I'm Sorry...

but you're all going to have to start 
reading a heck of a lot faster.

Okay, that's not me or my house, and my antenna is slightly smaller, just a tad... or so it seems perched on the ridge line of my home.  Western Hero, at least some of it has jumped into the latter part of the 20th century with both feet and is now coming to you via a microwave broadband link.  Now, I say late 20th century because if you have fiber or FiOS I don't want to hear it, and for the record... I hate you.

It wasn't all that long ago (okay it was a little more than a decade) that I moved from a little fishing village on the shores of the Yellow Sea (okay, it was really just outside Pyeongtaek, not to be confused with that worker's paradise - Pyongyang) trading my 11 Mbps connection for that greatest American invention since sliced bread... dial-up.  I was overjoyed a little less than a decade ago when I traded that dial-up for a 1.5 Mbps DSL line, a speed I have been languishing at ever since (best available).

Now I'll jump up on my soapbox and point out the the #1 country for internet speed at an average connection speed of 23.6 Mbps is, drum roll please... South Korea.  Guess who's #10...

Wrong again, it's Ireland... the US is currently sitting at number 11with a not so astonishingly fast 10.5 Mbps, although #2 Japan is only 14.6 Mbps.

Me, I'm currently sitting at 8 Mbps although they're coming back tomorrow with a taller mast and promising 18-20 Mbps.  Why you may ask...

Actually a couple of weeks ago my flat screen gave up the ghost and we wound up buying one of the new 4K Ultra HDTVs.  Now, no one is offering 4K video yet with the exception of NetFlix and a few other streaming sources and as my research has indicated you need a minimum of 15 Mbps to stream 4K video I've gone broadband.  Why do we need 4K video? Well you'll have to take that up with my darling wife ;)  That and the fact that I'll be saving $105 a month by switching all my data and communication services to a local company.  Heck, they're treating me right so I figured I'd give'em a plug.

For those of you that are interested, 4K Blu-ray is due out mid to late summer and Dish Network, who I also switched to, is due to have a 4K Ultra box also this summer. Strangely enough Direct TV does offer 4K service but apparently in some kind of proprietary format thing that only works with one TV currently on the market, the Samsung UHD/4K model which is "Direct TV Ready", well if your reading this Direct TV, wise business move... you've lost a ten-year customer.

Why am I telling you all this? Well I've been disconnected from the internet all day and unable to do any research.  How 'bout them Pats!

WELCOME TO THE DANGER ZONE

Revolutionary thought at a whole heck of a lot of bits per second.