Andy is having issues with his AirPort router. Every day he has to reboot both the router and the modem. What gives? Leo says the airport eventually will wear out and it's probably time to get a new router. Apple doesn't even update them anymore, nor do they make new ones. Leo recommends ASUS routers that run DD-WRT. New routers will also better handle how internet traffic is running these days.
Tom is watching TV and he gets pixelation while streaming. When he switches to an antenna, he gets the same problem. What gives? Leo says that's due to the digital broadcast. Digital signals don't degrade gracefully. It just gets bad. And it could be a host of things from the antenna, to bandwidth, to the streaming box. Leo has a hunch it's the service that's streaming the programming to him.
How is YouTube getting such a clean signal? Leo says they may be using fiber directly from a network.
Barb recently bought a Chromebook and wants to know if they have screensavers? Leo says no. Screensavers are an anachronism from the old CRT days when images would burn into the screen. That doesn't happen anymore with LCD screens. The Chromebook just goes into power saving mode and shuts off the screen. That's how it saves the screen. The screen also flickers a little. Leo says that the image may be too bright and that causes it to flicker. That's an easy fix, you just turn down the brightness a bit.
Yesterday, all the extensions for Firefox suddenly stopped working. Leo says it turned out to be that Firefox forgot to renew their certificate for security, causing them all to stop working. Now they're pushing out a fix to get things back up and running.
Jason called last week about his phone's screen freaking out. Leo thought it was the proximity sensor causing the problem. Jason did a factory reset and that solved the problem. Leo says that may have indicated a failed update. The first thing he should do when something weird happens out of nowhere is to do a factory reset.
Darren is looking to upgrade his network to a Mesh router and is having issues connecting his WyzeCams. Rich says that a lot of people are having issues with this because the WyzeCams are 2.4ghz and the mesh routers will switch between 2.4 and 5 GHz. That can cause camera connection issues. Google's mesh router will automatically connect to the band that the camera supports. So he may want to check out the Google WiFi mesh router.
Rich has Eero and he was able to hook up his WyzeCams without any issue.
Larry is a gamer and got a new video card that supports RayTracing. He put it in his computer but it's lagging terribly. On top of that, he's now getting "green sparkles" everywhere. Is his machine too old? Leo says it shouldn't be too old at all, it's likely just a bad card. Green artifacts are usually an indication of a bad video card, so Larry should send it back for a refund or replacement. The GTX 1070 is better matched to his computer anyway.
Greg can't mirror his phone with his Samsung smarTV, but he can use his hub to search the internet. Leo says the TV has to be cast-enabled to do it, and the feature may not be turned on in the settings. It could be DNLA or AirPlay. But it also says "smart hub is trying to update." Leo says that Samsung is notorious for not updating their TVs, and it will eventually get to the point where it can't be updated online. It's clearly looking for the update though. Samsung does suggest you can reset the country and that will fix it. The wrong country code could very well cause this issue.
Fred has a 2008 MacPro Cheesegrater, and he doesn't want to replace it. But it's having kernel panics. What can he do? Leo says a kernel panic is Apple's version of the blue screen of death. And it usually means it has a driver issue or a hardware issue. And sometimes, the first line of the panic will tell you something useful. Bad memory is a common cause of them. Power supply failing is an indicator. Try swapping out single RAM cards. That can tell Fred which RAM is acting up. He could just get one of the latest MacMini's and get a Thunderbolt 3 connection.
Max is having issues with his TV speakers on his Vizio D series TV. He keeps hearing audio coming out, even when it's off. Leo says that today's modern TVs don't really turn off anymore. They just go into a very low power mode. Leo suspects that Max's Xfinity cable box woke his TV up through HDMI. Leo recommends putting the Vizio into Eco mode and it will turn off. Then, he should turn off CEC in his TV settings.
