a couple quick technology questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a couple technology questions that I’ve been wanting to ask and have been prompted to do so by other Straight Dope threads.

  1. how do I watch Netflix on a TV set?

  2. how do I connect my iPod Shuffle to a car stereo?

2

  1. Get a SmartTV or a box like a Roku, AppleTV, FireTV Stick, or a device like a ChromeCast (computer required.)

  2. Does your car stereo have an iPod port/connector/doohickey? If not, read this.

3

Or a new game console like an XBox One or PlayStation 4.

4

Or many (all?) Blu-ray players have a Netflix app.

Does your car stereo have a USB or 3.5mm aux in jack? If it has USB you might be able to connect the ipod charging cable right to that. If it has the aux in, you can connect a male-male aux cable via the headphone jack in the iPod. If your stereo has neither of these, I think they still sell the things that transmit your device to a radio frequency.

5

I your car is old enough to have a cassette player, there are cassette adapters that you can use to connect iPod Shuffles, MP3, Players, and even smart phones to play music.

My wife had a Shuffle and we connect it to her Nissan Altima through the Aux port on radio. One problem is that AFAIK you can’t both play and charge a Shuffle through such a port. Therefore on long trips I’ll connect the Shuffle to its charger on a USB port when it runs low on battery. It seems to be good for about 5 hours though.

6

I don’t remember if I had to set up my ChromeCast using my computer, but I use my Android phone to watch Netflix on my TV with it - no computer required.
The Android netflix app has a little icon that appears if you have Chromecast running which casts the currently streaming show.
BTW your wifi is used for streaming, not your phone.

7

You just need something like a computer, tablet or phone that you can put the chromecast extension or app on.

8

I’ve an old gateway laptop, most any device you get internet on now will do, and an HDMI cable. Shop for the cable, some are less than $5.

9

My NetFlix solution uses an old iPod Touch with Apple’s composite AV cable. The battery in that iPod Touch is so old that you only get about 15 minutes of power with it unplugged, but it works perfectly as a dedicated peripheral. Plus, it can be used for other sources of video like YouTube, and I have the same component AV cable on the TV in the exercise room.

10

This thread assumes that the OP has a fast enough internet connection to stream movies from Netflix.

Not all of us do.

You can just have Netflix DVD’s mailed to you. My best friend does this and works pretty well.

You would need a DVD player and a new enough TV to hook it up to. I can’t stream where I live. But I did replace my DVD player a year ago with a new one for $40.

11

I mostly watch on DVD for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of stuff we want to watch is not on streaming yet. Second, if we didn’t have the DVDs crying out watch me we’d watch even less stuff than we do. Third, some of the DVDs have extras which don’t get streamed.
I do stream when I’m bored and the next DVD hasn’t shown up yet, or when the DVD is not available (like some MST3K things) or when I get a sudden urge to watch a remastered ST:TOS show. DVDs do work fine.

12

I did the Netflix DVD service before, and it may be the best option for me (but I hated the high frequency of DVDs too scratched to play without skips).

My car is old and the stereo doesn’t have any type of usb port, but does have a cassette player. I’ll look into options for hooking up an iPod Shuffle with that.

13

Something like this might work for you.