Service Providers (Internet, TV, Etc)

Noodlemod_sl said:

X1 is buggy as hell. A lot of times our menus get stuck in some weird state where you have to pwoer the box. But of course, we're recording shows so we can't power it.. so we just have to sit.. and wait.. and not watch anything.

Also the menus are SLOW. Not as slow as FIOS, but just bordering above that.

The internet has been top notch for us though.

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My DirecTV boxes are slow as holy shit now that I've had them for about 3 years. Channels take so long to change that my TV goes into sleep mode thinking there is no signal at all from the box. I'll literally stare at a black screen for 15-20 seconds sometimes when changing a channel. It's like my TV is on dialup internet. Screen goes black, maybe 10 seconds later parts of the guide/banner fill in, and then another 10-15 seconds later the picture appears. I would have demanded new boxes a while ago but I've had a pending Google Fiber install for over a year now, just waiting for that so I can be done with this crap.

My future in-laws have both the cable company's modem with phone shit they pay a lease for and one they bought. The leased hardware looks to be over 10 years old, so my guess is they weren't getting very good wireless because it sucks, so went out and got conned by some idiot at Office Depot into buying a modem, and when that didn't work probably finally bought their router which is terrible even after I pulled it out of a blocked cubby hole in their desk.

But basically, if you want to pay a monthly fee to have home phone service you'll have to buy a more expensive and usually shitty combination modem/router or keep leasing one. Why not pay extra to have a home phone, though? I mean someone from the 90's might try to call you!

Denamian_sl said:

Wow, she was getting a "good" deal on the modem fee. TWC has been charging $8 here for the last few years and just upped it to $10, also adding $2 to internet plans.

I'd love to get a modem for my parents, but they get their phones through TWC as well. The modem they get from TWC has the phone hardware in addition to the modem/router stuff, so I'm not sure how things would work. Anyone have any experience with that?

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Buy them an Ooma instead. VOIP phone, you pay for the initial box (around $60 on sale lately) and then all you ever pay again are the fees/taxes for phone service which in my city is about $3 per month.

Unless Time Warner tries to give them the run-around that it's actually cheaper to bundle a phone in too, rather than having just internet + TV.

Oh, the only additional expense with Ooma is if you want to keep your same phone number, they do charge like $30-$40 to transfer your current number over. So you could be looking at a roughly ~$100 up-front expense with Ooma for the box + number transfer, but if it even saves them $10 a month you're still coming out ahead in a year or so

No the X1 box we have is just slow - it's always been slow. I've power cycled it a few times to fix various shit issues that pop up.

Deathwing_sl said:

Those with a slow cable box, have you tried hard rebooting it? I'm betting it doesn't "shut down" when you turn it off, rather just go to sleep. Any type of memory or cache clearing probably only happens when it does a full reboot.

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I did that about 6 months ago. My slowass DirecTV box took 75 minutes to reboot/download updates before it was usable again. Shit was ridiculous.

Let me guess you have a HR34?

Kedwyn_sl said:

Let me guess you have a HR34?

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Looks like it's an HR22 actually. Old as shit I'd imagine. Ive had these boxes for probably 4 years now, and who knows how old they were before I even got them.

Tarrant_sl said:

They aren't going to kill it, they are selling it off, they've sold 3 entire states already to Frontier Communications.

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Got turned down for a job with Frontier because they had just brought on 3 states from Verizon and after the whole interview process was told they didn't have enough time to train someone new. Assholes!

I have X1 and the box was amazing when we first got it. It was responsive and fast. I was blown away after using Uverse but it didn't last. The box is slow and I noticed it's based on how much crap your DVR has installed. Below 50% full and it's great but once it hits 80%+ you just want to throw the damn thing out a window.

Nevermind, TWC is not cheaper than U-Verse, they just hide all the additional fees on their bundle price whereas U-Verse has it all upfront. Plus, TWC only offers bundles in their most expensive packages so you end up with way more service than you need. TWC internet is a lot faster at similar price points but something in the 24-45 Mbps is going to get the job done just fine in a 1 bedroom apartment.

Closing the loop on the Quantum Wireless microwave point-to-point using Ubiquiti NanoStation or NanoBridge viaColumbia Missouri |High Speed Internet, Television | Cable Fiber DSL Internet.

Advertised speeds were 10/3. Checked a local testing point on speedtest at 7:30pm on a tuesday and was getting 12 down, 6 up. Stable and reasonably fast for my area. Cost is $80 per month and install was $100.

The device they installed looks like a small satellite dish pointed at the cell tower and they mounted it to my DirecTV pole.

All in all, I am pretty satisfied thus far.

joeboo_sl said:

Looks like it's an HR22 actually. Old as shit I'd imagine. Ive had these boxes for probably 4 years now, and who knows how old they were before I even got them.

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Yeah, that one is very old. Directv sent me a newer DVR, HR-24, for an HR-21 that shit the bed on me and man it's a night and day difference between them in terms of speed.