Hope you had a Merry Christmas in 2022. Time for me to do a Christmas Gifts review.

My main Christmas gift this season was the 1Mii B03+ Bluetooth transmitter/receiver, shown above left. What’s this for, you say? Well, my Christmas gift lets me stream virtually any audio source to my Bluetooth earbuds for customized listening.

So, let me explain. When I watch TV, I also like to enjoy the sound. Often, this means I turn the volume higher. Not just for music and sound effect, but especially dialog.

Many of the programs watched these days are streamed from Netflix or Prime Video. Streaming services do not have as much audio compression as regular broadcast television. So, when you turn the volume up for dialog, music and special effects might blast our really loud and suddenly, you get complaints.

The point of this Christmas gifts review is that I have solved the TV volume problem. I can connect either digital or analog TV audio into the Bluetooth transmitter, and enjoy my program without disturbing anyone else. It works great.

If I want, I can also use Bluetooth for ham radio or shortwave listening audio. And, I find earbuds quite comfortable.

Christmas Gifts Review – Part Two

My other gift was a second Gigabit network interface card (NIC) for my radio computer. This lets me connect to my fast ANAN 7000 DLE MKII while bypassing the home network. Why do this?

Recently, I changed to fiber and use MoCA adaptors around the house. MoCA sends out tons of UDP broadcast packets which overload my managed switch in the radio room. Since my ANAN needs a strong gigabit connection, the broadcast packets sometimes interrupt the radio data stream. Sigh.

But now, my cheap and cheerful PCI-E NIC bypasses all the network traffic and gives me a solid connection to the radio.