What do you use to watch media in your living room

[E-Day]

I am currently looking around and researching what the best device is to use to play my media in my living room. When I first started doing this, I had the simple WD TV HD Live. It was slow and ugly, but it worked. Then I got the model up, which looked a bit nicer and had WiFi, but was still ugly unless you created thumbnail images for every file and folder.

Then I funded the EzeeCube on Indiegogo and was happy with it for a while, until it just stopped working and basically needed me to take out the hard drive, reformat it, and start from scratch. And then needed me to do this yet again. I have yet tried to set it up with a different drive. It also doesn't help that the company is basically gone, and promises of a return have so far been empty.

After dealing with that headache, I set up a Raspberry Pi 3 with LibreElec and Kodi, and combined with a Flirc so I could use my Harmony remote, it worked great for several months. Until it crashed. After that, half the buttons on the remote wouldn't register. I tried another board, I tried another install, An older version, a newer version; same deal. The remote will work fine for a bit, and then suddenly for no apparent reason, some of the buttons stop working. If I put the Flirc into my Surface Pro and use it with Kodi on there, it works perfectly fine. Then if I put it back in the Pi, it works perfectly fine.

Needless to say, this is a huge hassle. So I am looking for something that will just work without me needing to babysit it or constantly tweak it so it will keep working. I am convinced that a DIY solution running on a version of Linux with Kodi is going to be nothing but a hassle. So at the moment I am looking into the Nvidia Shield TV, and an Intel NUC. I know the Shield runs some sort of variant of Linux, but it's basically plug and play. And I like the idea of a NUC because the Windows version of Kodi seems to always just work, it has an IR receiver so my remote will work with it, and it can be a proper computer in the living room. The startup cost is quite high though.

So what does everyone else use? And how do you have your media organized? All mine is on my NAS and is stream to the living room through the Pi over ethernet. And do you use Kodi, or something else like Plex? Plex isn't as pretty as Kodi, but it's more "set it and forget it", which I like. My NAS isn't powerful enough to do any transcoding, so I won't be able to access stuff outside my home or over WiFi if it's 1080p video, but that's fine with me.

I watched a video comparing Plex on six devices, including the Shield, NUC, Xbox One, and three others. Sadly, it was very slow on the Xbox One, which is a shame because if it was any good I could just use it as my media box since it has a Plex app (NUC was the best, followed by the Shield).

[te72]

Call me old fashioned, but I understood very little of your post. Not that I'm a technophobe, but I haven't been around anyone who does this sort of thing in a long time. For the last... 11 years now? I've simply used my pc attached to my tv. Current setup is literally an 11 year old pc, with wireless keyboard and mouse. No cords, no fuss, no issues, apart from modern media requiring a bit more muscle than my computer has.

 

As far as the software side of things, stuff is organized via folders that suit my needs on the computer, through windows. Hell, I don't even know what version of windows I have haha. Use VLC media player, it handles just about everything nicely.

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, te72 said:

Call me old fashioned, but I understood very little of your post.

Same.  My PC is a lot newer than yours (I buy a new laptop every 2 years or so), but otherwise the same.  Just a laptop hooked to a monitor and an array of 7 external drives to hold all of my stuff.

[E-Day]

That would be okay for me, but I want it to be very usable for the rest of the family. I want it to be the same for them to use whatever streaming box I have in the living room as it would be for them turning on the PVR. Maybe someone who is more into this stuff will reply one day

[te72]

Sorry E-day, had a feeling that a simple approach like mine wasn't going to fit your needs too well. No worries though, only one who uses my computer is me, but I can understand helping others in the house makes life easier for everybody.

[khouji]

I'm watching at my 32" inch LED using my Netflix account

[Data]

I use internet protocol television.  I make a donation of $75 US to my international associates and in return they provide me access to their servers.   The service is good for 1 year and I get access to 95% of the U.S. channels as well as other countries.  This service works on android boxes although it does take more effort to get working and needs to be maintained more often.  In fact almost all the complaints of no service are from android boxes.  I recommend purchasing a mag 254 set top box from infomir.  The support for it is universal and I almost never need to reboot it. 

Everything else I download through torrent the following day with my PC.  For sports I use Sports Devil on Kodi and for NHL I use NHL Reddit streams on the PC or on one of my spare laptops.

The mag box would be ideal for a bedroom, spare room or living room.  It comes with it's own television guide similar to a satellite dish and you don't need to update any of this stuff and it's not any more difficult to bugger than a cable box.  Netflix would compliment the box well.

[te72]

To those that have partaken in piracy in the past, what would it take to convince you of the value of paying for the entertainment you've gotten for free? Personally, anime was always a pretty big one for me back in the day. Lot of it, however, wasn't available in English, subbed or dubbed, so I had no qualms in getting it through fansubbers.

 

TV in English however, I don't mind the pay-per-episode model, as I have no use for 458 channels containing maybe two or three shows I want to watch anyway. However, why would I pay $3 per episode for, well, anything? Given that an average show can have 5-25 episodes a season, that quickly becomes pretty unreasonable. Now, at $1 per episode, I'd be happy to buy shows that we enjoy. Otherwise we just wait for them on Netflix, Amazon, stuff like that, or watch with friends who have TV on occasion.

 

I'd say that the TV industry would be well served to look to Steam to find their way into my home. Satellite and cable options are not that way.

[Data]

6 hours ago, te72 said:

To those that have partaken in piracy in the past, what would it take to convince you of the value of paying for the entertainment you've gotten for free? Personally, anime was always a pretty big one for me back in the day. Lot of it, however, wasn't available in English, subbed or dubbed, so I had no qualms in getting it through fansubbers.

This seems like a loaded question which will only incriminate myself further but I will attempt to convey my perspective.

First, there is no value if you love sports in Canada.  The real pirates are the media companies and the crtc.  If you follow only you're most local hockey teams then you will need to purchase the Sportsnet package, the rest of the teams are blacked out.  To get access to the rest, then you need to purchase Rogers NHL Live who would otherwise blackout you're local teams.  If I bundle my internet with these sports channels I save a few bucks but it's already $130 month before tax with only 1 reciever.

I enjoy baseball when I have the time.  Sportsnet takes care of the Blue Jays games but if you want to follow other teams, you need to subscribe to MLB TV for about $140 annually which is cheaper than having it bundled to my cable plan.

The Movie Network and HBO Canada are $18 month which many people want.  The rest of the channels I never watch. 

There is also no option for what we call "conservative" news in Canada, in fact the only channel I can think of is Fox News in New York but the CRTC has banned it long ago and it has almost no interest in Canada.   

For the record though, I do subscribe to MLB but for hockey I just take the easy and cheaper path of watching illegal streams.

[E-Day]

8 hours ago, te72 said:

To those that have partaken in piracy in the past, what would it take to convince you of the value of paying for the entertainment you've gotten for free? Personally, anime was always a pretty big one for me back in the day. Lot of it, however, wasn't available in English, subbed or dubbed, so I had no qualms in getting it through fansubbers.

For several years we had cable through Rogers. Then at one point they raised the price of it by quite a bit. We had a grandfathered package that was just above basic. The price increase didn't give us more channels; the only change was a fancier looking (and laggy) on screen menu. We cancelled all our services with them and went with a smaller ISP for phone and internet. At that point local TV was taken care of with an internal antenna (when we got reception), and everything else was downloaded and watched on my old WDTV HD media player.

Then we moved and I had a really good antenna installed on the roof, which now got me channels from Watertown, NY. But because I had no way to record them, and most of the stuff we watch starts when it's time to put the kids to sleep, I still downloaded everything we wanted to watch.

Two and a half years ago, Bell was doing a bunch of canvassing in Ottawa because they lost a ton of customers to Rogers over the years. They just made Fibe TV available in most of the city, so they were signing people up. At this point I was tired of having to keep track of when a new showed aired, finding it, downloading it, moving it to the media player, plus the kids were getting older and it was hard to tell them that stealing is wrong when I was basically doing just that. So Bell comes along, offering their basic Fibe TV package with and HD PVR, Fibe internet at 50mbps down and 10mbps up with unlimited usage, and home phone with all the calling features and free long distance in Canada and the US for $99.99/month for three years. Considering I was paying my ISP $85 with tax for internet that was only 15mbps/1mbps and basic home phone with one feature, it seemed like a no brainer.

When my deal ends this summer, if they can match it or come close, I will stay with it. I enjoy the fast internet and having a PVR. Even with their basic package, I have more channels and shows than I can watch (and the package includes TSN and Sportsnet, Data ).

There are still shows we don't get that I download, like anything on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and so forth, and several shows for the kids. Those I still download. For me it's a matter of affordability. If I had the money, I would have all the channels. But I would need A LOT of money to justify what they would charge for that.

[KiwiArcader]

I have two NAS splitting TV and movie archives. Connecting to this are two Intel NUC's which run separate PLEX servers (both identical to each other) and which can do transcoding of a single HD stream no problem.

In the living room I have an Apple TV and a Xbox One and a 4K TV, all of which have Plex clients although I almost exclusively use the Apple TV which requires the PLEX server to transcode. The Xbox One doesn't need to transcode due to the codec support so should be the best option but I find it jerky on panning scenes in widescreen movies and which I have yet to figure out why it is occurring.

I am planning on upgrading to an Apple TV 4K which should support HEVC out of the box so have been converting my H.264 TV series to H.265 based mp4's with AAC 5.1 audio. They may not require transcoding on the newer Apple device. Wait and see.......

[te72]

I was just curious to see what your perspectives were, absolutely no judgement here. For all the more I watch, getting cable or satellite would be absolutely pointless. Now, if I could pick the perhaps 3 channels that air shows we watch, and record to watch at my leisure, I might be interested. Honestly though, apart from the anime here and there, everything we watch is on Netflix or HBO. Not really a sports fan here, apart from occasionally hockey, and F1, so no need for some fancy package deal like Data was describing.

 

E-day, I'm rather jealous of your internet man... our best option is still significantly slower than your former option. I may as well go make a sandwich if I want to upload anything.

[KiwiArcader]

I hear you re faster internet.

A year ago I was on VDSL and only getting 35mbit down/7mbit up as I was more than 1 mile from the local exchange. Now I am on gigabit fiber with speeds showing 955mbit down/470mbit up. It makes a huge difference for streaming 4K content off Netflix. I have my daughter connecting to PLEX across town and my brother connecting from the UK half way around the world and they have no problems streaming movies off my setup. I could probably stream 10 HD 720p streams with no impact on my internet but I'd need to upgrade the PLEX servers to handle transcoding so many streams.

[Data]

6 hours ago, te72 said:

I was just curious to see what your perspectives were, absolutely no judgement here. For all the more I watch, getting cable or satellite would be absolutely pointless. Now, if I could pick the perhaps 3 channels that air shows we watch, and record to watch at my leisure, I might be interested. Honestly though, apart from the anime here and there, everything we watch is on Netflix or HBO. Not really a sports fan here, apart from occasionally hockey, and F1, so no need for some fancy package deal like Data was describing.

 

E-day, I'm rather jealous of your internet man... our best option is still significantly slower than your former option. I may as well go make a sandwich if I want to upload anything.

OpenMedia helped sway the crtc in 2016 mandating the Canadian television providers to offer a skinny package for cable television service.  The idea is to get some channels for no more than $25.00 / month with the option to add individual channels.

The immediate problems are; 

1. Current subscribers who already have a medium to fat packages would see an increase in cost if they were to add the channels they already have today.

2. These skinny packages have almost nothing of value.  For instance out of 21 channels, 7 of them are french and out of those, 3 are government propaganda radio. 

3. We have 3 news sources in Canada; CTV, CBC and Global.  CBC is a state funded left leaning news media.  CTV isn't terrible but they were built years ago on government hand outs and I believe Global has always been entirely private.  Worst part about these options are that they are the national versions and no option to watch any of the local community versions.

The U.S. has HBO Go which gives full access to HBO's past and present content for $15.00/ month but if Canadians want HBO they have to purchase a basic cable plan and then add HBO Canada.  There is no access to old content although Game of Thrones will show on time which I believe is the only thing people wanted the last 7 years.

Our cable boxes allow us to sign in to Netflix as well as record television shows.

Lets do some math.

Lite MaxTv $25.00

Hardware rental $5.00

HBO Canada $18.00

$48.00 without tax

Netflix is $9.00 basic, $11.00 for two screens, $14.00 for 4K

Let's just choose basic.

Add internet. Options;

20 Down 5 Up = $58.00/ month

40 down 10 up = $68.00/ month

80 down 15 up = $85.00/ month

Let's choose the first.

$48.00 + $9.00 + $58.00

= $115.00 + 14% tax

= $ 131.10/ month

[te72]

On 1/11/2018 at 10:40 PM, KiwiArcader said:

I hear you re faster internet.

A year ago I was on VDSL and only getting 35mbit down/7mbit up as I was more than 1 mile from the local exchange. Now I am on gigabit fiber with speeds showing 955mbit down/470mbit up. It makes a huge difference for streaming 4K content off Netflix. I have my daughter connecting to PLEX across town and my brother connecting from the UK half way around the world and they have no problems streaming movies off my setup. I could probably stream 10 HD 720p streams with no impact on my internet but I'd need to upgrade the PLEX servers to handle transcoding so many streams.

Still  jealous of the speeds you mention. For reference, I'm on a 12mbit down, < 1mbit up. Realistically I can see upwards of 25mbit down if using torrents, but the upload speed is still lame. Starting to think the US is rather behind the curve on internet infrastructure...

On 1/12/2018 at 3:28 AM, Data said:

OpenMedia helped sway the crtc in 2016 mandating the Canadian television providers to offer a skinny package for cable television service.  The idea is to get some channels for no more than $25.00 / month with the option to add individual channels.

The immediate problems are; 

1. Current subscribers who already have a medium to fat packages would see an increase in cost if they were to add the channels they already have today.

2. These skinny packages have almost nothing of value.  For instance out of 21 channels, 7 of them are french and out of those, 3 are government propaganda radio. 

3. We have 3 news sources in Canada; CTV, CBC and Global.  CBC is a state funded left leaning news media.  CTV isn't terrible but they were built years ago on government hand outs and I believe Global has always been entirely private.  Worst part about these options are that they are the national versions and no option to watch any of the local community versions.

The U.S. has HBO Go which gives full access to HBO's past and present content for $15.00/ month but if Canadians want HBO they have to purchase a basic cable plan and then add HBO Canada.  There is no access to old content although Game of Thrones will show on time which I believe is the only thing people wanted the last 7 years.

Looking at your list there, it's unsurprising that that basic package is the price it is... like you say, nothing of value, at least that I would know of. To make an obvious connection though, any state-funded news is going to be propaganda, literally anywhere in the world. There's a reason behind the intent of our freedom of the press in the US, not to drag the thread into that realm. Crap like that doesn't even deserve a channel.

 

So, if you want to watch HBO, you have to watch it live, or record it? I'm a pretty big fan of HBO Go, except for their "save to my list" option having a habit of deleting things that you have saved to watch, even when they're still available to watch.

[Data]

11 hours ago, te72 said:

Still  jealous of the speeds you mention. For reference, I'm on a 12mbit down, < 1mbit up. Realistically I can see upwards of 25mbit down if using torrents, but the upload speed is still lame. Starting to think the US is rather behind the curve on internet infrastructure...

Looking at your list there, it's unsurprising that that basic package is the price it is... like you say, nothing of value, at least that I would know of. To make an obvious connection though, any state-funded news is going to be propaganda, literally anywhere in the world. There's a reason behind the intent of our freedom of the press in the US, not to drag the thread into that realm. Crap like that doesn't even deserve a channel.

 

So, if you want to watch HBO, you have to watch it live, or record it? I'm a pretty big fan of HBO Go, except for their "save to my list" option having a habit of deleting things that you have saved to watch, even when they're still available to watch.

The USA has an aging infrastructure, specifically the last mile where it transfers from the cities fiber optic to the copper line which traverses from telephone poles to underground tubes.  It's the same thing in Canada.  The cities and provinces have helped subsidized the cost of these fiber tier 1 lines running across the southern parts of Canada but many buildings are still using copper coaxial.  Our population density is considerably lower so we can still achieve adequate speeds.

  I made a mistake.  We do have an equivalent to HBO Go in USA, called HBO Now and all the shows are available.  What hasn't changed is that you need to purchase a basic cable package before you can log into the streaming app which comes out to at least $48.00/ month before tax.

HBO has never been all that interested in expanding to Canada because the number of potential subscribers is not a very enticing prospect also, the CRTC won't allow a US cable company to provide services here but it doesn't even matter since Bell Canada is more than willing to overpay for access to HBO's properties and ultimately Bell Canada uses this exclusivity to leverage subscribers.

This is where our cable providers are hedging their money.  They find new content, buy the rights in Canada and then force you to buy from the cable company.

[te72]

That was one of the strangest things to me, when our house was built. I have a bundle of coax cables left un-terminated in the basement next to the electrical box, probably 15 lines in all. I have absolutely no use for coax line in our house... I had explained how I wanted internet in all the rooms to be able to be plugged into directly, but I really don't think the contractor quite understood what I meant... obviously. On the plus side, the coax will make a nice pull cord to run cat5 lines someday.

 

You're probably not that far off, population density, compared to where I live. Lowest population in all the US (at least the lower 48, not sure about Alaska these days?), yet I'm in I believe the 7th largest state, by area. Still... internet speeds kinda suck. I don't think it's helping, that a large number of folks are online now, that weren't ten years ago. More traffic on the same infrastructure, slows everybody down. Yet one more reason I'm not really a fan of modern phones.

 

You guys are definitely getting screwed on the HBO side of things. Small wonder that such business practices might encourage piracy. Is Amazon Prime an option for getting HBO up there? Or is that not allowed due to Bell's contract / rights holdings?

[Data]

10 hours ago, te72 said:

That was one of the strangest things to me, when our house was built. I have a bundle of coax cables left un-terminated in the basement next to the electrical box, probably 15 lines in all. I have absolutely no use for coax line in our house... I had explained how I wanted internet in all the rooms to be able to be plugged into directly, but I really don't think the contractor quite understood what I meant... obviously. On the plus side, the coax will make a nice pull cord to run cat5 lines someday.

 

You're probably not that far off, population density, compared to where I live. Lowest population in all the US (at least the lower 48, not sure about Alaska these days?), yet I'm in I believe the 7th largest state, by area. Still... internet speeds kinda suck. I don't think it's helping, that a large number of folks are online now, that weren't ten years ago. More traffic on the same infrastructure, slows everybody down. Yet one more reason I'm not really a fan of modern phones.

 

You guys are definitely getting screwed on the HBO side of things. Small wonder that such business practices might encourage piracy. Is Amazon Prime an option for getting HBO up there? Or is that not allowed due to Bell's contract / rights holdings?

HBO is not available in Canada, even through Amazon Prime Canada.  Bell owns the rights to this and they will not license it to any competitors. 

The builder of you're house installed coaxial to every room so the owner could run a set to any room as well as using it for an FM antennae.  It's a contemporary way of providing data transmission and because there's 15 of them, they also had the foresight to future proof their needs.

[E-Day]

11 hours ago, te72 said:

I had explained how I wanted internet in all the rooms to be able to be plugged into directly, but I really don't think the contractor quite understood what I meant... obviously. On the plus side, the coax will make a nice pull cord to run cat5 lines someday.

Hopefully you'll run Cat6 or 7 instead of 5 when you get around to it

1 hour ago, Data said:

HBO is not available in Canada, even through Amazon Prime Canada.  Bell owns the rights to this and they will not license it to any competitors. 

The builder of you're house installed coaxial to every room so the owner could run a set to any room as well as using it for an FM antennae.  It's a contemporary way of providing data transmission and because there's 15 of them, they also had the foresight to future proof their needs.

While HBO is not available, The Movie Network airs all of HBO's shows. So if users pay extra for The Movie Network, they can watch anything that HBO produces as though they had HBO.

[Data]

7 minutes ago, E-Day said:

While HBO is not available, The Movie Network airs all of HBO's shows. So if users pay extra for The Movie Network, they can watch anything that HBO produces as though they had HBO.

The Movie Network and HBO Canada are packaged as a bundle and they show on our bill as $18.00 / month.  So for cable cutters or anyone who is only interested in watching Game of Thrones as they  first air for example, need to purchase a cable plan as well as the Movie Network / HBO package which cost about $48.00 / month cad.

[te72]

11 hours ago, Data said:

HBO is not available in Canada, even through Amazon Prime Canada.  Bell owns the rights to this and they will not license it to any competitors. 

The builder of you're house installed coaxial to every room so the owner could run a set to any room as well as using it for an FM antennae.  It's a contemporary way of providing data transmission and because there's 15 of them, they also had the foresight to future proof their needs.

Gotta love capitalism for the crap like this that happens sometimes...

 

As far as the house goes, we're the original owners. I just wasn't clear enough on our needs when the wiring was being done. Not a huge deal, I just can't think of any reason to have coax in the house. I'll never have cable, and what's this about using it as an FM antenna? As in, radio signals? Might be nice, if the radio around here was decent... sadly that's not really the case. There's a good reason I rely on the internet for entertainment.

 

10 hours ago, E-Day said:

Hopefully you'll run Cat6 or 7 instead of 5 when you get around to it

While HBO is not available, The Movie Network airs all of HBO's shows. So if users pay extra for The Movie Network, they can watch anything that HBO produces as though they had HBO.

Will cross that road when the time comes. Had no idea that anything beyond Cat6 was a thing... been a long time since I did any sort of networking.

[Data]

54 minutes ago, te72 said:

Gotta love capitalism for the crap like this that happens sometimes...

 

As far as the house goes, we're the original owners. I just wasn't clear enough on our needs when the wiring was being done. Not a huge deal, I just can't think of any reason to have coax in the house. I'll never have cable, and what's this about using it as an FM antenna? As in, radio signals? Might be nice, if the radio around here was decent... sadly that's not really the case. There's a good reason I rely on the internet for entertainment.

It's not so much the idea of capitalism as much as Canadians are desperate for some type of competition between the cable companies because they have a monopoly over all communications and the CRTC has always been cozy with the governments.  This is generally a bipartisan issue but some are so frustrated that they toss around the idea of allowing US companies a chance to compete for Canadian subscribers.  This would quickly take subscribers from our current providers because of the higher value service but on the other hand this can also become a slippery slope for a sovereign country to partake in.  Cutting the cord and canceling service seems to be the only thing that has an effect but many Canadian are too docile to bother complaining. 

As for an FM antennae, I have run coaxial cable on to the roof so it is in clear view of the transmitter or sometimes just in front of a window and got good reception.  I figured you're cables ran to a vhf antennae on the roof to receive analog over the air channels.  These VHF antennae are built with the same attenuation that FM radio uses so they may coexist.

[te72]

Capitalism was perhaps the wrong word on my part. More protectionism, I would think. A truly free market would allow just that, for foreign companies to trade in your marketplace. I see it in other industries as well, but the telecom industry is well known for doing everything they can to NOT compete with other telecoms, especially in the US. Makes me wonder where the market would go if your suggestion of cutting the cord took more of a hold oop north?

 

On the FM antenna explanation, appreciate that. I haven't thought about using a roof antenna in, well, a very long time. Not that it isn't useful for some, but I haven't had TV hooked up since I first moved out of my parents house in 2004, I think it was. Might have had it in our second apartment, but I dunno for sure, it's been a couple days haha. Weird as this might sound, I think ads are why I don't like TV. I don't mind the shows, but the ads really take me out of the experience, and not for the better. I rather enjoy modern TV, and being able to watch it uninterrupted is MUCH preferable if you're able. Frankly, if you pay for TV, why do you have to watch the ads too?

[Data]

On 1/17/2018 at 12:43 AM, te72 said:

Capitalism was perhaps the wrong word on my part. More protectionism, I would think. A truly free market would allow just that, for foreign companies to trade in your marketplace. I see it in other industries as well, but the telecom industry is well known for doing everything they can to NOT compete with other telecoms, especially in the US. Makes me wonder where the market would go if your suggestion of cutting the cord took more of a hold oop north?

Don't even joke about free trade agreement guy.  The Liberals of Canada may actually want Trump to surrender the NAFTA agreement and replace the U.S. with China.
As Trudeau discovers the ways of the world it is going to be Canadians who suffer from his acquiescence with China.  To date, the negotiations with China have been a complete disaster.

Justin's family is close friends with the Castro family and has publicly displayed admiration for China and Iran specifically for their dictatorship.  He also shares similar beliefs with Barack Obama in regards to their anticolonial marxist dreams for their respective countries.

Canada's new ambassador to Beijing John Mccallum kicked off negotiations with China in April 2016 using Justin's strategy for negotiations by saying yes to whatever China wants in advance. He said, "Within 24 hours of arriving in China I was invited to present my credentials to President Xi Jinping and I conveyed a message to him from our prime minister which can be summarized in 3 words more more more"
A month later McCallum reveals that human rights abuses in China are not even up for negotiation anymore but justifies it by braging over the amount of money Chinese tourists spent in 2015.

In September 2016 shortly after Trudeau's arrival in China, he learned of his new nickname given to him.  The name "Trudeau" sounds like the mandarin word for "potato".  At some point they changed this to "Little Potato".  I don't have much faith in our trade negotiator when the other party uses an undignified nickname for him and he seems fine with it.

After this Justin went to Hong Kong and raised concern about China's human rights record, but in the same sentence went on to criticize Canada for it's indigenous peoples abuse.  This resulted in China running a media article about the Prime Minister criticizing Canada for our past abuse on indigenous people and further weekening our leverage.

In early 2017 Trudeau went against the recommendations of the Department of National Defense, Canadian Security Intelligence Service as well as the US Department of Homeland Security and gave away our top secret military laser technology, putting us and our allies at a military disadvantage.  

In November of 2017 the Prime Minister infuriates world leaders and embarrasses host nation of Vietnam when he failed to show up for a crucial meeting to salvage the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Later this month when he visited China again under the pretense that they would talk about free trade, Trudeau got snubbed and the trip ended in a waste when he left without our Canadian detainees and no trade deal.

Trump claims there is a trade deficit of $71 Billion with Mexico and a "pretty good trade deficit with Canada. They were saying WE have a surplus with Canada, I said no and I like the Prime Minister very much, Prime Minister Trudeau, nice guy, good guy, I like him. Trudeau was wrong though because he was not including lumber and energy.  With those categories, he claims the US has a $17 billion deficit with Canada.

To me I would predict that Canada will sooner allow Chinese telecommunications companies to start in Canada, possibly British Columbia, before a U.S. company gets a foothold.

[te72]

That was a long winded can of worms bud.

 

I see your point though, you're no more likely to get HBO Go than I am to sign up for cable.