Personal

Installing complete Charter bundle: Internet/Cable/HDDVR/Telephone

I had the following setup in my house up to now. I had a 16MB/sec Charter internet link which cost 69 a month, qwest for local telephone which was 35, Charter Cable Basic/Extended which was 69 and Tivo which was 13. All plus tax. So, before tax that was 69+35+69+13 or 186 a month.

I was edging towards switching to DirectTV which cost about 100 bucks a month for HDDVR/Cable but then I'd still need qwest and Charter for internet as Qwest DSL is very slow here (5Mb). So, that would be about 200 bucks all in (Charter internet+directtv+qwest). I would have more channels with directtv but we have enough channels...

The charter guy came today to install the HDDVR equipment and that went smoothly. The signals were low in the two rooms for the HDDVRs so he fixed that to get an acceptable signal by changing the way the cable splitters were configured downstairs.

I attached the main room cable box using component video to my Yamaha Receiver and used a Digital optical audio connector (bought at Target for 12 bucks compared with 30 at Best Buy). The picture looks very good on my 720p LCD set and the sound is very good. Most shows/movies are using Dolby digital and the sound is very good as a result. Charter provided the component video cables and they don't hook up to receivers, just TVs but that wasn't hard to finish off.

On the whole, the Motorola HDDVR boxes are ok. The Tivo series 2 I had before is much easier to use I think. But, this could be just getting used to a different system. The multi-way remote control for the Motorola can be programmed to control the TV/DVD and receiver but I don't like it. I'm going to end up with a Harmony remote I think in the end but thats another day.

So, it's a few hours of using it but I'm enjoying the improved picture quality and sound from the new setup. The Charter Telephone is getting installed on Thursday because Qwest requires 5 days notice and its 5 days on Thursday. The only option for that was a UPS or not for the telephone which I bought (40 bucks) otherwise if the power goes then you have no phone.

Tivo2GO performance tuning

Starting playing with tivo2 go this weekend. I have two series 2 tivos in my house. Both are hooked up with Linksys wifi b with a linksys router. I have Tivo Desktop on my PC which is also hooked up with wifi b. So, everything is wireless.

I tried using transferring programs from one tivo to the other but wasn't happy. It couldn't transfer the program fast enough to watch as it did it.

I then tried copying to my PC then but it was slow. I then hooked my PC directly to my linksys router with a wire but it was still taking 50 mins. Thats Tivo -> Wifib -> Router -> 100Mbit -> PC.

So, I bought a Linksys USB 10/100 router and wired that instead of wifi b between the tivo and the router.

Much better. I can now watch programs from that tivo upstairs immediately. PC transfer times also dropped to around 23 minutes from 50 mins.

When my PC is wireless, transfers are around 30 mins.

So, I'd recommend this setup. One tivo wired to hub, one tivo wifib, one PC wifib.