Tivo offered me a free adapter to stay with them

Posts: 28 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Nov 23, 2004 Posts: 28

my husband bought me a tivo for christmas without realizing that it may not work with Vonage service... i was finally able to get the thing to set up but couldn't get any updates to download so i returned it to the store he bought it from -

i finally got around to cancelling the tivo service and the customer service person i spoke with - offered to send me a free adapter - of course, it was too late for me as i'd already returned the box - but
thought this info could help someone else

Posts: 17 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: May 20, 2005 Posts: 17

I wish I knew that sooner. I had the Same problem. It took a day or two to get me Tivo to do its first download and get on line. I ordered a wireless adapter to put the Tivo on my network after a few days. Had I known they might offer a free adapter I would have tried that approach first. Wink

My wife feel in love with the Tivo in only a day or two so it wasn't going back period. It took about a week or so before I finally got my adapter in. In that time the Tivo did manage to get through and update but its successful call rate was very low... maybe 10%. Once I got the adapter hooked up it updates daily with no issues.

My question is why didn't you network your Tivo? You get a whole host of extra features. While none of them are "must haves" for me, it does provide some added benefits. I did schedule a recording over the internet just for the fun of it. PLus the updates are much faster now.

Posts: 15 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 30, 2006 Posts: 15

I suggest tivo be connected to the net. Vonage will work with regular directv and dish network receivers as they have 300 baud modems in them.

You people fail to realize that Vonage IS NOT A POTS LINE SUBSTITUTE! Voip will never be as reliable as a POTS line and with most codecs, high speed data calls won't work. Vonage is no where near as stable as POTS lines.

Occasionally, When I try to call or people try to call me, I get "all circuits busy", etc. This isn't often, but when it happens it's really disrupting. Cell phones exhibit the same problems sometimes. It happens when all the circuits that interface vonage's SIP servers to the PSTN are in use.

Posts: 17 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: May 20, 2005 Posts: 17

Quote:

You people fail to realize that Vonage IS NOT A POTS LINE SUBSTITUTE!

I'd tend to disagree with that...and if the Voip players (Vonage, .....) what to grow beyond niche market penetration they need to work hard to try and achieve this. I'm well aware of all the issues with latency, lost packets, hops,.... so we don't need to rehash those.

Just looking at it on paper, Vonage I think uses at least 90Kb of bandwidth to transmit/receive data. That far exceeds the 64Kb that the POTS lines can theoretically achieve (good luck ever getting close to that), and even farther beyond the 56Kb that a good modem will achieve. They also support FAX lines, and should have been well aware of the various alarms, tivos, monitors, credit card machines, etc that exist on phone lines and made "plans" to deal with them.

So I would expect that the Tivo should be able to negotiate down to around 28Kb and be able to get through somewhat reliably... more than 10% of the time. Maybe the modem Tivo uses doesn't have good error handling.

jm

Posts: 15 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 30, 2006 Posts: 15

The voice codec bitrate has nothing to do with how much data can travel through a POTS line. The compression of the voice codec is where it fails for data calls. The bandwidth required for data calls (The full 300Hz to about 4kHz) cannot be achieved with a compressed voice codec.

Voip is not POTS. People need to realize this before they go scratching their head as to why data calls won't work. The future is services over fiber. Over fiber, you can get full fledged POTS lines, because they don't use Voip codecs. Thats how business get phone lines for their PBX, either over fiber or a copper carrier. They are full fledged POTS lines and don't have the limitations Voip has.

Why do you think business only use Voip for voice applications? It's pretty much all it's good for. Call centers, office phones, etc are great for Voip. Fax works fairly good because it's low speed. Anything faster than 14.4k and needs the reliability of POTS, like alarm systems, the businesses have POTS.

I'm a tech. At work, we have Voip for office phones and our our call center. For fax, our alarm systems, POS terminals, and modem applications we all use POTS lines. The reason is because Voip won't really work for these things except for fax.

So, people will be dissapointed when they use Vonage with things like tivo and alarm systems because high speed data calls won't work over Voip. And when power or net goes out, Voip is dead, POTS is still alive.

Posts: 43 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 43

Whom did you call? I dont think this will work for me, because I have the directv HD tivo.

rachelfran wrote:

my husband bought me a tivo for christmas without realizing that it may not work with Vonage service... i was finally able to get the thing to set up but couldn't get any updates to download so i returned it to the store he bought it from -

i finally got around to cancelling the tivo service and the customer service person i spoke with - offered to send me a free adapter - of course, it was too late for me as i'd already returned the box - but
thought this info could help someone else

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 26, 2006 Posts: 6

smb3_lad wrote:

The voice codec bitrate has nothing to do with how much data can travel through a POTS line. The compression of the voice codec is where it fails for data calls. The bandwidth required for data calls (The full 300Hz to about 4kHz) cannot be achieved with a compressed voice codec.

Voip is not POTS. People need to realize this before they go scratching their head as to why data calls won't work. The future is services over fiber. Over fiber, you can get full fledged POTS lines, because they don't use Voip codecs. Thats how business get phone lines for their PBX, either over fiber or a copper carrier. They are full fledged POTS lines and don't have the limitations Voip has.

Why do you think business only use Voip for voice applications? It's pretty much all it's good for. Call centers, office phones, etc are great for Voip. Fax works fairly good because it's low speed. Anything faster than 14.4k and needs the reliability of POTS, like alarm systems, the businesses have POTS.

I'm a tech. At work, we have Voip for office phones and our our call center. For fax, our alarm systems, POS terminals, and modem applications we all use POTS lines. The reason is because Voip won't really work for these things except for fax.

So, people will be dissapointed when they use Vonage with things like tivo and alarm systems because high speed data calls won't work over Voip. And when power or net goes out, Voip is dead, POTS is still alive.

While this is true, it's not entirely accurate. The problem with data trasmission as you have noted is due to the lossy compression employed by codecs. The solution to that is to use a lossless compression codec. Sure this will use more bandwidth but it would work. The problem isn't with the nature of Voip but with some of the technologies currently used to implement it.

The next obvious question is why do we need data services over an IP connection? The answer is legacy hardware. Faxes and modems are all old technology. Once we get rid of these archaic devices it won't be an issue. There already are many IP based solutions to replace a fax machine. There are also alarm systems that stay continuously connected over a broadband connection. Soon enough these will be the standard.

For $50 you can hook up all your communications equipment to a UPS. Then the only reliability issue is your ISP. If someone hits a pole, they could take down your phone service just as easily as your broadband. Most people today have cell phones as backups anyway. As far as an alarm is concerned, it's pretty trivial for someone to cut your phone connection before breaking in.

Fiber is just another data trasport medium. The more bandwidth you have the less you need to be concerned about compression and packet losses. Fiber is not POTS though. POTS = plain old telephone system. At the simplest level of comparison POTS provides it's own power source and is not digital.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 18, 2006 Posts: 13

So, people will be dissapointed when they use Vonage with things like tivo and alarm systems because high speed data calls won't work over Voip. And when power or net goes out, Voip is dead, POTS is still alive.

I've had DTivo and a 540 Tivo for years now. No problems. Also a Dish 508, no problems either. But yes I understand others have had issues.

As for power outages, I have a UPS so if the ISP isn't effected by the outage I can make some short calls (until the batter depletes, that is).

And one nice thing is that here even a disconnected service phone can call 911, but I would certainly recommend at least a cheap cell phone plan. I have had one but it is apparently either going out of business or changing their pricing structure with a corporate name change.

But the one thing that doesn't work so well is Vonage with Netzero dialup, not that I use it very often. Less than 30k and usually much worse. Why would I use it at all for dialup? There have been times when Vonage was working but I'd lose internet connectivity, but that's discussed in another thread. Wink

As for faxing I've never had trouble faxing to eFax or anybody. My only issues have been software related because for some goofy reason when I call Tampa from St. Petersburg, FL I have to dial the area code WITHOUT dialing "1" and even though the fax software gives me that option it still adds the "1" in. So I have to trick it into working. Smile

I have no comment at all on alarms because I didn't renew my contract and back then I had a landline.