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"Brains" == Brains <fmoody-ug-wlug@moodman.org> writes:

Brains> John Stoffel wrote:

...

Hi,

Anyone on here using Charter Telephone VOIP service? I've currently got Verizon, but the wife hates it because our phone lines get flaky all the time, esp when it rains.

So I'm thinking to save money and combine all my stuff onto Charter. I've already got High Speed internet and regular old cable. Not wild about Digital Cable since I'm happy with Tivo and I don't want yet another set top box to have to deal with...

So, any horror stories about Charter Phone VOIP quality and service?

Thanks, John

Brains> I can't speak to the VOIP side of things, but I will Brains> say that I'm running my Series 1 Tivo with comcast digital Brains> cable. The thing that makes it mostly bearable is that I can Brains> use the data port instead of the IR blaster. Might see if Brains> that is an option for you if you end up going the digital Brains> cable route. I've got a series 2 box, with lifetime, so I'm really loathe to get rid of it until it goes up in flames. And since I *really* like the TiVo remote, I don't want to have to teach myself, wife and kid how to use yet another friggin TV doohickey. So to get this straight, you've got your TiVo plugged into the Charter Settop box and you can browse all the channels via the TiVo remote? Duh... I just re-read your reply and I see that you use comcast, not Charter. Sigh... now to find out what Charter uses. More googling I fear!

Brett> On 9/5/07, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

...

So I'm thinking to save money and combine all my stuff onto Charter. I've already got High Speed internet and regular old cable. Not wild about Digital Cable since I'm happy with Tivo and I don't want yet another set top box to have to deal with...

Brett> I know nothing about Charter's VoIP because I use VoicePulse Brett> VoIP and highly recommend it. Half the price of charter for Brett> the plan I use ($15/mo) and I'm very happy especially with Brett> their service department. If you have any problems you'll talk Brett> to and hear back from intelligent service people who call Brett> and/or email you to discuss the issue. Is Charter your internet provider? And of course, I don't want to have happento me what happened to the people who used SunRocket Voip. Oh well... VoicePulse doesn't happen to be offered in Boylston yet. John

On Wednesday 05 September 2007, Brett Russ wrote:

On 9/5/07, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

...

So I'm thinking to save money and combine all my stuff onto Charter. I've already got High Speed internet and regular old cable. Not wild about Digital Cable since I'm happy with Tivo and I don't want yet another set top box to have to deal with...

I know nothing about Charter's VoIP because I use VoicePulse VoIP and highly recommend it. Half the price of charter for the plan I use ($15/mo) and I'm very happy especially with their service department. If you have any problems you'll talk to and hear back from intelligent service people who call and/or email you to discuss the issue.

-BR http://www.voicepulse.com/ _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

For VIOP alternatives check out GalaxyVoice. http://galaxyvoice.com For a MA phone number there is no montly fee and 60 mins free. The oer minute costs are free after that. Of course the features are all there too 3 way/call wait/caller ID/voicemail/hunt group/find me followme/etc Vmail is nice as you can setup an email with wav attachment I use it and am pretty happy. Thanks Brian

Tal Cohen wrote:

I have Vonage and have been using them for a few years no. No problems at all running over a Verizon DSL connection.

I've heard mixed reviews about Vonage. For some people, it's flawless. A handfull I've talked to, though, have had a problem where there's no audio for the first 10 seconds or so of a call. Most people, hearing nothing, just hang up on the other end. One guy in particular, when his wife couldn't get through to the doctor when the baby was having problems, ditched Vonage very quickly. -- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC

Frank> John Stoffel wrote:

...

Hi,

Anyone on here using Charter Telephone VOIP service? I've currently got Verizon, but the wife hates it because our phone lines get flaky all the time, esp when it rains.

Frank> I use Charter VoIP server at home. Basically, unless you Frank> looked at where the wires ran or peeked at the bill, you'd Frank> never know that it wasn't a regular phone. Cool. Do you have also have Charter's high speed internet? I've got that currently and I run m0n0wall (http://m0n0.ch) as my firewall. So I've been surfing voip.com, vonage.com, voicepulse.com and other sites looking for any issues I need to think about. Mostly, as long at the phone doesn't annoy my wife, she won't care about it. :] Frank> There is one caveat with any VoIP service, which is that you Frank> need local battery backup for the equipment in your house. The Frank> VoIP box Charter provides includes a battery with (IIRC) about Frank> 8 hours standby or 3 hours talk time, but it's not a bad idea Frank> to back that up with a larger UPS. I've got a UPS at home and I guess I could run an extension cord from where the phone stuff would be to that location. Wouldn't be a problem... Thanks for the suggestion. John

Frank> Yup - I got the whole triple play bundle, with a fedora 7 box Frank> as firewall. I've just sprung for the bundle as well. I'm going to save a bunch of money, even on international (rarely done) calls, since they're just 6 cents a minute. If they haven't lied to me. :] John

Brett> The advertised price for the triple play is a 12 mo promo of Brett> $106/mo plus taxes & fees. Is that what you have? I guess Brett> when I see a bill that high (and going higher after a year) Brett> it's hard to get excited about how much I'm *saving* :-) I'm Brett> sure it's worth it for some people though. I've gotten the 5mb down, 512kb down Internet, plus Phone (unlimited calling in the US, plus 6c/min for Internation calls to Switzerland/UK) plus Digital Cable with the Total View Tier (BBC America mostly... :] all for $119.97/mon for 12 months. Then it will go up (hah!) to something like $133/mon. Considering that I was already paying $106+ a month for Cable/Internet, plus $50ish for Verizon phone, I'm feeling ok about it. Yes, I'm saving money, plus we'll all Call Waiting without having to pay extra for it like we would with Verizon, etc. But I will say that researching this was a total pain in the ass while looking at the Charter Web site. They really don't make it easy to figure out which channels are in which tiers, what the various (Big, bigger and biggest!) channel bundles really are, etc. It's a friggin maze of useless info which you have to dig deep into to figure out. Oh yeah, and if you read the fine print, if you over use your "unlimited" phone calling, they get to pull your service if they want. So be careful if you have teenagers in the house. :] Luckily, my 5 year old doesn't have anyone to call. Yet. :] John

John Stoffel wrote:

Before we had a splitter in the analog cable, with one feed going to the TV directly, the other going to the TiVo. This way we could watch live TV (commercials and all!) when the TiVo was recording something we wanted, but didn't want to watch at the moment.

Now that we have digital cable, I don't think I'm going to be able to do this anymore. Dammit. This is an oversight/gotcha that I didn't realize.

I'll see how much extra it will cost to get another digital set top box, which I'll dedicate to my TiVo's use I think. :] I dunno... maybe there's a way to do this. Anyone know for sure if the Scientific Atlanta set top box has analog output of *all* channels, so I can just tune up and down using the TV tunner? Even if I don't get over channel 99 on there, I'd be ok with that.

I suspect (strongly) that it doesn't work that way and that I'm screwed, sorta. Not terrible actually, but annoying.

Actually, it does. If you throw a splitter in, you'll find that all of the analog signals are still there just as before. One thing you'll need to be aware of, though, is that depending on where you put them, adding in too many splitters will now degrade the signal quality for your phone as well as just your television picture, so make sure you give the phone box priority. -- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC

A word to the wise, make sure that they actually can port your number before you switch. I moved into a new place in Uxbridge a couple years ago. So new that they didn't even have the cable company's lines - so I just got a package through Verizon that included DirecTV and DSL. Then about 6 months later they finally attached the street hookups for our development so we could get it. They sent out reps to our houses to sell us on the services inlcuding phone. The rep swore up and down that we would be able to keep our number that we'd gotten from Verizon, so we got all signed up. When the installation day came, I was then told that I could not get my number ported and there was nothing they could do about it. I fought tooth and nail and filed complaints with every level of manager I could to figure out why. Come to find out that my town is serviced by two different high-level telephone routers and that one router is setup to process 278 exchange and the other is setup to handle 266 exchange. There is some arbitrary line in my area that if you fall on one side of the line you get 278 and the other gets 266 - totally bogus. I tried to reason with them that the phone switch in my house was just a network device and that, once on the network, they could route whatever number to it that they wanted, but the customer reps I talked to that could actually understand what I was talking about just weren't having it. I finally just accepted it and figured I'd have to just suck it up, but then I found out that the service didn't work with the phone system I had at the time (multi-cordless with base that cost like $150+). They tried to tell me to just get a new phone and I was like - so you're going to pay for that same feature set on a new set of phones for me? At this point I had already canceled all of my other services including the DSL. Another word to the wise on that front. Don't ever cancel your DSL unless you are 100% certain you don't want it. It takes a minimum of 10 days to get your new DSL connection setup, yet when you cancel your service it goes dead nearly immediately. So, if you accidentally change your mind, you have to wait 10 days to get it back on. In the end, I was able to get my original Verizon number back and get my DSL and DirecTV turned on again, but it was the most painful experience that I have gone through in quite a while. I actually still have Charter, but just for the local cable access package ($13/mo) so that I can watch the selectman's meetings and stuff like that. Just figured I'd share my experience. -Jared On 9/15/07, Stephen Daukas <scd@daukas.com> wrote:

We upgraded to the digital/phone/Internet package and installed only one digital box wit the rest of the house on analog. While I can only speak definitively about Shrewsbury Cable, I can't see how this wouldn't work anywhere...

Depending on the equipment the cable provider uses, one or more splitters with the appropriate notch filters on each output, may be necessary to separate out the unwanted packets and phone signals for each device. In Shrewsbury's case, the gear they now use doesn't require the filters, so I split the incoming cable using the town's original 1:3 splitter, connected one output to an amplified splitter (Radio Shack) to provide analog to the rest of the house (via additional splitters - everything is configured as what's called a "home-run" to the basement), and connected each of the other two outputs to the digital box and phone/cable modem respectively. The tech from Shrewsbury had no problem with this configuration because if you want independent digital signals, you need two or more digital tuners. If you want to see what this looks like, I'll send a link to pics on picassaweb.

Since I have finished the basement as something of a Pub, I have a little TV mounted in a corner above the bar. I am about to split the signal from the digital box's output, in the same way as described above for the whole house, so that both the larger TV and the "bar TV" can be driven by the one digital tuner - the digital box output to the TV is analog.

There is one very important issue to remember when playing "cable guy": Avoid putting an amplified splitter, or even a cheap splitter, in-line between your digital (or phone) gear and the outside world! These digital devices are bi-directional and the amplifier is essentially a capacitor that will block all but 60Hz(+/-) and will typically not allow return signals to pass. Sometimes, a cheap splitter's internal configuration is such that the return signal is degraded so much that it too is essentially blocked. (Anyone who has had trouble using BSRs to control lights or other appliances working on some outlets in the home, but not others, is fighting a similar issue with the circuit panel being the culprit). You can buy cable amps that will accommodate digital devices, but a good splitter was less expensive the last time I checked.

And one last tidbit... As of July (?) of this year, cable providers are now required to allow you to purchase the digital box if you don't want to pay a monthly rental fee. I'm not sure if you can be restricted to the one being provided by the cable provider, or if they are required to support any digital tuner the customer may have... This could be a savings if you have several TVs because the typical monthly fee for a digital box is ~$8/month, or ~ 100/yr.

Later, Steve

On 9/15/07, Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu> wrote:

...

John Stoffel wrote:

...

Before we had a splitter in the analog cable, with one feed going to the TV directly, the other going to the TiVo. This way we could watch live TV (commercials and all!) when the TiVo was recording something we wanted, but didn't want to watch at the moment.

Now that we have digital cable, I don't think I'm going to be able to do this anymore. Dammit. This is an oversight/gotcha that I didn't realize.

I'll see how much extra it will cost to get another digital set top box, which I'll dedicate to my TiVo's use I think. :] I dunno... maybe there's a way to do this. Anyone know for sure if the Scientific Atlanta set top box has analog output of *all* channels, so I can just tune up and down using the TV tunner? Even if I don't get over channel 99 on there, I'd be ok with that.

I suspect (strongly) that it doesn't work that way and that I'm screwed, sorta. Not terrible actually, but annoying.

Actually, it does. If you throw a splitter in, you'll find that all of the analog signals are still there just as before.

One thing you'll need to be aware of, though, is that depending on where you put them, adding in too many splitters will now degrade the signal quality for your phone as well as just your television picture, so make sure you give the phone box priority.

-- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

-- Stephen C. Daukas Engineer, Geoscientist, Environmental Analyst ________________________________________________ - Please, before printing, think about the environment - _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

Thanks to Frank and Stephen for their suggestion to try out the Analog side anyway, maybe I'll still have basic analog on there. Right now in my basement I have: -------linein-->four way splitter, -7db per ------- cable modem ------- phone box ------- upstairs living room ---- two way splitter, -3db each ----- digital box ----- not sure, VCR? ------- god knows where... :] I've got a rat's nest to untable behind the Entertainment unit, so once I get more cleaned up, I'll see how it goes. The digital picture is nice, as is BBC America. :] And the TiVo can tune the settop box without a problem, which is nice. John

FCC recently mandated that cable/staellite providers must continue to provide traditional analog (420i, if memory serves) until the year 2012 (maybe 2014?), despite the 2010 "shut-off" date for over-the-air broadcast of " traditional TV"... So, looks like the drop in TV prices I was hoping for in the next year or two won't take place for a while longer! (sigh) Steve On 9/15/07, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

John> Thanks to Frank and Stephen for their suggestion to try out the John> Analog side anyway, maybe I'll still have basic analog on there.

And I do! Cackle cackle cackle! Of course, I won't be surprised if sometime down the line, Analog cable get shut off when they convert everywhere to pure digital feeds... :]

Thanks again guys, life is pretty good now.

John _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

-- Stephen C. Daukas Engineer, Geoscientist, Environmental Analyst ________________________________________________ - Please, before printing, think about the environment -

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:05:59 -0400 Clint Moyer <cdmoyer@charter.net> wrote:

Analog broadcasts (OTA, Cable, satellite) end Feb 17, 2009 as far as I know. If you have other info, please point to it. Thanks.

http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html#whatisdate

Clint

Not specifically an analog signal, but analog TV support. The former is most likely what they'll do, though. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070912-fcc-to-cable-you-must-support-... I've seen a lot of dropping TV prices still, myself. Go Pats (in unencrypted QAM)! Brian J. Conway

Is anyone in the group using gtkpod (iPod GUI) on Ubuntu 6.06 or 7.04? I installed the gtkpod package yesterday on Ubuntu 6.06 and hooked up my son Dan's iPod Nano using its USB cable. The iPod icon appeared on desktop automatically. I checked, using mount command, to see if /media/ipod was mounted read-write, and it appeared to be. I started gtkpod and was able to completely read the contents of the iPod, all 350+ songs. So far, so good. But, when I tried, as an experiment, to create a new playlist using gtkpod, and write that change onto the iPod, I got several error messages about write failures due to a read-only filesystem. Anyone had a similar experience? Any fix or workaround out there? I'm considering either finding another open source iPod utility, something other than gtkpod, or upgrading to Ubuntu 7.04. My ultimate goal is to 1) Transfer all the songs from the iPod to the Ubuntu laptop, 2) Reformat the iPod for use with iTunes running under Vista, 3) Transfer all the songs from Ubuntu back to the iPod. I think I can do steps 1 and 2, but so far, step 3 is a problem. And until I'm 100% confident that I can write all Dan's songs *back* onto his iPod, I won't try reformatting it. Why, you might ask, don't you just use the Apple eBook that originally wrote (via iTunes) to Dan's iPod? 'Cause that device now sits in my daughter Abby's dorm room 400 miles West of here (R.I.T.). Thanks, Doug

Thanks Brad for the info. Yes, it's an HFS+ formatted iPod, and hence my problem. I'll try the "touch test" test you suggest. I have a feeling though, I may be out of luck. Doug brad <maitre@ccs.neu.edu> Sent by: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org 09/18/2007 10:24 AM Please respond to Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug@mail.wlug.org> To Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug@mail.wlug.org> cc Subject Re: [Wlug] Can Feisty Fawn solve an iPod problem? On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:00:35 -0400, douglas.r.aker@verizon.com wrote:

Is anyone in the group using gtkpod (iPod GUI) on Ubuntu 6.06 or 7.04?

I use amarok to sync my ipod, but i have used gtkpod in the past.

I installed the gtkpod package yesterday on Ubuntu 6.06 and hooked up my son Dan's iPod Nano using its USB cable. The iPod icon appeared on desktop automatically. I checked, using mount command, to see if /media/ipod was mounted read-write, and it appeared to be. I started gtkpod and was able to completely read the contents of the iPod, all 350+ songs. So far, so good. But, when I tried, as an experiment, to create a new playlist using gtkpod, and write that change onto the iPod, I got several error messages about write failures due to a read-only filesystem.

Anyone had a similar experience? Any fix or workaround out there?

I have had similar experiences using HFS+ (apple's filesystem) formated ipods. What is the format of your ipod? When you plugin your ipod look at the output of dmesg. Sometimes you'll see a message telling you that it's mounting the filesystem as readonly. If the filesystem is HFS+ then you will need to disable journaling on the filesystem in order to write back to the ipod. As far as i know this can only be done from OS X. Since i have run into this problem many times before, i always try to write to the ipod using a terminal. Simply, 'cd /media/ipod', then 'touch test'. This will try to create an empty file on the ipod. If you get filesystem errors then the ipod is likely mounted read-only.

I'm considering either finding another open source iPod utility, something other than gtkpod, or upgrading to Ubuntu 7.04.

I believe most (if not all) open source utils use the same underlying library, libgpod. If you are seeing filesystem errors changing utils will likely not help you.

My ultimate goal is to 1) Transfer all the songs from the iPod to the Ubuntu laptop,

This should be possible even if the filesystem is read-only.

2) Reformat the iPod for use with iTunes running under Vista,

Also, this should be easy to do. If you plugin the ipod to a windows machine that doesn't recognize the ipod's library, it will ask you if you want to reformat it.

3) Transfer all the songs from Ubuntu back to the iPod. I think I can do steps 1 and 2, but so far, step 3 is a problem. And until I'm 100% confident that I can write all Dan's songs *back* onto his iPod, I won't try reformatting it.

Please check what filesystem that currently resides on the ipod. I have done all these steps before several times.

Why, you might ask, don't you just use the Apple eBook that originally wrote (via iTunes) to Dan's iPod? 'Cause that device now sits in my daughter Abby's dorm room 400 miles West of here (R.I.T.).

They can make pretty long USB cables now-a-days. Good luck, - brad _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

John Stoffel wrote:

They are required to *try*. Also, my neighborhood is all underground lines, so I only need to worry about the other umpteen miles of wires in the air going down.

Don't discount the possibility of a neighbor and a backhoe. :) Many the famous large internet outages have been underground fiber cuts. Scott

Robert> Flood? Backhoe? Heh. I'm in an old sand & gravel pit. We *never* flood. *grin* But I take your point. Backhoes, the enemy of connectivity!