Tivo with no landline - best short term solution

[khadland]

Hi all

We've got to move out of our place for about 3-4 months while some building work is done. Our temporary place won't have a landline so I'm thinking that I've got 2 options for keeping the Tivo happy :-

1: cart it off somewhere to get it plugged in to a landline once a week

2: buy a turbonet/cahcecard & set it up to use the mobile broadband connection I'll be using for my work PC

I'm thinking that option 1 will be cheaper but more faff whereas option 2 is the 'clean' solution but I'd rather not splash 100 quid on a netwrok card if I can help it...

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[AMc]

Setting up Internet Connection Sharing with a mobile broadband PC should be feasible BUT there were people posting problems with transparent proxies on some mobile broadband providers so do a search before you commit.

I would put a network card in if you normally have broadband and a router - being able to use Tivoweb, dailymail and install endpad is well worth the price of entry assuming you have the limited technical skills to plug in the card and configure the hard drive.

How about £36 vs. £100? check this thread for details...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=425805&highlight=network+card

[Sneals2000]

Also - if you are running without a landline - and don't have physical broadband then it might be worth looking at 3G->WiFi gateways. I think T-Mobile now have a cheap one - which uses a USB dongle that can be removed to use on the move, or docked in the WiFi adaptor for home use. That way multiple users can share a single 3G data connection via WiFi.

If you used a WiFi/Ethernet adaptor with your Tivo and a network connection that might be a neat (albeit not cheap) solution. However you'd then have a WiFi connected Tivo for when you move again - and no worries about phone connections?

[dieselnutjob]

how about something like this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350222037309

it's a box with a phone socket that enables an ordinary phone to make VoIP calls

if the tivo can do a dialup call over VoIP and if the call quality is good enough then it might work

[AMc]

if the tivo can do a dialup call over VoIP I'd very sceptical that this would work. Tiscali and Talk Talk did something to their supposedly normal phone lines that killed dialup for many, many Tivo users. The suggestion was VOIP routing at the exchange was the cause, though I don't remember anyone confirming that for sure.

[khadland]

Thanks for the thoughts folks - I don't have a need for wi-fi at home (seems a bit OTT just for Tivo) so I'll probably just go with a weekly visit to the in-laws to use their landline.

[Sneals2000]

how about something like this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350222037309

it's a box with a phone socket that enables an ordinary phone to make VoIP calls

if the tivo can do a dialup call over VoIP and if the call quality is good enough then it might work

They work for voice but most implementations of VOIP totally mangle modem data. They compress the audio in a manner that is OK for voice intelligibility, but destroys modem stuff.

Some VOIP boxes have a Fax mode which supports the 9600 baud system used for fax data - but this isn't universal (not sure how common)