So, we made the big jump last night. We were on Comcast for analog cable and high-speed internet and Vonage for voice. Now, we got a deal for a few months on switching up to digital cable and what I think is their digital voice.
Basically, we only pay $20 more per month for phone and digital cable upgrade. I am sorry to see Vonage go as it has been awesome and the best service available – voicemail by email, all normal calling features, forward to cell phone, etc. But, I am going to cancel and see how Comcast Digital Voice goes.
The installer fella plugged in the ethernet cable into the wrong port on my PC and spent 90 minutes before I could get to my cell and help him. Oh well. It works now!
So, last night, I got to spend a few hours getting the Wireless Router (SMC 802.11b/g unit) working with then new cable modem. Oh my, this cable modem is HUGE but it has it all – VOIP adapter, Wireless (which I better secure soon-oops), one port (not a switch!) and of course the cable modem itself. I had to use a paper clip and reboot the SMC unit TWICE, and then it was all good. I turned off it’s DHCP which seemed to be fighting will the modem which of course I can’t log into but I can only assume is also a DHCP server. So, the computer had no issue getting online after the double reboot. However, I manually assigned all TCP/IP info to the TiVo’s and other PCs in the house. So far, all is working.
Now TV is a different story. The DVR in the Comcast unit is disabled as we aren’t forking over $10 a month for the small (40gb?), crippled, crappy, no season pass DVR when I have (i.e. paid for, actually free after rebates 2 years ago) an awesome Series 2 hopped up to 160GB TiVo which every family member loves LOVES. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to change from analog cable to digital cable, then I had to go online to setup so I had to get the wireless working (see above) BEFORE I could even start setting up channels. The IR blaster worked awesome – no issues. It does take about 3 seconds to change channels, but it works. Nicely, the bottom 100 channels are the same, so all the season passes are INTACT! The upper channels are digital and it is awesome to see David Letterman streched across my 4:3 TV as though it is a widescreen. Seriously, digital TV is so in it’s infancy and a good number of the channels were OK (letterbox is fine) but many are stretched, some have letterbox and horizontal bars – weird although that fella on TwiT explained this. With my seven year old CRT TV (JVC, nice, but old) digital looks the same as analog. Oh well. Now we have SciFi – BATTLESTAR GALACTICA with out waiting for DVD! ! ! And even better, Universal HD (not that I can enjoy HD) where Firefly is going to be REBROADCAST !! !! ! ! AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! More playing tonight!
Overall, it is going to be interesting. So, if we keep it even after the price goes up, we are ready for an HDTV – just not financially ! ! !
