The screen in my garage gym, and why the good box stayed indoors

I turned the garage into a gym during a January of good intentions, and unlike most January projects this one stuck. Two years on I am still out there four mornings a week. The one thing that took a while to get right was the screen, because a garage is not a living room and pretending otherwise wastes money. Three things make it different, and all three point away from the obvious choice. It is cold and it is damp. Not wet, but a detached garage in a British winter goes through condensation cycles that electronics do not enjoy. Anything expensive sitting out there permanently is a slow-motion gamble. The wifi is bad. My router is at the front of the house, the garage is at the back behind two brick walls, and the signal that arrives is technically present and practically useless. That was the real constraint. And I am eight feet away doing something else. I am not scrutinising the picture. I want it on, loud enough, and I want it to start without a negotiation. So the sensible answer was a cheap, small, replaceable device rather than the good one from indoors, plus sorting the signal properly. I worked out which end of the range made sense from this rundown of streaming devices in the UK, which was helpful for the opposite reason to usual — it was clear about where you can happily spend less. The signal I fixed with a wireless repeater halfway down the house, which cost less than the device did. Two winters, no problems, and I have never once cared that it is not the good box.