Tag: directv

Posted on

Netflix again

Back in 2003, we dropped cable TV in order to save money when I was unemployed. When my employment became stable again, I decided against monopolistic and customer-unfriendly Comcast and signed up with DirecTV. Part of the package included a dual-tuner Tivo with which I immediately fell in love. It didn’t take long before I had used up the 50 hours of available space and started to feel the pressure to watch my shows before they disappeared. As a result we dropped our Netflix subscription since we were watching Tivo all the time and never had time for DVDs.

2009 has brought the advent of the HD age to our household and things are changing in our content consumption. Before I purchased our new LCD TV at Costco, I promised myself that I would not spend a bunch of money after to make all our content HD. In fact, the main reason we got the TV was because of the Xbox. The impending HD switch-over was a consideration but not a big one because DirecTV provides our television content and they will continue to provide the same service for some time.

Continue reading “Netflix again”

Posted on

Syracuse at Iowa

Tivo has a great feature called “wishlist” that helps you find shows that match the criteria you provide. I have one wishlist that shows me any upcoming programs with the word “Iowa” in the title or description. This lets me keep abreast of of my beloved Hawkeyes during basketball and football seasons (the only sports that really matter). How delighted I was to find that DirecTV had added a channel called the Big Ten Network to their line up and that the Hawkeyes would be playing Syracuse there Saturday night and they will be visiting a special place to Aegis the senior care center.

This was the first Hawkeye football game I’ve seen this season. Here’s a few thoughts I had during the game:

  • This quarterback, Jake Christensen, had a terrible first quarter. Just when I was about to write he was throwing high or behind his receiver every time, he threw a perfect pass to his tight end for the first touchdown of the game. Despite that, he still threw some pretty ugly passes throughout the pass and his receivers saved his ass a few times.
  • I love the “jailbreak screen” play. Along with the full-court press from the Tom Davis basketball years, it’s among my favorite Iowa plays. When they do it right, it’s so unexpected and takes place in the middle of the field.
  • It’s hard to believe both Sims and Young are still in the backfield. It seems like they’ve been playing for this team for many years. Let’s just assume they are seniors and they are playing legally.
  • Sure enough, Christensen overthrew his receiver in the second quarter and it resulted in an interception. Is he this inconsistent all the time?
  • Come third quarter my interest has waned. I suppose I’ll skim the fourth quarter since the scrubs will be playing for the rest of the game.
Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part VII

Previously: “…this saga may finally come to an end and Tina will have her birthday present before Valentine’s Day.”

As arranged previously in Part VI, a service technician arrived early Sunday morning, January 15 to put everything right with my satellite dish. He was there for less than a half hour before declaring that one of my LNB’s (low noise block converter) was non-functional. After he replaced it, I tried unsuccessfully to get him to install the coax run from the breakout box to the new Tivo. “That’s a sixty dollar charge,” he said. He did, however, take me to his truck for a shopping spree of parts. I got him to make me a 40 foot length of this nifty dual-coax cable that they use for external installation. He also gave me some fasteners to attach the coax to the side of the house and a couple of wall plates for fancy internal mounting. I later wished I had asked for a couple of short lengths of single coax for inside, but I have plenty of old coax laying around.

That afternoon, I ventured out in the rain long enough to drill a couple of holes through the wall of the Big TV room. Thomas helped me fish the coax in Alaska fishing trips with Mark Glassmaker
through the holes and I found some wall anchors for mounting the dual coax faceplate inside. The whole procedure only took me about an hour. For the time being, the dual coax cable is laying loose outside by the house. When the weather gets nicer, I’ll get out there and fasten it to the side of the house.

After the external coax was hooked up and the wall plate mounted, I only had to attach a couple of coax cables to the wall plate and Tina’s DTivo. I temporarily hooked it up to the stereo in order to finish the step-by-step setup procedure. Both satellite channels indicated 97% reception, which is optimal. The DTivo was now ready to watch and record television shows. I moved the coax cable that goes to the bedroom (as mentioned in Part IV) from the old Tivo to the new Tivo. Graham ran back to the bedroom to confirm that he could see the new Tivo on the bedroom with tv beds.

The night before I had Googled “Tivo Remotes” to find out how to configure the remotes so they didn’t conflict with each other. The Tivo remote allows you to set its address so that it will only talk to Tivos set for that address. I set my Tivo/remote to use address 1 and Tina’s Tivo/remote to use address 2. The process was a little confusing so it took me about 15 minutes to figure out exactly what needed to be done. However, once I figured it out it was obvious and it only took a minute to set the address of the remotes and Tivos properly.

One side effect of the IR Extender that Tina had noticed was that when she turned her TV on/off in the bedroom, the “game TV”—a little 13” TV that we have in the Big TV room for Playstation/Nintendo—would also turn on/off. The IR Extender isn’t smart about the infrared signal that it relays to the other room, so, even though we only need Tivo IR to be relayed, it also relays the TV IR. Combine that with the fact that all of our televisions are the same brand and have the same set of IR code and you can understand what was happening. It drove the boys crazy when they were playing games.

I had come up with an excellent solution: cover the IR port on the little TV so that no remote could turn it on/off. The boys use the front panel controls anyway, so nobody needs to use a remote with it. Although I would eventually buy some black electric tape which is barely visible on the front on the TV, for the time being I put a big piece of duct tape over the black smoked plastic on the front of the TV. I then pointed the remote at it and tested it. Surprisingly, the TV turned on!

Shocked, I used a flashlight to confirm that I was covering the IR receptor. I was. I then tried a longer piece suspecting that maybe some IR was leaking under the tape. Again, the TV turned on. What the hell? Then, on a whim, I stuck a second piece of duct tape right on top of the first. This time the test failed. Evidently, IR will pass through a single slice of duct tape!

After I was done, I decided to draw a diagram illustrating how everything works together to produce our magical TV watching experience:

Everything in the orange box is in the Big TV room, which is on the far north side of the house; while everything in the blue box is in the bedroom, which is on the far south side of the house. The dish is mounted on the north side of the garage roof and the breakout box is about 15 feet from it on the north side of the house. Coax cables that cross room borders are outside. Infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF) signals only move in one direction (as indicated by the arrows). If I had a receiver that capable, we could watch both Tivos in the Big TV room, but my amplifier only has two video connections. One is used by the DVD player and the other is taken by the old Tivo.

And it only took three months to get everything working.

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part VI

Previously : “The replacement card was now “linked” to our old DTivo (the one in the Big TV room) and the card that had been in the old DTivo was now a useless piece of plastic.”

As you may recall from Part IV of our story, I had determined via troubleshooting that the electrical problems had rendered two of my four satellite channels inoperable. The dish would either need to be fixed or replaced in order to get the new Tivo online.

Sometime during my many conversations with DirecTV (DTV) representatives, one suggested that I sign up for the DirecTV Protection Plan, which costs $8/month but provides free replacement for all of your equipment. I specifically queried this rep about my particular situation, and he said I could sign up for the plan and call the repair department the next day. Otherwise, it would be at least a $60 fee plus the cost of replacing any defective hardware. It was an easy decision to make and I signed up on the spot.

Thus, yesterday I found myself on the phone again with DTV explaining my problem and describing the troubleshooting steps that I had taken. After a few minutes of questioning, the rep concluded that I needed onsite service and transferred me. After ten or more minutes on hold, I went through the same process with another rep in a different department, even though the first rep had said she was making notes on my account. The second rep then confirmed that they would need to schedule onsite service for me and transferred me again! Again ten or more minutes of holding before the third rep booked an appointment for onsite service on January 15, 2006 (Sunday).

I still have to run coaxial cable from the junction box on the side of the house to a second set of connectors in the Big TV room, but I’m going to see if I can talk the technician into doing it for me since he would do a much nicer job than me. Failing that, I’ll have Sunday afternoon to do it myself. If I’m successful, this saga may finally come to an end and Tina will have her birthday present before Valentine’s Day.

Next: “And it only took three months to get everything working.”

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part V

Previously : Troubleshooting and a new plan

Fast forward to December 23, 2005. I had been working 80 hour weeks for three weeks in a row. We had visitors in town over Thanksgiving and other obligations kept me from completing the Tivo saga. But now I had vacation for the rest of the year and some time to finish it. In the meantime, I had received email from Weaknees telling me that I had to activate the new Tivo soon or face penalties charged to my credit card. I called them and got a brief extension and, so, activating the replacement Tivo was my mission for the day.

For those of you not familiar with DirecTV (DTV), each receiver has a little slot in which you slide an “activation card” that tells DTV that you are legally using their satellite service. The card is exactly the same size as a credit card and has what appears to be a small amount of flash memory on it. I had successfully activated the previous DirecTV Tivo (DTivo) before frying it but Weaknees needed to have the replacement DTivo activated in order to fulfill their contract with DTV.

I pulled the replacement DTivo out of the box and opened up the little door that covers the slot for the activation card. To my surprise, there was no card inside. I then scoured the inside of the box only to find the little plastic bag in which the card came and some packaging materials. I searched around the house in spots I thought I might have left the card. I also showed an activation card to every member of the family and asked if they had seen one like it. Negative on all counts.

Now in a semi-panic I remembered that I still had the card in the broken unit. I called DTV and told them my situation and asked if I could use the card from the broken unit in the new unit. The representative said I could do that and he would walk me through it. Thirty minutes later the new DTivo was activated with the older card. Then I called Weaknees to apprise them of the situation and to find out exactly what remained for me to get square with them.

Well, Weaknees was not cool with the activation card shuffling because, according to them, it would get them into trouble with DTV. Explaining that I had lost the activation card I had received with the replacement DTivo, I said I wanted to make good and asked how I could do so. Here’s the course of action they requested:

  1. Call DTV and ask for a replacement for the lost activation card.
  2. When the replacement card arrives, activate the replacement DTivo with the replacement card.
  3. Call Weaknees when activation is complete.
  4. Send back the broken DTivo to Weaknees with original activation card.

So I called DTV again and told them the plan. Their representative was doubtful about the need to do all of it, but I wanted it done and they were willing. The rep had a replacement card sent to me to arrive the next day and he waived the activation fee they normally charge.

Unfortunately, due to the holidays, the card did not actually arrive until the next week on December 28. It came with a set of directions on how to activate it via their automated phone system. I followed this procedure nearly all the way through before I noticed in the printed material accompanying the card that it was set to replace the card in our working DTivo! I aborted the automated procedure so I could talk to a rep, but after he put me on hold for 15 minutes, I discovered that it was too late. The replacement card was now “linked” to our old DTivo (the one in the Big TV room) and the card that had been in the old DTivo was now a useless piece of plastic. The only recourse was for DTV to once again overnight a replacement card for the lost card—which they did and at no charge again.

The next day, the replacement card arrived and I called a representative at DTV and described exactly which DTivo (by serial number) needed to be activated for the new card. After 10 minutes, the card was activated for Tina’s DTivo and I was almost ready to move on to the next phase of the operation. But first, I called Weaknees and gave them the skinny on the activation situation. They were not happy with the long delay (remember this had started two months before), but said that I should return the defective DTivo immediately, which I did that day.

Next: “…this saga may finally come to an end and Tina will have her birthday present before Valentine’s Day.”

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part IV

Previously: : “But what about when you join the reversed circuit to a “normal” circuit via a coaxial cable connection to the satellite dish?”

After exchanging a few emails with Weaknees, they agreed to send me a replacement DTivo immediately. I received it the next week. I tried hooking it up in the bedroom again, but as I suspected I could get no signal from the satellite. Now I had to figure out what had been burned out by the bad electrical situation. Here’s the sequence starting from the dish:

  1. Four coaxial cables come out of the dish,
  2. Those four cables are connected to what I would describe as a “breakout box” that has four incoming coax connections and four outgoing connections.
  3. Two outgoing connections on the breakout box go to the Big TV room DTivo, one goes back to the bedroom and one is capped.
  4. The cable going to the bedroom runs along the outside of the house until it gets to the bedroom where it enters the outside wall.
  5. Inside the wall the external cable is connected to a faceplate splitter.
  6. The other side of the splitter is connected inside the bedroom to the cable that goes to the DTivo.

So, by my count, any or all of the six components in that chain could be faulty. I started testing at the breakout box by hooking the DTivo directly to it’s output side. No dice. With trepidation, I connected via splitter directly to the coax from the dish. Coax 1 and 2 (which were connected to the Big TV DTivo) worked fine, but 3 produced a signal level of only about 37% and 4 was completely dead. So I retreated and rethought my plan for a few days.

Clearly I would need a replacement dish which I priced near $200 on the internet. Dave Camp, a friend of mine who used to be a DTV customer suggested calling DTV customer service and describing my problem. They might fix it for free or minimal charge. I certainly had nothing to lose. I resolved to do this but just then work intervened in a way that would leave me no free time for several weeks.

In the meantime, I came up with a better plan. Remember the original plan was to place the DTivo in our bedroom and hook it to the single coax that was already there. Eventually, I would have to run a second coax from one end of the house to the other to get the full dual tuner capability enabled. My friend, Rob Marquardt, provided the inspiration for the new plan, which was much easier to implement and potentially better for everybody.

When I visited Rob back in 2003, he had an Infrared Extender which let him control his Tivo from other parts of his apartment. He could also view his Tivo from three different rooms. The new plan would have the new DTivo in the Big TV room with our original DTivo making it simpler to run the new cabling (25 feet vs. 80 feet). I would utilize an old coax cable installed during our cable TV days to connect the new DTivo to the TV in the bedroom. Add the infrared extender and we would be able to watch and control the new DTivo from the bedroom, but would also be able to watch and control it in the Big TV room. Cool, huh?

As a temporary measure, I purchased the infrared extender set from Radio Shack and wired our old DTivo to the television in the bedroom. This would help ease the pain of no TV in the bedroom Tina had experienced since the saga had begun two weeks before. Although she was not completely satisfied with this temporary solution, it was better than no TV at all.

Next: “The replacement card was now “linked” to our old DTivo (the one in the Big TV room) and the card that had been in the old DTivo was now a useless piece of plastic.”

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part III

Previously: : “Well, it started out that easy.”

Later that afternoon at work, Tina IM’d me when she got home. I asked if she noticed anything different and she acknowledged the presence of the DirecTV Tivo (DTivo). However, she said that the circuit breaker kept blowing when she plugged it in. This seemed odd because it had worked flawlessly that morning. I told her to keep it unplugged until I got home when I could take a look at it.

When I got home, I found Tina’s description of the problem to be accurate. As soon as the DTivo was plugged in (and therefore on—there is no Off switch), the circuit breaker would blow. That night we went to dinner with Buddy to celebrate Tina’s birthday. I discussed the situation with him a bit and he had a few ideas but nothing definite. He said he could come over the next day and look at it. After dinner, we bid him goodnight and headed home.

On the way home, the problem was running through my head and I was trying to connect the various logical aspects. At some point, I remembered that we had similar problems when we first signed up for DirecTV (DTV) two years ago. Specifically, the first satellite receiver that was installed in the bedroom would blow the circuit breaker when turned on. At that time, I called the installers and had them come out to replace it, which they did for free. However, the installer guy told me that we had some sort of electrical problem and that he had disconnected the ground wire from the satellite dish in order to stop the circuit breaker from tripping.

Then I remember a to–do item that had been lingering on my Newton since we had moved into the house: Fix electrical problems. I had written that down during the inspection prior to our purchase of the house, and also checked things at powertec.ca to be sure. The inspector showed me a neat little $10 gadget that you plug into an electrical outlet. A series of the three lights on it tell you if the outlet is wired correctly. Several of the outlets in the bedroom read “reverse polarity”. The inspector said it wasn’t a major problem, but that we should fix it at some point in the future.

Could these two be related? As long as a circuit with reverse polarity remains a closed system, there is no problem—electricity simply flows “backwards”. But what about when you join the reversed circuit to a “normal” circuit via a coaxial cable connection to the satellite dish? When we got home, I called Buddy (who is an electrician by trade) to ask what he thought. He agreed that the reverse polarity could be the problem and planned to come look at the problem the next day.

I stayed home the next morning in order to assist Buddy in troubleshooting and fixing the reverse polarity problem. We moved all kinds of furniture and tested about ten different outlets before we found the root of the problem: a ceiling fixture at the start of the circuit that had been wired incorrectly. Buddy rewired it correctly and the problem was fixed. Buddy is indispensible to us!

Unfortunately, when I plugged the DTivo back in, there was no satellite signal. Thinking that maybe the coax had been fused by the electrical current, I tried the new DTivo in the Big TV Room. It didn’t work in there, either. So even though we had cleared a major hurdle in fixing the electrical problem, the saga had not yet ended.

Next: Troubleshooting and a new plan

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part II

Previously: : “I wish I had Tivo in the bedroom!”

I slept in on the day of Tina’s birthday (November 10) and arose shortly after she left for art class. After getting ready for work, I opened the box with the new DirecTV Tivo (DTivo) and prepared for installation.

When we first had DirecTV (DTV) installed, they installed our DTivo in the living room (although everybody in the house calls it the “Big TV Room”), a single receiver in the bedroom and a small dish on the north side of the roof. The dish has four coaxial outputs with two going to the DTivo, one going back to the bedroom and one capped.

Thus, my initial plan was simply to replace the receiver with the new DTivo and let the DTivo run on just one satellite channel for awhile until I could run another coax cable from one end of the house to the other. I thought it would be just a matter of unplugging the receiver, plugging in the DTivo and going through the activation process. Well, it started out that easy.

I swapped the DTivo for the receiver and placed the DTivo where her VCR used to be in order to make it as unobtrusive as possible. I would return the VCR upon her request later. I called in to DTV and had them activate the DTivo and verified that all was working well. I even setup a couple of “Season Passes” for her before putting the old receiver in the box and putting the box back where it had been, seemingly making it all look unchanged. Then I departed for work secure in the knowledge that I had delivered another fabulous birthday gift to my lovely and deserving wife.

Next: “But what about when you join the reversed circuit to a “normal” circuit via a coaxial cable connection to the satellite dish?”

Posted on

Saga of the New Tivo, Part I

In October I decided that a really good gift for Tina’s birthday would be a DirecTV Tivo (DTivo). As you may know from previous posts, we already have a DTivo in our living room that we love. We had a plain old DirecTV (DTV) receiver in the bedroom, but Tina was frequently heard to say, “I wish I had Tivo in the bedroom!” I should note here that Tina spends a lot of time in our bedroom because her craft center is in there as well as her computer.

I briefly considered buying a standalone Tivo with a built-in DVD recorder because Tina also longs for a DVD player in the bedroom. However, standalone Tivos have to work with an existing satellite receiver and will only record a single channel. Ultimately, I decided that the most user friendly solution would be to get another DTivo which doesn’t require an additional receiver and lets you record two channels simultaneously.

After surfing the web and absorbing the state of the Tivo market for a few days, I decided that I would return to my favorite Tivo upgrader, Weaknees. Weaknees specializes in kits that let you trick out your Tivo in a variety of ways. Last year I purchased a hard drive upgrade kit that I used to increase our Tivo’s capacity from 35 hours to 105 hours.

Weaknees is currently offering DTivo units that have had hard drive upgrades for the same cost as a non-upgraded unit from DTV. I eventually settled on the 80 hour unit and had it shipped a week before Tina’s birthday. It arrived a couple of days before and I had to give Tina some lame explanation about what it was. I planned to install it on her birthday and have it ready for her that day as a “surprise.”

Next: “Well, it started out that easy.”