Apart from owning a decent 1080p television with one or more HDMI ports, you will need the following items. Expect about $600 in initial setup costs (TV excluded).
Amex
If you don’t have this bad boy – or a VISA or MasterCard with a US billing address; or a “virtual” VISA from Entropay; or a US PayPal account (not a Canadian PayPal account that lets you pay in US dollars, but a PayPal account with a confirmed US address) – then there’s no reason to read further. Without any one of these financial products, you will not be able to sign up and pay for your US streaming services.
For the purposes of this Guide, I assume that you won’t be able to get your hands on a VISA, MasterCard, or PayPal account with a confirmed US billing address. I also assume that you’ll take one look at Entropay’s service fees and go: “Fuck that!”
Amex is our cutting-the-cable card of choice. Why? Because American Express is the only issuer who reliably accepts transactions with a partial Address Verification System match.
To protect domestic copyright, content streaming services in the USA (and elsewhere: this isn’t an American issue) geoblock their websites. As a further safeguard, they also restrict their service signup and payment forms to addresses in the United States.
When you pay for things with your credit card, you either type in or swipe or chip-read your billing address. Credit card companies use AVS to compare the billing address you entered for the transaction to information that they have on file for your account. Depending on the issuer (typically, your bank), AVS will proceed with a transaction only if all or most of the details you submit are correct.
Amex? Not so much. You can enter your credit card and card security numbers, and then pull a cardholder name and billing address directly out of your ass – and Amex will accept the transaction. As an online retailer, I always paid particular attention to Amex orders, for precisely this reason.
It’s a woefully inadequate fraud “prevention” technique. But for our purposes, it’ll do just fine.
If you don’t have one already, get your Amex here.
High-speed Modem
DSL, or…
Ultrafast Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is a viable option for what we have in mind – particularly if you live in a neighbourhood where cable Internet gets a bit dyspeptic after dinner. DSL is like your own personal connection to the Interweb; because it isn’t shared, you typically don’t experience peak-hour bottlenecks.
The problem with DSL: if you don’t have a landline, or if you (rightly) plan to get rid of it, then you’ll need an eight-dollar-per-month dry loop connection. This is a leased telephone line without analog voice service. A dry loop connection – or dry DSL, as it’s called – pretty much defeats the point of not having a landline, in the first place.
If you absolutely must use DSL, then you must, absolutely, deal with Bell. That means you have but a single modem option, mon frère: the Cellpipe 7130. Which you may only rent from Bell. Which, also, puts you out of pocket exactly eight dollars per month – just like your dry loop connection.
Sixteen bucks to Bell and you haven’t even started streaming yet. Still jonesing for DSL? Thought not.
Cable Modem
If you’re going to stream, you’ll need an ISP with balls down to here. Preferably, one that offers service on steroids but doesn’t bend knee to its Big Three overlords by imposing caps on the amount of data you can download. (There are ways around datacaps, and I’ll show them to you. But if you don’t have to deal with them – all the better, no?)
My ISP of choice is Teksavvy. You may have heard of these guys. They were in the news several months back, resisting a gutless CRTC decree that all bandwidth resellers shall cap their data so Bell and Rogers can discourage you from subscribing to Netflix.
I like Teksavvy because they’re a national provider and their service is reliable. In spite of what they say on their website, Teksavvy doesn’t actually enforce datacaps – except if you’re a DSL customer in Ontario or a cable customer in Quebec. Don’t ask me why. (The names Bell and Videotron likely have something to do with the answer.)
My wife and I subscribe to Teksavvy’s Cable 28 service at $46.95 per month. Cable 28 is supposed to deliver download speeds of up to 28 megabits per second.
During peak hours, we’re lucky to hit 20mbps – which sits very comfortably above the bitrate you need to stream 1080p video. On off hours, however, we get download speeds that clock in at a scorching 45mbps. That’s pretty freakin’ fast. And we have yet to be charged for exceeding Teksavvy’s advertised 300GB datacap. Because, as I mentioned earlier, there really isn’t one on this plan.
Teksavvy supports the following cable modems for its Cable 28 service:
- Motorola SB6120 – 1.0.6.1
- Motorola SB6121 – 1.0.6.1
- SMC D3GN-RES – 1.4.0.40-RES
- Thomson DCM475 – STAC.02.16
- Technicolor DCM476 STAC.02.50 HW Ver 2.0
- Technicolor DCM476 STAC.02.50 HW Ver 2.1
- Huawei MT130U V100R001C01B071 HW Ver 1A
Teksavvy specifically recommends the Thomson Technicolor DCM476
Wireless Router
High-speed Internet service is meaningless if you don’t have a wireless router that can handle what your ISP is packing. You need both range and speed.
Choose the Linksys EA4500 App-Enabled N900 Dual-Band Wireless-N Router with Gigabit and USB
Streaming Player
Okay, let’s get this out in the open right now. I’m not a Mac fanboy. I think Apple is for people with learning disabilities.
I spent the earlier half of my career writing software manuals. I can accurately boast an expert-level proficiency in most operating systems and hardware platforms. I witnessed, firsthand, the needless expense proprietary solutions impose on individuals and businesses – which is why everyone (except Saint Jobs) did away with them in the late ’80s and early ’90s. I know whereof I speak.
Yes, Apple makes attractive technology – if you like your smartphone or tablet with a side order of slave labour. What gets me is the robotic, cult-like devotion to a rapidly-aging ecosystem whose sole purpose is to fleece you for every morsel of content you consume.
Apple TV? No thanks. I won’t exchange one monopolistic content purveyor for another. I want options.
That’s why we’re going with the Roku 2 XS 1080p Streaming Player
It’s cheap but not cheaply built. It’s robust but not complicated. I bought one last year as an experiment. I have three in my home today.
What Else?
In short:
- Unblocking service or VPN (mandatory)
- U.S. streaming service subscriptions (mandatory, unless you like watching free Roku channels courtesy the American evangelical right)
- Indoor HDTV amplified antenna (optional)
- WiFi-enabled desktop or laptop computer with lots of storage space (optional)
I’ll expand on these checklist items in later chapters of my Guide. I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself. Things must be done in a very specific order, or you’ll have one helluva time unknotting the mess you’ve made.
Let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll move on to Switching ISPs.