pvrwire.com — Not so long ago, we discussed rumors about how some people were having trouble using their Vonage voice-over-Internet lines to make nightly calls on their TiVos. Now someone has solved the problem with DirecTV TiVo's.
Aug 7, 2005 View in Crawl 4
caldrounAug 8, 2005
Not true hitbytrain. I have a phone line hooked up to mine, and it complains if there isn't a dialtone. Now I do have a series 1 direct Tivo if that makes a diff.
njfinnAug 9, 2005
OK I worked at Vonage doing tech support. They are NJ Based. The DSL line filter works because it forces the modem to make a call going at 14.4 bps. The filter blocks the sound ranges that the modem needs to connect at high speeds. The low speed connection is a little more fault tolerant and you don't lose the connection when you drop a bit or two.This wont work for everyone. If your Internet connection is dropping packets or has high latency your screwed because the sound quality will never let you make a digital call.Think about what happens:Modem takes digital signal--Turns it analog-->phone passes it to Vonage-->vonage turns it digital-->then back to analog--> then to device the you are calling converts it back to digital.One small lose gets multiplied and you call fails. Same reason behind faxes failing. First thing they say it to cut the speed of the fax transmission. I hope I got this straight and did not confused the topic.
pompAug 9, 2005
My TiVo / Vonage Saga just made the Make: Blog today, you can read my post here:<a class="user" href="http://pompproductions.blogspot.com/2004/08/my-tivo-vonage-saga.html">http://pompproductions.blogspot.com/2004/08/my-tivo-vonage-saga.html</a>And the Make post is here:<a class="user" href="http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/more_tivo_vonag.html">http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/more_tivo_vonag.html</a>
hitbyatrainAug 10, 2005
Yes, you will get a nag screen if you don't connect. But the DirecTiVo will still operate normally. A standalone TiVo won't--unless it is an early Series 1 set to only manually record. However, it is true that enabling the USB ports on a DirecTiVo will allow the smart user to enable all sorts of cool things.