Download Your Facebook Photos by Daniel Howley

Facebook is a great place for sharing photos online. But let’s say you want to hand out hard copies of an all-time favorite from your (or a friend’s) wall – this snap, for example:

To get it onto a flash drive so you can send it off to the printer’s, you’ll have to first download the image from Facebook — which is, luckily, a pretty simple task.

Just visit Facebook.com on your desktop and find the photo in a profile’s Timeline or Photos section. After you click the image to open it full-screen, select the Options button in the lower right corner of the screen.

Select Download from the pop-up menu, and choose where you want to save the image.

Happy sharing!

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It’s Not Too Late: The Procrastinator’s Guide to Last-Minute Christmas Shopping by Christina Tynan-Wood

You waited until the last minute — again. So now you’ve missed every opportunity to “Get it there by the 25th!” You are faced with going to the store with hordes of other grumpy procrastinators. It’ll be a Scrooge Apocalypse out there: Traffic, Christmas music, picked over sale bins, and the smell of desperation. But it’s what you deserve. Right?

Oh, stop beating yourself up. This is an opportunity. Even if you are — at this very moment — giftless, dressed in your finest Christmas sweater, and late for the festivities, you can still pull it out.

And you don’t have to settle for lame gifts, either. In fact, I believe that, if you fully embrace your procrastination as a casual, laid-back choice, you can still be in the running for Giver of Best Gift each of your recipients gets. Procrastination is an art. Maybe it’s time to up your game.

Amazon Gift Card

It does not get any easier than this — or faster. Hit Amazon.com, pick an amount over $25, choose a card, drop in an email address for your recipient, and tell Amazon when to deliver it. Even if you didn’t think about bringing a gift until you the moment you started applying hair pomade for the holiday party, you’ll still give them exactly what they want — because they get to choose it. Got five minutes? Snap a picture of yourself — or, if they’re available, one of your cute tots or pets — to make the e-card more personal. You can send this same card to everyone on your list in less time than it takes to down a pre-party highball. By the time you walk in the door, everyone will be happy to see you.

Etsy Gift Card

You’s planned on picking out a unique piece of jewelry for someone special. You imagined her unwrapping that little handmade something or other that you’d discovered while perusing some hip boutique that only you know about.

Never got around to making that little fantasy reality? Not to worry. You can still get her something artsy and unique — and do it at the 11th hour — by giving an Etsy gift card. She can shop an entire online world of handmade gifts and select exactly the bauble she fancies. You’ll be on time and she’ll get exactly the thing she wishes you’d bought. Score for everyone!

Audible.com

Listening to audio books can be the best kind of multitasking: You can “read” a book at the same time you’re going for your walk or cleaning the house. If someone in your life is finding it hard to find time to read, just give her a few months of Audible. (A three-month membership is $45 and comes with one free book a month.) Or just buy a single book you enjoyed yourself and want to share. If you’re already a member yourself, you can gift books using your own credits. Gifts are sent via email so you can roll out of bed, unprepared, on the 25th and still give a gift that’s both erudite and thoughtful.

Aha

Get this iPhone app from Aha Life and change the way you give gifts. Maybe you think a cozy throw blanket is the best gift ever, but your recipient is wishing for jewelry or something a bit naughtier. Send the blanket (in 60 seconds from your phone), and she can swap it for the thing she really wants before it ships. You’ll never know she did. Don’t know her address? No worries. She can enter that when she is accepting (or swapping) the gift — it’s totally friction-less. Even if you do it from across the room at a party, she will know you thought of her and that a gift she wants is on the way to her. 

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Apple is helping out those who have left Christmas shopping a bit late by offering free next-day delivery for online orders made on December 23, MacRumors reports. 

Any customer who orders an in-stock item by 2 p.m. on December 23 will be eligible for free next-day delivery in the U.S. 

Additionally, in-store pickup orders made two hours before closing on December 24 will also be available for pickup, according to Apple’s website.

In the U.S., Apple currently offers free next-day shipping on in-stock iPhone models but everything else, including the Watch, Mac, and iPad, has a two-day shipping as standard. 

In the UK, free next-day delivery is usually standard on in-stock orders over €40 (£29, $43.30) if you order before 6 p.m. GMT.

Apple is also extending the standard 14-day return policy. Any item purchased in-store or online between November 1 and December 25 is eligible for return by January 8, 2016, in the U.S. and January 20 in the UK, according to MacRumors.

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Tip: Best Way to Fix OS X’s Autocorrect? Turn It Off by Rob Pegoraro

Let’s get right to teh point: I’d rather live with the occasional dumb typo than have OS X’s humorless and militant autocorrect stomping all over my words. You should too.

What has this feature done to earn its eviction? The automatic spelling-correction that Apple added with 2011’s OS X Lion got a lot pushier with 2012’s OS X Yosemite. It has now ascended to a level of intrusiveness and cluelessness that makes Microsoft Office’s long-gone Clippy assistant look like a gifted ghostwriter.

First, OS X’s spell-check ignores capitalized words, resulting in such acts of brand assassination as turning “Etsy” to “Easy” and “Roku” to “Rook.” It’s done the same to people’s names, rewriting the Federal Communications Commission’s Mignon Clyburn into a nonexistent “Mignon Cleburne.”

(Among lowercase words, OS X’s principal failing is a fuddy-duddy unfamiliarity with Internet slang that revises “dadcore” to “daycare” and “stabby” to “stubby”.)

Second, overriding these substitutions demands tedious thumb-wrestling. The standard Command-Z Undo command doesn’t work; hitting the Esc key and typing what you meant the first time around only repeats the auto-correct. Instead, here is Apple’s own advice on how to override its confounded copy editing: “To revert to your original spelling, put the insertion point after the word to show your original spelling, then choose your spelling.”

A few months ago, I decided I’d had enough of OS X’s autocorrect. My solution: I turned it off, and I think you should too. To do so, as the screenshot above shows: Open System Preferences (from the Apple menu), select Keyboard, open the Text tab, and click to clear the checkbox next to Correct spelling automatically.

Ta-da! Your welcome.

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Pogue’s Picks: 7 Terrific Holiday Gifts You’ve Probably Never Heard of by David Pogue

You already know that high-tech products dominate holiday gift-giving. This year, the world’s stockings will be stuffed with an awful lot of the obvious ones: Amazon Echos, Chromecast Audios, Surface Pros, iPads, and so on.

But there’s more to life than the big names. Every year, the market overflows with new and obscure products, all scheduled to come out just in time for the holidays. And in there, buried among the boring and the doomed, are some genuinely great ideas for holiday gift-giving.

And so, as a service to you, the busy person with better things to do, I’ve winnowed down all those products to just seven, ranging in price from $2 to $300, that are beautifully done, non-obvious, and sure to please the lucky recipients.

Ready? Let the grab bag opening begin!

Magnetic Notes

These crazy, self-sticking pages look exactly like Post-it notes, but there’s a big difference: They don’t use adhesive. Instead, they adhere with static cling.

To anything: glass, stone, plastic, wood, metal — anything. And since there’s no gumminess, you can pull them off and stick them back on over and over again.

(They came about from a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.)

They come in a crazy number of sizes, styles, and colors — including transparent, which is something you won’t find in regular Post-it notes. They also come in large, very large, and super-large sizes — so big, they’re like portable wipe-off boards that you can stick anywhere.

(The pages stick equally well front or back. The front has the color; the back is shiny white plastic, which you can use as a “white board” with wipe-off marker.)

Everyone who sees these things thinks of another idea for them. “Put the big ones on the walls and let the kids draw on them!” “Put one inside your windshield to leave a note!” “They’d be great for family Dictionary!”

Staples will carry them eventually; for now, you can order them from the company’s site.

Yoshirt

Send these guys a photo (using the Yoshirt app, if you like), and they send you back the coolest T-shirt ($40). It features your photo or design, covering the fabric completely, front and back.

This is no iron-on. They actually print the color of your design directly onto the sections of the garment and then sew them together into a shirt.

I sent them this picture of my cat Wilbur (left), and this is what they sent me back:

I’ve had four people ask where they can get my cool cat T-shirt. Guess what? They can’t. I have the only one!

A Yoshirt makes a spectacular gift, one that won’t wind up forgotten in some gadget drawer. Just be aware that these shirts are made by hand — so if you want your shirt for sure delivered in time for Christmas, place your order in the next couple of days.

SleepPhones

Plenty of people like to fall asleep to music, podcasts, or audio books — or would like to, anyway. But how are you going to do that? Not with hard plastic earbuds, that’s for sure — they’d kill your ears after a while (if you don’t get strangled by the cord first). Not with traditional headphones, either; they’ll come off if you turn onto your side.

Here’s the ingenious solution: SleepPhones. It’s an incredibly soft, fleece headband that contains soft, flexible, flat speakers aligned with your ears and a soft, flat, rubber control panel in the front. Whoever’s next to you in bed won’t be disturbed by your own private audioscape.

There’s a $30 model with a cord that plugs into your phone or whatever audio source you have. But the real magic is the wireless Bluetooth model ($90 on Amazon). It lets you drift off to music with your head in any position on the pillow, without feeling any lumps or getting tangled in any cords.

You have to recharge the little control pod daily, and getting it in and out of the headband can be a struggle. But at least you can take the speakers and control pod out when you want to wash the headband.

Zolt charger

It’s the smallest, lightest laptop charger in the world, according to the company.

Well, I can tell you for sure that it’s much smaller and lighter than my MacBook Air’s traditional charger, which I no longer carry.

Despite consuming so much less space and weight in my bag, the Zolt charger (a) has two additional USB jacks for charging phones and things simultaneously, (b) has only two prongs, not three, so it fits into more outlets, and © has rotating prongs, so you can make your charging cables sprout in the right direction from a crowded power strip.

It comes with tips for every conceivable brand of Windows laptop, and for $20, you can get a MagSafe 2 cable for Mac laptops. (The Zolt Website is wrong when it says the charger isn’t compatible with larger Mac laptops, like the 15-inch MacBook Pro. It is — it just doesn’t charge them as fast as the Apple charger.)

Withings Activité watch

Fitness bands are great and all. But in general, they’re ugly, especially compared with the other kind of gadgets we’ve been wearing on our wrists for hundreds of years: watches.

This year, it occurred to a few companies that they could put fitness-tracking guts into actual wristwatches. D’OH!

This one is fantastic. It’s the Withings Activité, with a special dial dedicated to showing how close you’ve come to your daily step count. 

It also tracks your sleep pretty well (and can wake you with a silent vibrating alarm). All of this health data shows up on your phone in handsome, well-organized graphs.

The best parts: The watch is truly waterproof. You can shower with it, no problem — in fact, it’s a great swimming tracker. And the button battery lasts eight months. Let’s see you do that, Fitbit!

What’s crazy is that you can make the hands of the watch spin around fast — when the time zone changes, for example, or when you double-tap the watch to check the alarm time. The hands fly around, pause at the alarm time to show you, and then fly back into place at the current time. So cool.

The watch models range from the Activité Pop ($100 on Amazon, choice of colors) to the Activité Steel shown in the video above ($170) to the Activité (Swiss-made, calf-leather band, $450). I miss having a heart-rate monitor, but waterproofness and an eight-month battery are pretty sweet consolations.

Blaze Laserlight bike light

Here’s another Kickstarter success story: A great-looking, waterproof, rechargeable, 13-hour, aluminum-clad bike light.

I thought $200 was a lot for a bike light, but every biker I know who saw this thing went nuts. 

They loved both the very bright, 300-lumen LED light (choice of brightness; blinking or continuous) — and, in particular, the picture of a bicycle projected 15 feet ahead of you by a green laser. The idea is to let cars and people know that you’re coming while there’s still time to react. 

(The company says that 79 percent of biking accidents happen when cars maneuver into a bike’s path.)

The light itself pops off of the handlebar bracket with a quick trigger pull so that thieves can’t make away with your $200 light. The laser doesn’t operate when the light is off its bracket, for safety.

Here’s a surefire way to make a beloved bike rider in your life very, very happy.

Bose QuietComfort 25

Bose dominates the noise-canceling headphones market for one simple reason: Nobody else has managed to duplicate the effectiveness of its noise cancellation. I’ve tested several dozen pairs (looking truly absurd on long flights during testing), and Bose’s are simply the quietest.

But Bose knows that it’s the 800-pound gorilla. That’s why it can get away with charging $300 for these babies.

Anyway, the QuietComfort 25 headphones are new, and they’re a big step forward. They sound better than their predecessors. They don’t give some people the uncomfortable sensation of — what’s the word? — ear vacuum, as the QC 15s did.

And unlike previous Bose models, these work as headphones for music even when they’re not turned on or the battery’s dead.

Finally, the 25s fold up smaller into a more compact case.

Truly, if you spend much time on planes or trains, or your loved one does, you’ll have a hard time finding a better designed noise-canceling headphone.

Holly happidays

There you have it — seven ideas you probably didn’t think of yourself. May your days be merry, your family gatherings harmonious, and your battery life exceptional.

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Microsoft pulls botched patch KB 3114409 that triggered problems with Outlook 2010 By Woody Leonhard

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update KB 3114409, intended to help admins keep Outlook 2010 from starting in safe mode, has in fact done the opposite. Many Outlook 2010 customers report that installing KB 3114409 forces Outlook to start in safe mode.

As of early Wednesday morning, the patch has been pulled, but if you're experiencing odd problems with Outlook 2010 -- it opens in safe mode only (always opens maximized and has no sounds, no reading pane, or other view settings that stick), has broken templates, and much more -- you should look at the KB 3114409 article for instructions on how to remove the patch.

And you should reflect on how a patch this destructive ever made it through internal testing.

For those of you on Windows 10's forced upgrade treadmill, note that Microsoft has pulled the patch, so you won't be forced to install it again.

Judging by the complaints (which started less than an hour after the patch was released mid-day on Tuesday) and reports that the patch had been pulled (which started appearing around midnight eastern time on Tuesday night), it took Microsoft around 12 hours to pull the faulty patch -- yes, 12 hours to pull an obviously bad patch.

If this sounds like déjà vu all over again, recall last month's KB 3097877, a patch that froze Outlook, blocked network logons, and caused other mayhem on Windows 7. Confusingly, Microsoft rereleased that patch after pulling it for a day, using the same KB number as the original botched patch. I'm still getting complaints from Windows customers who don't understand why they have to reinstall a patch that's already been installed.

HTHC: One of my machines running Windows 10 installed this patch.
Outlook always starts in "Safe Mode". I was unable to access my iCloud contacts and calendar because safe mode disables all Outlook plug-ins. iCloud integration with Outlook was one of those plug-ins.

What is "safe mode? If you have a problem getting Outlook to run, you use a special command to tell Outlook to run with just the basics. Hopefully, Outlook starts and you can undo/disable what was causing Outlook to fail to load normally.

How can you tell you are in "safe mode"? At the top of the screen, Outlook indicates it is in "safe mode".

How do you fix this problem? I uninstalled the bad Windows 10/Office patch and then re-installed iCloud so that the interface between Outlook and iCloud would work again. 

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The essential guide to powerline ethernet adapters (including 7 hands-on reviews) by Yardena Arar

Editor’s note: This roundup of powerline ethernet adapters is continually updated. It was originally published on January 15, 2015, and this is the third update. Since the number of products in the story was becoming unwieldy, we’ve removed the older models and kept only the latest HomePlug AV2 MIMO and ITU G.hn adapters. If you want to see the story as it was originally published in January 2015, click here.

This latest iteration adds an entirely new review of the ZyXEL PLA5456KIT to our earlier reviews of the D-Link DHP-701AV, Extollo LANsocket 1500, TP-Link TL-PA8030P KIT, and the Trendnet TPL-420E2K. You’ll also find the one ITU G.hn adapter we’ve reviewed to date: the Comtrend PG-9172.

The lay of the land

The powerline networking landscape continues its rapid evolution with a couple of new groundbreaking products based on the state-of-the-art HomePlug AV2 MIMO standard. The ZyXEL PLA5456 has achieved parity with the previous fastest adapter we’ve tested—the Extollo LANSocket 1500—while the TP-Link TL-PA8030P remains the only kit we’ve tested to boast three ethernet ports (ZyXEL’s kit has two).

The new wave of products also highlights two tiers of HomePlug AV2 MIMO performance: The three adapters we’ve tested that are based on Broadcom chips—D-Link’s DHP-701AV, Extollo’s LANSocket 1500, and ZyXel’s PLA5456—are significantly faster than the competition that’s based on Qualcomm chips (these being the only two companies shipping AV2 MIMO chips in the U.S. at this writing). We have no way of evaluating claims by the two companies as to why Broadcom-based adapters perform faster.

Benchmarks and prices of the top performers.

In my previous testing I looked at a couple of other HomePlug AV2 MIMO products as well as a Comtrend kit that was the first retail product based on a competing, less familiar powerline standard called G.hn.

HomePlug and G.hn both define a method for carrying data—including audio and video—over standard electrical cables. This enables you to use existing wires in your home as a data network. HomePlug is based on the IEEE 1901 standard, while G.hn is based on the competing ITU G.9960 standard.

In addition to using power lines to form a network, G.hn also supports using telephone wiring and coaxial cables. The IEEE also has a standard to facilitate hybrid networks, IEEE 1905.1. It’s backed primarily by the HomePlug Alliance, which runs a 1905.1 certification program for powerline, Wi-Fi, and coax-based products under the trade name nVoy. Because 1905.1 operates using software, an amended version, 1905.1a, adds support for other network technologies, including G.hn. But no one is operating a certification program for 1905.1a at this point, and as a practical matter, HomePlug and G.hn products simply don’t work together.

Both G.hn and the latest version of HomePlug—HomePlug AV2 MIMO—use a variant of the multiple input/multiple output technology you’ll find in 802.11n and 802.11ac network devices. Using MIMO, a powerline device will utilize all three wires in an electrical cable, transmitting data on any two pairs: Line/Neutral, Line/Ground, Neutral/Ground, and so on to achieve theoretical TCP throughput of up to 1.2Gbps. Earlier HomePlug devices transmit using only the Line and Neutral wires; SISO (Single Input, Single Output) HomePlug AV delivered maximum throughput of 600Mbps.

HomePlug AV2 MIMO

This illustration provided by the HomePlug Alliance shows how MIMO works when applied to powerline networking.

You should be aware that real-world performance is considerably lower in both cases. Also, your home must have three-prong outlets to get the full benefit from MIMO. HomePlug AV2 MIMO adapters will work with two-prong outlets, but they’ll fall back to SISO mode (single input/single output) and deliver less throughput.

This illustration provided by the HomePlug Alliance shows how MIMO works when applied to powerline networking.

No mixing: HomePlug and G.hn are incompatible

Powerline networking can be faster and more reliable than Wi-Fi when you need to serve client devices that are behind very thick walls—particularly concrete or masonry—or that are multiple stories away from your router. But the two powerline standards discussed here are not interoperable, so choose one or the other.
To create a powerline network, plug one adapter an AC outlet near your router and connect it to your router using an ethernet cable. Plug other adapters into AC outlets near the devices you want to add to the network, and then connect those devices to the adapters using ethernet cables. Don’t plug the adapters into outlet strips or surge protectors, as those devices might consider the data packets traveling over the wire to be noise and filter them out.

Powerline ethernet adapters

In our experience, powerline performance varies widely depending on the location of the adapters. Each product was much slower when the adapter connected to the router was further away from the adapter attached to the client, although their performance relative to each other didn’t change.
While the HomePlug Alliance certifies powerline products bearing the HomePlug brand as interoperable, that doesn’t mean you’ll get optimal performance from a network formed by a mix of HomePlug AV2 MIMO brands. When I connected D-Link’s DHP-701AV adapter to my router and connected the client computer to Netgear’s PL1200-100PAS, I saw significantly degraded performance compared to using the same brand at both ends. Interestingly enough, I saw much better performance in the reverse scenario: The Netgear connected to the router and the D-Link on the client end. Bottom line: No matter which powerline product you choose, stick with one standard and one brand.
You can mix powerline and Wi-Fi devices, though, and most people do. You can also buy powerline-based Wi-Fi range extenders that create local wireless access points in rooms where your Wi-Fi signal can’t reach. Powerline is a fantastic solution when Wi-Fi alone doesn’t cut it, but Wi-Fi is much more convenient if for no other reason than Wi-Fi adapters are built into nearly every device (smartphones, laptops, tablets, media streamers). Plus, there’s the whole “no wires” thing; heck, even newer set-top boxes and DVRs have gone wireless.

So which powerline device is fastest?

It’s notable that HomePlug AV2 MIMO adapters dominate this roundup, with Extollo’s LANsocket 1500, ZyXel's PLA5456, and D-Link's DHP-701AV in a virtual tie, with ZyXel’s PLA5405 finishing fourth. The only G.hn adapter in the roundup, Comtrend’s PG-9172, placed fifth.

Unless you’re on a very tight budget, avoid older and cheaper powerline adapters. Their performance pales in comparison to the newer products. If your home has a limited number of electrical outlets, you might want to buy an adapter that has a power passthrough, even if you end up sacrificing a little performance in the process.

As for the standards battle, it wouldn’t be fair to declare a winner based on the performance of the only G.hn adapter I’ve tested; namely, Comtrend’s PG-9172. Having said that, the PG-9172 is less expensive than all the other adapters, and it was significatnly faster than Netgear’s PLP1200 and TP-Link's TL-PA8030P.


HTHC Note:
Why would you ever use this technology? Want to install a SlingBox in your master bedroom? The SlingBox requires a wired connection to connect to the internet. Don't have a wired connection? Your options are running a cat5e cable from your router to your bedroom or using this technology.

My experience using this technology is as a last resort.

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Apple TV vs Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast: Which Streaming-Movie Box Should You Buy? by David Pogue

Big companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are fighting each other over territory in a surprising market: streaming TV devices. You know—those small, homely, black plastic boxes that connect your TV to Internet video services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon Video, and HBO Now (and music services like Pandora and Spotify)?

And to these four add one more: The less boxy Google Chromecast device, which plugs directly into your TV and uses a mobile app as a remote.

Why would such important companies fight over such a relatively unimportant category? It’s not as though everyone needs a streaming-TV device. The Netflixes and YouTubes of the world come built in to most new “smart” TVs, as well as game consoles and TiVos, rendering a separate box a little unnecessary.

Besides: Millions of people, especially young ones, don’t watch TV on the TV at all. They’d just as soon watch Internet shows on something that can already get online, like a phone, tablet, or laptop.

So who are these devices for?

They’re for people with older TVs that don’t already offer access to Netflix & Co. They’re for people who’d like access to many more services than their TVs already offer, better organized, more easily searched, and more beautifully presented. And they’re for people who want to do all of this while sitting on their couches in front of an enormous screen.

Anyway, the new crop of streaming TV boxes and connected devices has landed. Just in time for the holidays—what a concidence!

As it turns out, they’re amazingly alike. They all bring the most popular video and music services to your TV, including the ones you have to pay monthly for (HBO Now, Hulu Plus, etc.). And all require a connection to a power source as well as your TV’s HDMI ports. 

They all have fast processors and, in most cases, the ability to say the name of the movie, show, actor, genre, or director you’re searching for, which is a godsend. (Without it, you’re condemned to type out search terms using the remote control and an on-screen grid of letters, which is like water torture.) 

Most of them come with “point-anywhere” remotes that work using Bluetooth, so you don’t have to point them directly at the boxes. Each company offers a free remote-control an app for your smartphone, too (though, strangely, Apple’s own remote app doesn’t work with its new Apple TV).

Alike, yes, but not identical. So which is the grand prize winner? Here’s a hint: It’s the one from the company that makes nothing but streaming media boxes and whose name begins with an R. 

Candidate 1: Apple TV ($150 or $200)

The new, 2015 Apple TV is the only box that can bring you movies and TV shows from Apple’s own iTunes store. The question is, does anyone care?

It feels as though the biggest and best-priced movie store online these days is Amazon Video. (Netflix is shifting its focus to producing its own shows.) So if you’re going to buy a streaming box, you’d better make sure it can get onto Amazon Video. Especially if you’re an Amazon Prime member; you get thousands of movies and TV shows to watch free.

Unless you buy the new 2015 Apple TV. It’s one of only two boxes here that can’t bring you movies and TV shows from Amazon Video. (There are rumors Amazon is indeed writing an app that will bring its videos to Apple TV, which would be awesome for Apple fans. But the Amazon reps I asked declined to comment.)

(As a workaround you can always play Amazon videos on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad and broadcast it to the Apple TV using Airplay. Not as convenient, but doable.)

Here’s my full review of the Apple TV. And here’s the short version: It offers amazingy sophisticated voice recognition. You can say to the remote control, “Show me the highest rated romantic comedies from last year,” or “Find the second episode of Season 2 of ‘Lost,’” and it’ll find your options from the Apple, Netflix, and Hulu stores.

That Siri stuff is very useful, and the screensaver is a knockout (slow-mo flyovers of beautiful major cities). But the Apple TV is pricey, it can’t display 4K “ultra HD” video, and not all of those cool voice features work with inside all of the video services.

And Apple? Please, for the love of Steve, fix the text-entry screen. This one looks like you went out of your way to design the clunkiest possible way to enter account names, passwords, and search terms.

Still, if you’re reading this on your Macbook, iPhone, or iPad, you’ll probably to keep it all in the family with an Apple TV.

Candidate 2: Roku

Roku has a whole line of streaming TV boxes, each with a higher price and longer list of features. It also offers a cheaper Roku Stick, which plugs directly into the HDMI jack of your TV—a better bet for wall-hung TVs.

Here’s the rundown:

• Rook 1 ($50): Old and super basic.
• Roku Stick ($40): Adds screen mirroring from your Android or Windows machine; hotel/dorm WiFi connection; “point-anywhere” remote.
• Roku 2 ($70): All that, plus Ethernet, USB, memory-card slots; faster.
• Roku 3 ($100): All that, plus voice search, motion-control remote for games, headphone jack on the remote.
• Roku 4 ($130): All that, plus 4K video, remote-control finder, optical audio output.

What’s nice about the Roku experience is that you do some of the setup on its Web site—like choosing the channels you want it to receive—so you don’t have to fuss around with the remote. (You can install any of 3,000 channels on your Roku box. Most are, ahem, not exactly mainstream. Blind Cat Rescue channel, anyone? How about the War Games with Miniature Soldiers channel? This is not a joke.)

Too bad you can’t also use the computer for entering your account names and passwords (for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.). You still have to tap out letters on an onscreen grid, crying all the way.

Roku has been in the business a long time, and it shows. Everything is polished. Everything works. The exclusive features are fantastic:

• Remote Finder. Press a button on the box, and your remote beeps loudly from wherever it’s hiding in the room (Roku 4).
• Dedicated buttons on the remote for Netflix and Amazon Video. Steps saved.

• Headphone jack. It’s right on the remote. You can plug in headphones or earbuds and listen to the TV’s audio without disturbing anyone else in range — brilliant (Roku 3, 4).
• 
  
• The Feed. It’s like a Facebook for movies, shows, and actors you “follow”: a scrolling news feed of updates. Automatically lets you know when a movie’s price drops, or when it has just become available online. (The feed also shows up on your phone, in the Roku app.)

• Works in hotels and offices. All of these boxes require a WiFi network, but most can’t use WiFi networks that have a login screen—like in hotels, dorms, and companies. The Roku can (all models).
• 4K. Not may people have 4K (“ultra HD”) TV sets yet, and there’s precious little to watch in 4K. But the Roku 4 is ready for both.

All Rokus offer a universal search feature, where you type what you’re looking for, and you see a list of online movie services that offers it. But Roku is the only company here that doesn’t have a video store; it therefore argues that its listings are the most complete and unbiased:

My only gripe is that the voice search feature (Roku 3 and 4) isn’t as powerful or natural as Apple’s or Amazon’s. You can’t say, for example, “Show me Tom Cruise movies”—you just say, “Tom Cruise.”

While the Roku 4 is the latest and greatest version, for my money the Roku 3 is still the best call for most streaming video fans. 

Candidate 3: Amazon Fire TV

This plain-looking black box prominently features the stuff you’d buy or rent from Amazon itself.

The cynic might say, “Way to promote your own wares, Amazon.” The optimist might say, “Well, that’s handy—this is the only streaming box that shows me at a glance what I’m getting for free with my Prime membership!” (See the diagonal corner stripes on the movie titles below? Those are available via Amazon Prime.)

I have my beefs with the design. The descriptive text is chopped off at the bottom of the screen after only a few words, while most of the screen remains empty space:

The voice search works well for finding stuff to watch by name, actor, director, or genre; you can even open apps by voice. And one voice search finds stuff from Amazon’s own catalog (video, music, apps), as well as those of Hulu, HBO GO, Crackle, Showtime, and Starz. Not, alas, Netflix or Hulu.

 

As with Apple TV, you can also ask simple questions about news, sports, and weather. In fact, the Fire TV goes farther—you can ask general Siri-type information questions (“How tall was Abraham Lincoln?”), or add reminders to your Amazon to do list by voice (they sync with the Amazon Echo app).

As with Apple TV, there are a few game apps available for downloading; in this case, you can buy a $40, Xbox-style game controller to complete the effect.

Amazon also sells the Fire Stick, which doesn’t do 4K (as the Fire TV box does), doesn’t include the remote that does voice searches (it’s $30 more), and is much slower. 

If you’re a loyal Amazon video fan—and especially if you’re an Amazon Prime member—the Fire TV will make your binge-watching a little easier.

Candidate 4: Google Chromecast

This streamer is unique among its rivals. For one, it’s not a little black box; it’s a puck-shaped device that plugs into your set’s HDMI port via a flexible cable. It also lacks a remote and has no “home sceen” of apps on your TV; instead, you use a phone app (iPhone or Android) to find stuff to watch. (YouTube, Netflix, Google Play, and thousands of other video apps work with Chromecast.) The downside? When your phone’s dead, so is your streamer.

Apple’s iTunes and Amazon Video aren’t among the offerings for Chromecast, but there’s a cheat: You can also send any Web page to your TV, from any device: phone, tablet, Mac or PC laptop, as long as you’re using Google’s Chrome browser. So you can dial up your favorite Amazon videos in your browser and watch them on the big screen.

There’s voice search on Android but not iPhone, no 4K, and no true universal search across all video services.

But the Chromecast is tiny (hangs off the back of your TV) and, incredibly, only $35. It’s the best call for cheapskates and geeks who want to watch the Web on their walls.

Candidate 5: Western Digital WDTV ($174)

This hollowish plastic box and its big remote give you access to 80 video and music services, including Vudu and Hulu Plus. You don’t have to install them yourself, as you do on Apple TV or Roku.

However, you’ll find a few key services missing—little things called Amazon Video (rats), HBO Go (shoot), Showtime Anytime (huh), and even Netflix (whaaa?!). There’s no voice searching, no universal service searching.

So what’s the point?

The USB and network jacks are the point. They let you connect a hard drive, flash drive, or network wire to play video files of your own, in any conceivable video format (MKV, AAC, DIVX, FLV and MOV). And photos, and music.

In other words, this box isn’t really about Internet streaming at all. It’s made in heaven for file hoarders, people with big video collections of their own. It’s not for things like the iTunes Store, but it’s the ultimate box for accessing the Steve Store or Casey Store.

(It also offers a feature called Miracast, which wirelessly transmits your Windows or Android device’s screen so it displays on the TV.)

Stream Away

If you had to buy a streaming TV box today—or give one as a gift this season—you’d probably want the Roku 3. It has the headphone feature, the voice search, and by far the biggeset selection of channels, including the important Amazon Video.

And it’s only $100 ($30 more gets you the Roku 4, which adds 4K and the remote-control finder).

Every now and then, a bunch of behemoth companies battle over a little piece of marketing turf—but the winner is the scrappy little company that’s never focused on anything else.

Check out these other awesome Yahoo Tech stories:

• Siri vs Cortana, Google Now, and Alexa: Which Voice Assistant Will Win?
• Apple iPad Pro Reviewed: One Spectacular, Very Productive Copycat
• The 11 Worst Internet Scams We’re Still Falling For

David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech; here’s how to get his columns by email. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. 

HTHC Note: 
We use a Roku Streaming Stick. None of my flat screen TV's are "smart TV's". Before Roku, my solution would have been to buy a Blu Ray Player that had those apps built in to connect to NetFlix or Amazon Prime Video.

For $25 on sale, the Roku Streaming Stick connects to NetFlix, Amazon Prime Video, HBOgo, Showtime Anytime...

I use my tablet to control as the input device/keyboard instead of the Roku remote. 

I am very happy with this solution.

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