# Phone connection and voltage



## mntmouse (Oct 28, 2006)

Hi,

I have recently moved and have updated my details with Tivo accounts. I have just had Telewest reinstalled (as per my old house) but Tivo will not complete its phone download. The test call works and the main daily call works up to the point when it says downloading. It says down loading for about 5 minutes and then "Fail. Call interrupted" is shown.

I am running out of TV listings! I have rung Tivo and they suggested that as nothing had changed other than the phone line it is connecting through it is likely to be the line that is the problem. I have tried connecting through various lengths of cable but this has not made any difference. Tivo help line has said that the problem might be the voltage on the line and that the ideal voltage is between 30 and 50V with 2V fluctuation during the call. Has anyone else had this problem and is there anything i can do without involving Telewest at this stage?

Thanks


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I did hear that some sky users are having problems where their boxes fail to make a call.

This can be caused by your phone provider using voice over ip technolgy which is not best suited to analogue items such as analog modems and fax machines.

Fitting a turbonet type card in your tivo and updating direct by ip may be the answer but is not cheap 

Automan.


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## mntmouse (Oct 28, 2006)

Is there anyway i can see what voltage is on the line?

Is the line likely to be VoP if it is a telewest phone line as well? I thought the signal came in on two seperate feeds; 
1) TV + internet 
2) phone

I was considering the connection card anyway so that i could set to record from my phone or another computer


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## Fred Smith (Oct 5, 2002)

mntmouse said:


> Is there anyway i can see what voltage is on the line?


Put a meter on it.



mntmouse said:


> Is the line likely to be VoP if it is a telewest phone line as well? I thought the signal came in on two seperate feeds;
> 1) TV + internet
> 2) phone


My NTL is two seperate feeds.



mntmouse said:


> I was considering the connection card anyway so that i could set to record from my phone or another computer


Go for it. One of the best things you can do with TiVo.


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## mntmouse (Oct 28, 2006)

Which of the wires do i measure the voltage across and is there any risk of damaging Telewests socket if the wrong two wires were measured across.

I am keen to sort the telephone system out (particularly as the initial set up is stuck on the sorting info out 4-8hour stage and won't let us add any new programmes to the to do list)


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## Fred Smith (Oct 5, 2002)

mntmouse said:


> Which of the wires do i measure the voltage across and is there any risk of damaging Telewests socket if the wrong two wires were measured across.


2 and 5 and no

http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/wiring_info.htm


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

TeleWest phone is separate from the internet and TV.
If you're really that desperate you could always take Tivo to a friend/relative's house to complete the set up. This will also rule out a problem with the Tivo itself - the phone line could be a red herring.
It would also be worth connecting Tivo to the 'master' socket as the quality of DIY extensions can be poor affecting signal on modems.

You could try setting up a dial up connection from a PC modem and/or fax if yuo have one to test the line. If you can't get a decent connection speed on the PC (32,000 or 48,000) or you can't complete a FAX call then the line is faulty.

Are voice calls OK?

As you say you've just had the line reinstalled then I would make this TeleWest's problem. They should have adequately tested the installation and if it doesn't work then it is down to them to test and fix it.


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## mntmouse (Oct 28, 2006)

I'm back with the same problem. I assume this is the right thing to do rather than start another thread.

Recently Tivo has missed its daily call and then I have had to go to a BT line (i.e. at work etc) and carry out the daily call. It is almost as if once it has missed one day the call gets too long and times out.

Is there any thing else I can do other than change my Virgin phone line to a BT one?! I guess I could get the network card if I could find someone that had one in stock but i know messing about with the drives is a right faf and also I think looses the data.

What can I do?
So far I have had the following error messages;
failed. number not answering (even though it was in the middle of downloading)
failed. call interupted
failed. unkown error

All of the test calls I have made work fine.

I have tried the ,#090 for a faster connection and ,#150 for the 50v setting but these have not worked.

Is there any thing else? I still don't feel I can ask the neighbours if I can plug into their socket, although I do have a telephone cable long enough!


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## mntmouse (Oct 28, 2006)

sorry, this is a bit embarassing but the ,#150 dialling prefix has worked for me after all, my final question (for now) is;
is it ok to leave the prefix as ,#150 or should I put it back to 'none' as it was before, could i do any damage or wear the modem out with ,#150 silly question but i would rather ask it than be without Tivo. I suspect I can change it back to none now that the long call has been made.


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

There's nothing wrong with using a VM telephone line - I did for a while.

You shouldn't need the ,#150 setting - the errors you reported sounded like line noise. Do you get line noise when using the phone normally?


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## laurence (Jun 17, 2007)

For what it's worth, I got the same problem on my (BT) line after adding an extension. At first I could only get tivo to update if I connected it to the master socket and disconnected the extensions. After a time even that didn't work for some reason. I gave up and bought a cache card. I wonder if it's possible the modem becomes more sensitive to line noise as it ages or something.


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