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Rural high speed for streaming, etc....


Puzzleboy

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My Dad has Xplornet, which is spotty at times.  He has satellite for t.v., but wants to save some money.  So we were thinking of getting him a box, if his ISP can support it. 

Anybody have experience with this?  If the service is spotty (latency, etc.), do the boxes (Android, etc.)  have a buffer so that the viewer remains uninterrupted?  No DSL or cable in his area. 

Just want to find him a solution.  Thx.

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Xplorenet has a cap and gets pricey if you go over it. 500gb is the max they sell. Streaming HD would give him much room. 3GB per hour for hd so 166 hours per month of streaming and no other cpu useage would be the max. he could be ok if the household watches less than 3 hours of tv per day.

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6 hours ago, Puzzleboy said:

My Dad has Xplornet, which is spotty at times.  He has satellite for t.v., but wants to save some money.  So we were thinking of getting him a box, if his ISP can support it. 

Anybody have experience with this?  If the service is spotty (latency, etc.), do the boxes (Android, etc.)  have a buffer so that the viewer remains uninterrupted?  No DSL or cable in his area. 

Just want to find him a solution.  Thx.

I have Xplornet as well and set Netflix to SD to buffer less.  Though I read they were modifying the service to download more or all before streaming to avoid signal loss.  What area is he in?  The LTE service for rural isn't that great for cottage country as LTE has issues near the water.  I can get 25 meg download/upload in town (Parry Sound) and maybe >2 at the cottage.  Xplornet has rolled very little of this and are upgrading their sats to 50meg DL, but there is still the latency with any sat service.  Is line of sight available?  Many offer unlimited bandwidth and the service would be fine for streaming.

As for the Droid boxes buffering, I would guess that depends on the app, not the box.

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15 hours ago, Puzzleboy said:

My Dad has Xplornet, which is spotty at times.  He has satellite for t.v., but wants to save some money.  So we were thinking of getting him a box, if his ISP can support it. 

Anybody have experience with this?  If the service is spotty (latency, etc.), do the boxes (Android, etc.)  have a buffer so that the viewer remains uninterrupted?  No DSL or cable in his area. 

Just want to find him a solution.  Thx.

I just bought a streamteam box.  Great little box but any kodi type apps can and will buffer.  I do get free live tv (minus cost of internet and the one time box) with it and of course netflix etc if I want.  Great little box and comes pre configured.  

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We are in Bancroft area (rural) so only DSL available speed the same from everyone as it is limited by the crummy bell lines. 

Went with Acanac they have 2 packages 1 unlimited the other 175 gb/mth I believe.

We went with the cheaper 175 limit figuring we aren't there much anyway. Turns out since they have no way for you to check your usage they don't charge you if you go over lol so the cheap worked out. We pre-paid $25/mth plus $9/mth to bell for a dryloop (no home phone so need dryloop). 

To our surprise speed is decent we stream netflix np. Torrents come in 250k which is much slower that at home but we can easily live with that. 

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I'm DSL with Acanac also.  Service has actually been excellent with them.  Didn't know that about usage though, so gonna look into that!

No DSL in my dad's area though.  :(

Edited by Puzzleboy
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If you have Acanac, then you can have service from any re seller.  VMedia tends to have the best prices among the re sellers and all their packages are unlimited.

Not for rural, but Bell and Rogers are selling their high end packages for much lower than the re-sellers can sell theirs.  I switched from Acanac to Rogers (250meg) service for $75/month at home and just got Bell at the office (50meg up and down) for $59/month no contract.  We used to have two DSL lines at the office, both 6 meg one for internet and one for voip, it was all that was offered until just recently.

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4 hours ago, ArcticCrusher said:

If you have Acanac, then you can have service from any re seller.  VMedia tends to have the best prices among the re sellers and all their packages are unlimited.

Not for rural, but Bell and Rogers are selling their high end packages for much lower than the re-sellers can sell theirs.  I switched from Acanac to Rogers (250meg) service for $75/month at home and just got Bell at the office (50meg up and down) for $59/month no contract.  We used to have two DSL lines at the office, both 6 meg one for internet and one for voip, it was all that was offered until just recently.

Vmedia has very poor rankings on the Canadian isp page.  Canadianisp.ca

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38 minutes ago, Kev144 said:

Vmedia has very poor rankings on the Canadian isp page.  Canadianisp.ca

So does Acanac, but for my use it was fine.  Ask my son and the gaming lag was just too much.:lol:

I know a few on VMedia and they say its fine for them.

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25 minutes ago, Kev144 said:

if in a cogeco area, start communications is a decent provider. . got good reviews and been good to me and friends.  

Start is a third party supplier so they are available anywhere.  We had the two lines in our office from them before we switch to Bell.   My bro has/had them at his home and at his cottage in Innisfil.

Can't complain about their service.

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  • 4 months later...

Called Acanac today, upgraded the speed, and still unlimited downloads, reduced to $29/month with one month free.  No further $9 dryloop (scam) fees either. 

Just for fun, I asked the rep why they didn't contact me earlier with this plan...... :)

 

On 2016-12-09 at 7:16 PM, I'll Ride Anything said:

We are in Bancroft area (rural) so only DSL available speed the same from everyone as it is limited by the crummy bell lines. 

Went with Acanac they have 2 packages 1 unlimited the other 175 gb/mth I believe.

We went with the cheaper 175 limit figuring we aren't there much anyway. Turns out since they have no way for you to check your usage they don't charge you if you go over lol so the cheap worked out. We pre-paid $25/mth plus $9/mth to bell for a dryloop (no home phone so need dryloop). 

To our surprise speed is decent we stream netflix np. Torrents come in 250k which is much slower that at home but we can easily live with that. 

Edited by Puzzleboy
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1 hour ago, Puzzleboy said:

Called Acanac today, upgraded the speed, and still unlimited downloads, reduced to $29/month with one month free.  No further $9 dryloop (scam) fees either. 

Just for fun, I asked the rep why they didn't contact me earlier with this plan...... :)

 

Lucky you, our phone line will not support anything more than dial up and we have no cable available either. We have 4G that gives us about half the advertised speed and is capped plus it costs 80 bucks a month.

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4 minutes ago, Puzzleboy said:

My Dad's in a similar boat.  No DSL service, and he's not that happy with Xplornet. 

One benefit of living in the city..... helps to offset some of the detractors.  :)

Mine is pretty solid, but slower than advertised 90% of the time. They throttle it on purpose and are pretty much falsely advertising speeds.

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  • Platinum Contributing Member

You guy may remember that last summer I gave up on Bell and switched providers.

I had a 5 meg plan with them for $69/month. It was hit and miss on speed depending on the weather and would go down once a month.

Now I'm on a line of sight type system beamed from across the road. I'm supposed to get 10 meg and often tests out at 15-16 but it really doesn't seem any faster. Netflix still buffers and the system has been down more than Bell was, sometimes for a couple of days.

And the good news is I'm now paying $100/month.

I called Xplornet and they said they could do better. I got a hold of their local service guy and he said they were maxed out for my area and wouldn't take me on.....lol

 

My son got pissed with the new service and got his own with Bell.

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Xplornet won't be better and they won't stream Netflix at SD consistently so forget Hd. If you have a droid box you can download first then watch so you can get a movie in Hd and not have to worry about buffering. Be careful downloading with other sources as they use torrents so your ip can be tracked, and you might get an email telling you so.  Streaming alone should be fine.  Lol. 

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3 hours ago, Blackstar said:

You guy may remember that last summer I gave up on Bell and switched providers.

I had a 5 meg plan with them for $69/month. It was hit and miss on speed depending on the weather and would go down once a month.

Now I'm on a line of sight type system beamed from across the road. I'm supposed to get 10 meg and often tests out at 15-16 but it really doesn't seem any faster. Netflix still buffers and the system has been down more than Bell was, sometimes for a couple of days.

And the good news is I'm now paying $100/month.

I called Xplornet and they said they could do better. I got a hold of their local service guy and he said they were maxed out for my area and wouldn't take me on.....lol

 

My son got pissed with the new service and got his own with Bell.

Same bs xplornet told us about having faster packages and then the local rep said the system was full in my area 

 

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