DirectTivo and Vonage Success Stories ONLY

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 15, 2005 Posts: 2

BTDT. Tried a FAX line, it was a nogo. How did you get the USB setup to work?

Posts: 218 · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:49 pm Post subject:

Quote:

My units are all using USB, but if it works, a $9.95 fax line might be worth it considering some of the pain that I sense here.

Seriously, using the serial cable really isn't a pain. Once you have it all set up and running it will literally take you two minutes to do the updates. I have two DTV Tivos and do it about once every two weeks. Just hook up the cable, tell the DTV Tivo to make a daily call and walk away. I messed with those codes forever and that was nothing but a headache..this way is a breeze. I would rather take 2 minutes of my time rather than give someone about $120/year for the fax line which most people say won't work anyway.

Robert

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 15, 2005 Posts: 2

Robert:

Do you have a link for the "serial solution"?

Posts: 218 · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:14 pm Post subject:

Try this....I use W2K and it worked fine for me even though the directions were for XP. Be sure to enable your own account and not just the guest account and have it use an IP range that your router is not assigning on your network. For example mine starts assigning IPs from 192.168.1.100 so I set it up to use 192.168.0.100 or something like that. I can give you all the specifics from my box if you need them

http://www.b-lan.com/otto/tivo3xp/

Posts: 482 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:57 am Post subject:

rlstjohn wrote:

Quote:

My units are all using USB, but if it works, a $9.95 fax line might be worth it considering some of the pain that I sense here.

Seriously, using the serial cable really isn't a pain. Once you have it all set up and running it will literally take you two minutes to do the updates. I have two DTV Tivos and do it about once every two weeks. Just hook up the cable, tell the DTV Tivo to make a daily call and walk away. I messed with those codes forever and that was nothing but a headache..this way is a breeze. I would rather take 2 minutes of my time rather than give someone about $120/year for the fax line which most people say won't work anyway.

Robert

When I said pain, I meant the pain that people express with not being able to get their TiVo to connect, not that it's a pain to use a serial cable. Although I would rather go through the one-time process of enabling USB and never having to think about it again (and while you're at it, get extraction working and install the version 4 software so you have the Home Media Options).

And I just asked if anyone had tried using a fax line for the daily call, because logic would say if a fax machine works, why wouldn't a modem? But if people have tried it already then 'nuff said.

Posts: 1424

spepi wrote:

I have gone through about all of the different topics on this. I have been to TivoCommunity, and I am wondering if this topic could start with people adding in success stories only. I havent gotten a fix yet.
I have an Series 2 RCA DVR80, so I know my USB's wont work.

Thanks
Spepi

So much for success stories only. I have a SAT-T90 which is a Series 1 DirecTiVo. When I first got Vonage I set up my dialing prefix to ,#019 and worked with Vonage customer service until it was making calls consistently.

Some time recently I was playing with call quality and switched to 60 from 90. That prevented the unit from dialing in. Setting call quality back to 90 restored operation. I am using the same local number I used with my POTS service.

I don't believe I am using *99 which I do use on my FAX machine.

I am using a Motorola VT1000 on a residential Comcast cable connection.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 24, 2005 Posts: 4

Just an FYI

You don't actually need to have your DirecTiVos call in for them to work. The only side effect is that you'll have an annoying message each day. DirecTiVo info is provided over the satelite.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Posts: 20

Thanks to everyone here, I am now able to successfully make calls using my series 2 Directivo.

I am not sure if it was one configuration change or a combination of all of them, but I slowly made improvements to my system (starting with the voice quality) and eventually worked my way through until I was able to successfully place calls using both my Directivo and ADT alarm.

There is tons of useful information on this forum, but I thought it may help some of you if I summerize the changes that I made to my system.

First, my setup is a Linksys PAP2 ATA, a Linksys WRT54GS Router, a Motorola Surfboard Cable Modem with Comcast 4Mb service.

Here are several of the things I did:

1. I am using a Linksys WRT54GS Router with the latest version of the Alchemy firmware (pre7a v3.37.6.8sv). This definately gives you far more control over your network traffic. I set the QOS for upload and download to 80% of my speed as indicated on the Voip Speed Test on this site.

2. Also under QOS, I set up MAC priority for my PAP2 by entering the MAC address and set it to premium.

3. Per the Vonage website recommendation, I set up port forwarding for the following port ranges using the IP adress of the PAP2:

5060-5061 UDP
10000-20000 UDP

4. On my direcTivo unit I made the following changes:

Callwaiting prefix = *99,*70
dial prefix = ,#304
phone number = 212-277-3895

I placed several test calls and forced several daily calls. All were successful. So far, I have been EXTREMELY pleased with Vonage. I do still have the land line with my main number until the end of April, but it is only routed to a single phone in the house. I think SBC's days at my house are numbered.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 23, 2005 Posts: 9

Chefboz wrote:

Here it is...this has worked for me:

set your Dial Prefix to: 2122773895
Then your Call waiting Prefix to: ,#034
Then set your area code to 212 and download new call in numbers
when that goes through select the 212-277-3895 number
set it up to dial with or without the "1" and give it a try --

Whoo-hoo! This worked for me, too! After spending the weekend trying to get my R10 to dial out AND making my own serial cable, (plagued by WinXP 802.11b connectivity issues and a couple of other problems because I didn't follow directions exactly), it worked the first time.

And now my R10 is downloading its stuff. I am still going to pursue the serial cable for our older DirecTivo since that modem was destroyed by lightening.

Thanks SO MUCH for this!

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 15, 2005 Posts: 3

I got the null modem cable from 9th tee. I'm using xp pro on my laptop with a usb-serial converter. I have a Phillips DirecTV Tivo. I am new to Tivo. I followed the directions here:
http://www.tivohelp.com/archive/tivohelp.swiki.net/45.html

I was getting a connection to my laptop and seeing a few packets transmitted and received but it was hanging on "Negotiating". Couldn't figure it out. Just a shot in the dark, I checked to see if Windows Firewall was enabled, it was. I disabled it and it now works like a charm. The thing is, Windows Firewall wasn't popping up or giving any kind of warning. Was just a hunch. This isn't in the directions on the above link so maybe this will relieve someone's frustrations Smile

Anyway, hope this might help someone.

sd1