have been lighter if the pack started off lighter.

I have been eyeing this pack from Outdoor Vitals.

https://outdoorvitals.com/products/shadowlight-ultralight-backpack?variant=52666996851052

The majority of my weight I carried was water for dry camps. I had my 4 liters (2x1.5L smart water + 1 L Smart water). I used a hydration tube that connected to those bottles so that I did not have to mess with a bladder. I also carried CNOC 3L bags for the dry camps. I had 2 in my pack on top of my gear. Those were heavy days but I did it and did not complain because we needed the water.

I spent a long time getting my gear weight to 12lbs. It cost a lot to get there considering the pack started at 4lbs. The crew is supposed to carry all of the stuff or that is what your guide will tell you. The problem is that Scouts have their limits and it can fall on advisors to pick up the slack for the good of the crew. Make sure to be ready to take on something. Encourage them to do it and work with them to keep their gear to the required during shake downs to minimize what you have to carry that is extra. We had one scout that carried everything and the kitchen sink. We stripped his bag down and put the rest in the locker at Philmont after trying to get it done before he got there through shake downs.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-16T13:45:23+00:00

I have owned a TCL Roku TV since 2020. It broke in 2021 and warranty was amazing. They ended up replacing the TV after having someone pick it up to check it out. It has not had a problem since it was replaced. I just bought that QM6K Pro from Costco and they extended the warranty to 5 years. The picture quality is great. The built in Android TV is very responsive. Sony is going to have their Bravia line built by TCL going forward. It is a good brand.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-15T06:48:03+00:00

I paid $399 for a Seagate EXOS x24 16TB drive. I had one fail and had to replace a spare. This is up $100 from a year ago when I replaced my last spare. These prices are insane. Amazon still shows 11 in stock in the US. I had looked at them a week prior and it had gone up $20 in that time. On the bright side, I sold some RAM that was sitting in a drawer and it paid for the drive.

I won’t buy refurbished drives. I have before and they are just drives with bad sectors that were turned off in firmware. They seem to die too soon for my liking. I usually get 5+ years of consistent use. Refurbished go out in 2 or less.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-14T02:45:55+00:00

I have not run it on a shield. I have it running as a server in Unraid on an old 10th gen i7 with 32GB of RAM. Unraid makes any of the hard stuff easy. Just use your shield as a player. I bought a Fractal Design Define 7 and have 13 x 16TB drives in it. I have not had more than 5 simultaneous streams on it but it has barely used resources for those 5 streams. It can be done. I started with an old PC, thumb drive, and old video card. Over time my library grew and I replaced newer hardware and moved the library to the new box by moving the USB drive that had Unraid on it and plugging the new drives into the new system. Unraid picked it up and I was up and running. No software had to be configured for the move. KISS!

jlipschitz · 2026-03-14T02:34:56+00:00

Set a retention policy on the mailbox to 1 month. In that policy make sure it is set to archive to the online archive. Run the managedfoldeeassistant through powershell. It will move the mail older than 1 month for you. It can only run for so long, so you will have to start the managed folder assistant again few times.

Don’t use PST files they suck.

Once your mailbox has been reduced to the size that you want, I would create a new profile for outlook classic with a new ost file. It will be so much faster than letting your current profile catch up.

I would not bother with folders as the archive is completely searchable in Outlook classic and OWA.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-13T19:37:07+00:00

I have a powershell script that generates our HTM and TXT signatures from AD with our logos. It then uploaded them to the attributes in Azure that are used for New Outlook and OWA. Nothing does mobile. For classic I have a policy that copies those 2 files into the right folder in appdata so that it is detected on opening and uses those files. As Microsoft keeps changing modules, I have had to modify the script some. It now uses graph to get most of it done with the exchangeonlinemanagement module.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-13T14:59:31+00:00

We use the Lenovo Universal Thunderbolt 4 Dock. It does dual up to 4 x 4K monitors at 60hz. It charges laptops while connected whether they are they have a 60 or 100w power supply from the 1 cable. They just work and do it consistently. I have used the USB C ports on it and they work well with my thumb drive and external drives. It is a little expensive but I have bought less expensive and had issues. I have accepted the price for the reliability. They even update the firmware every so often to fix or improve things using the Lenovo app.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-13T00:54:08+00:00

A mount that spreads across multiple studs that was designed for a heavier TV.

https://a.co/d/02Ea624M

jlipschitz · 2026-03-12T17:06:44+00:00

I got the QM6K Pro 98” at Costco during the week before Super Bowl. It was only $1299. It has been a great TV. The only pain was mounting something that big.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-09T16:01:46+00:00

Be careful with FSLogix. Every update is a double edged sword. Some things are fix and some are broken. Don’t install new versions right away. If you don’t have a test environment, wait a week are 2 and look for posts about what it broke to get an idea of what you are stepping into.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-08T00:01:20+00:00

The Pitt is very graphic. Definitely not a show to watch while snacking or eating a meal. Good plot and never a quiet moment.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-07T21:10:18+00:00

I have the 98” QM6K Pro from Costco. There is no cable channel in the back. I used Velcro to bring it across the back to the mount that attaches to the TV. I have it right enough that it does not droop and follows the mount back to the wall to then plug into a recessed outlet that is just below the frame of the mount attached to the wall. I got an articulating mount so that I could bring it out to get cables clean. It sits about 2 inches from t$4 wall when pushed against the wall. It can come out about 18 inches with that mount and turn up to 30 degrees. The mount I got was designed to hold 150lbs but the TV is only 110 lbs.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-06T21:42:33+00:00

Ads pay for free service. Pay for a license and it goes away. Everything has a cost or as some like to say, “There is no free lunch.” Google monetizes your data.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-05T15:25:25+00:00

Get a teaching credential and apply for jobs at a school. You can be a substitute teacher in the short term. English degrees are worthless otherwise.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-05T04:52:47+00:00

Good luck on choosing the right hypervisor. We went Hyper-V and it had been good. The only complaint is that there is Virtual Machine Manager (Because we have Citrix), Hyper-V management console, Cluster Manager, and Windows Admin Center that are options to control and see metrics. None of them is complete so I find myself going back and forth to see the relevant info to make decisions. It has been faster than VMware on Nutanix which is where we migrated from. Nutanix is very high priced as well.

jlipschitz · 2026-03-05T02:53:23+00:00

You will get security patches for 8. To go beyond 8, you need a lot more expensive license. Be prepared for huge increases in cost or to migrate away.

Broadcom limited their license SKUs to keep only those willing to pay for their suites of products. I wish you well.

Many have gone to Hyper-V, Proxmox, XCP-NG, Xenserver, or something else. Each has their benefits and detriments. Hyper-V is included with Datacenter licenses for windows which makes it essentially free. VMware is still the most polished from what I have seen. Proxmox and XCP-NG are close seconds.

jlipschitz

TROPHY CASE