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es. The HBO Now app provides a way for cable-
Which country made it illegal to own just one
guinea pig?
 Brazil
 Iran
 Ethiopia
 Switzerland
(Continued from page 16)
I usually use a pre-moistened alcohol hand wipe
and wait a couple of minutes for any liquid to evapo-
rate, followed by a clean cloth to polish away any
leftover streaks. A minimal amount of liquid and the
right cloth can do wonders to keep a device looking
great and reasonably well disinfected.
Q. What is the difference between HBO Now and
HBO Go?
A. Science fiction movies love to use popular
brands to make the future seem familiar.
A classic example was 2001: A Space Odyssey,
where names like Hilton and Bell Telephone implied
that the future will resemble the past.
Here in the present, HBO is now owned by AT&T.
You read that right, the company formerly nick-
named "Ma Bell" is now a media conglomerate. And
HBO is no longer constrained by the cable box, it is
a line of services paraded under the HBO banner.
HBO Now and HBO Go are for different audienc-
July/August 2020 17
cutters to access HBO without cable, while HBO Go
allows cable subscribers to access HBO on phones
and tablets. Neither are going away anytime soon,
but the times they are a-changin'.
Enter HBO Max. Launched in late May, HBO Max
joins Disney+ and AppleTV+ in the on-demand
streaming market currently dominated by Netflix and
Amazon. If you have an HBO cable subscription,
HBO Go is free. If you have HBO Now, you may be
offered an upgrade to HBO Max. If you are new to
HBO, jump straight to HBO Max.
The times are changing. HBO's future beyond ca-
ble is a premiumpriced service with a mix of legacy
titles and new programs.
Q. Occasionally I get warnings that I am close to hit-
ting my data cap. What can I do to lessen data use?
A. Although everyone uses the Internet differently,
video streaming almost always takes up the over-
whelming share of total data use.
The most obvious way to use less data is to watch
less video, but there is another, often overlooked
approach: switch to a smaller sized stream.
Video size is not very prominent to most users.
The stream for your device is selected automatically,
based on app preferences, the speed of your con-
nection, and the screen size of the device. That
works most of the time, but it can result in a stream
that consumes more data than necessary.
Take a look at a YouTube video. Under a small
gear icon is a popup menu that includes an item ti-
tled "Quality." Usually you will see a range of choic-
es that start around 300 and go up to 1080 or more.
These numbers describe the resolution of a video
stream, but the effect is to change the total number
of data bits that fill the video frame.
The "Auto" option will make its best guess for what
you need, but often you can go a step or two lower
without diminishing the viewing experience.
"Quality" settings exist in most streaming apps, but
too often they are hidden away and hard to find.
How much you can lower the quality depends on
many factors, including the content itself, the screen
size, and the distance to the screen. Even the quality
of your eyesight plays a role.
Now that you know what is possible, try experi-
menting with the services you use most. The data
needed to view one two-hour Netflix movie on a wall
TV will be cut by two-thirds by switching from HD to
Standard Definition. That is a lot of data.