Tivo & Vonage Success?

[Mchero]

Was running my S2 off of broadband for years w/o problems. In the middle of a divorce & of course lots of furniture comming & going. I switched over to vonage for my phone service & during the moving of the Tivos around the house I misplaced the Linksys wireless adapter.

I connected the tivo via phone line when my data ran out & configured the tivo for dial-up. Was unable to connect to the Tivo service & then it hit me, VONAGE!

After searching thru the forum here it was apparent I was not going to get my Tivo updates via my Vonage phone service.

I went over to the Vonage web page & ran across this tidbit of information;

Note: If your DVR is having problems connecting, and you have a Linksys RT31P2, WRT54GP2, or PAP2, set the dialing prefix in the TiVo dialing settings to *99, as this automatically sets the Bandwidth Saver to High. If you have a Cisco ATA-186, Linksys RTP300, Linksys WRTP54G, or Uniden UIP1869V you do not need to dial *99, as these devices automatically adjust the settings for you.

I added *99, (Comma for 2 second pause) to the prefix string and was able to get a test connection! It took quite awhile so I'm not confident I'll get a good connection to the Tivo service but thought that I would at least post my findings.

I'm on my 2nd attempt to conenct to the Tivo service & it seems to be hanging at the Configuring but after about 2 or 3 minutes it did switch to getting account status. Wow it's taking a long time! Acting as if connected at a whopping 300 baud! Then it popped up a message Problemm getting account status.

Can't wait to get my broadband back!

[jtown]

I'm always amazed that people get modems and faxes to work at all with VOIP. It'd be like copying your Commodore-64 data tapes to MP3 then back to tape and expecting it to work. It might but you'd be very lucky and it'd probably take 20 attempts to load a program. Just buy another network adapter for the Tivo. :)

[megory]

I'm again thinking of trying to connect my TiVo over vonage and a bit overwhelmed. So -- did your protocol work? Any additional hardware necessary?

[Mchero]

No luck Megory

Did find my Linksys WUSB11 v2 wireless adapter that DID work with the prior S2 Tivo I had in the bedroom. Fought with it for about an hour/night for two days & gave up! During the wireless network configuration it would display my WAP's SSID (along with a number of my neighbors SSID's), I'd select my SSID & when I selected next it would time out telling me the network was not found!

MAN was I getting frustrated! I even entered my wireless config manually. The tivo would act as though it was getting an IP address but during a test connection it would tell me gateway not found!

I gave up & two days later spotted a USB cable under my desk. I took it up to the Tivo & re-ran the wireless setup. Ran the connect to Tivo now and it worked! Go figure!

Wired and Wireless networking on the Tivo S2 is very crude! Little support on the network adapters! Take a list of the approved/tested Tivo adapters to your local electronics super store. You will be very disappointed! Most of the approved/tested are not in stock.

When I moved my ex out of the house a week down the road she called telling me she was out of guide data. I connected her to her Comcast digital phone & it was able to connect and dowdload guide data BUT it took a good 45 minutes connect time! Sure glad I have my broadband working now!

Just recently I upgraded my Comcast digital STB for a Comcast HD DVR. I was quite impressed with both the software and PQ. Software not as nice as my S2 but WOW! The Hi-Def content! I thought Comcast signed a deal with the Tivo folks? What's going on with that?

The Motorola DCT3416 I is a very impressive box! If it had the Tivo SW and more of the ports on the backside enabled it would be well worth trading in the S2 or even the S3!

I belive I'm paying $9/month for HiDEF and another $7/month for the HiDef DVR. Not bad compaired to Tivo's S3 deal along with Tivo's monthly fee.

Robert

[will592]

Just thought I would add here that I also have Vonage and had a terrible time trying to get an old series 1 I picked up at goodwill (alas, no lifetime :( ) to connect. I tried all of the codes and couldn't get it to connect. Then, I read somewhere that a DSL adapter might help. So I picked one up, plugged it into the tivo (plugged the male end directly into the tivo...you might say 'backwards') and connected it to the vonage router and it made (still makes) the call just fine! Hope this helps


Chris

[Mchero]

Thanks for the tip Chris.
I don't know how a DSL filter would work on your Vonage but hopefully someone else could verify if it works. I assume the "DSL adapter" your referring to is a DSL filter, like one you can purchase at Radio Shack?

[pdhenry]

Can't wait to get my broadband back!Yet you have Vonage... :confused:

[cditty]

Worked like a charm for me. I had to call tech support and tell them what I was doing. They changed something on their end and it started working fairly well.

[Mchero]

Yet you have Vonage... :confused:

Broadband connection on my Tivo. As the posts above stated, I was having a (*&* of a time trying to get my S2 broadband connected.

RM