# Comcast Digital Voice and Tivo



## brebeans (Sep 5, 2003)

Hi:

I'm thinking about ordering Comcast digital voice phone service. I currently have comcast cable and internet and regular phone service.

The digital voice will entail getting a new modem to which the phone is connected.

Is this compatible with Tivo? Will I need to do anything differently?
What problems should I look out for, if any?

Thanks.
Doing this will be way cheaper than my current local and long distance phone setup so I'm hoping that it's simple and has no impact on tivo.

I have two tivos wirelessly networked right now.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

Same as it worked before.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smark said:


> Same as it worked before.


 

Well, it would be the same if he is connecting to the Tivo service through his internet connection via his wireless network connection. If he is using the modem (why would you?) to dial out it may not be.

I have Lingo VOIP and it refuses to work correctly using the modem. (This is no longer and issue for me now that 7.2 supports intial setup over the network connection.)


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

brebeans said:


> I'm thinking about ordering Comcast digital voice phone service.


How much are they going to charge? I am paying ~$16.94 (includes tax) a month for VOIP (with about 500 minutes) w/ Lingo. For $20 something I would get unlimited. Is Comcast competitive here? I have Comcast internet, but I don't think they have VOIP in my area yet.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

$39.95 for unlimited local and LD. But, if you are in a house we can backfeed so that all the outlets in your home are active so that is a benefit.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

greg_burns said:


> Well, it would be the same if he is connecting to the Tivo service through his internet connection via his wireless network connection. If he is using the modem (why would you?) to dial out it may not be.
> 
> I have Lingo VOIP and it refuses to work correctly using the modem. (This is no longer and issue for me now that 7.2 supports intial setup over the network connection.)


Note that he mentions his Tivos are wirelessly networked.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smark said:


> $39.95 for unlimited local and LD. But, if you are in a house we can backfeed so that all the outlets in your home are active so that is a benefit.


I am "backfeeding" with my Lingo also. Run one wire from my phone adapter to the wall. All the phones in the house work. (Granted I only got 2). Is this a special feature they advertise? Not sure this is a supported "feature" of Lingo service or not.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smark said:


> Note that he mentions his Tivos are wirelessly networked.


I did notice, but I couldn't help asking myself why he was asking the question unless he was still using the modem.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

Smark, you sigs links are dead. You work for comcast? Or just a customer with their VOIP? Just curious.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

greg_burns said:


> I am "backfeeding" with my Lingo also. Run one wire from my phone adapter to the wall. All the phones in the house work. (Granted I only got 2). Is this a special feature they advertise? Not sure this is a supported "feature" of Lingo service or not.


It is a special feature of CDV yes.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

greg_burns said:


> Smark, you sigs links are dead. You work for comcast? Or just a customer with their VOIP? Just curious.


Work.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smark said:


> Work.


Just saw that $100000 Pyramid parody commercial for the first time. Comcastic!


----------



## brebeans (Sep 5, 2003)

Hi:

thanks a lot. I feel better about comcast voice now.

by the way, it is 39.99 per month for unlimited local and long distance. I also have my internet and cable tv through them (with hbo and showtime) and it will end up being around $180 for everything monthly. 

It's a better deal than my current comcast digital phone, plus long distance carrier, for sure.


----------



## lhuff (Aug 26, 2004)

Comcast called me this morning and asked if I was interested in their phone service. I have TV and broadband from them. I was shocked at the price. I get unlimited local and LD to US and Canada, all of the normal digital perks (caller id, 3-way calling, transfer call, etc), SimulRing which rings my home phone and cell phones at the same time, and great customer service from Vonage for $24.99. When I signed up two years ago, they sent me a telephone adapter which hooked to my 802.11b router. When I upgraded to 802.11g, I bought a Linksys WRT54GP2 router (which included Vonage service) from eBay. It went bad and they sent me a Linksys WRT54G wireless router with 2 phone lines free overnite and even emailed a postage paid label to return the dud (mentioned to show sample of customer service). All of this for $15 less than Comcast. At first I "backfed" and it worked fine, but later bought a wireless phone system with four handsets from Sam's. for portability and gadget value.

$15 X 12 = $180/year. That's a lot of money to give Comcast unless they provide something their sales person forgot to tell me about.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

lhuff said:


> That's a lot of money to give Comcast unless they provide something their sales person forgot to tell me about.


amen brother

I used the same arguement when I compared Vonage to Lingo. But the price difference isn't near so much. Lingo seems to offer all the same feature as Vonage, just for slightly less.


----------



## brebeans (Sep 5, 2003)

Is there a difference between Vonage and Comcast Digital Voice? The rep told me it was more "secure" than Vonage.....? What does [*that* mean?

Well, perhaps Vonage could have been a better deal, but since I have comcast for everything else, if anything goes wrong they can't blame "the other guy". I guess I'm paying a bit more for convenience and one bill..

thanks.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

Well, one of the main points is Quality of Service. We prioritze the packets on our network and they don't touch the public internet and instead use our own network to get where it needs to go so then security would be improved a bit. Perhaps not too much.

I had Packet8 before and was happy with it, but CDV is honestly a lot more clear and has a very robust feature set. Plus being able to have a technican come out and fix issues is better than playing the ISP vs. VoIP provider game.


----------



## lhuff (Aug 26, 2004)

> being able to have a technican come out and fix issues is better than playing the ISP vs. VoIP provider game.


I certainly agree with that. I had Bellsouth telephone and MindSpring ISP (and Dish, but no problem there) and every time I had a problem it would take a week of blaming each other before I got it working again. I finally told them to stuff it and went with Comcast for TV and ISP. There is definitely an advantage to having one number to call with problems. Even with that, it's pretty easy to tell that if your network (Internet) is up and your phone is down, it's probably a phone thing. Anyway, it's worked well for me for a couple of years, but I can surely see your point.


----------



## PsiPhi101 (Jun 27, 2003)

Another issue with Comcast Digital Voice versus Vonage is E911 service. Even though the FCC has now mandated that the VoIP carriers provide the service, most are a long way away from offering it. Comcast does not roll out phone service unless E911 is all set up.

With Comcast, the phone call is on the dedicated IP backbone and then handed off to the Public Telephone network, the call never goes out over the public Internet, and as a result, the quality is much better. 

Also, if anyone on Comcast CDV service is having problems getting TiVO to work, please open a ticket. So far, I have yet to see one that we haven't been able to get working. 

One thing to try if the dial-up isnt working after going to CDV is to get a DSL filter (from Radio Shack). This has worked several times that I have seen.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

PsiPhi101 said:


> Also, if anyone on Comcast CDV service is having problems getting TiVO to work, please open a ticket. So far, I have yet to see one that we haven't been able to get working.


Why, if they have HIS, aren't they connecting their Tivo's to the internet rather than trying to dial-out? 

I suppose if they didn't have a home network setup, or a convient connection near their Tivo..., or running older software and needed to do initial setup via phone. 

Just curious what the common circumstance is you've seen in the past with these folks.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

greg_burns said:


> Why, if they have HIS, aren't they connecting their Tivo's to the internet rather than trying to dial-out?
> 
> I suppose if they didn't have a home network setup, or a convient connection near their Tivo..., or running older software and needed to do initial setup via phone.
> 
> Just curious what the common circumstance is you've seen in the past with these folks.


That is because you can get CDV without the internet service.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smark said:


> That is because you can get CDV without the internet service.


Ahhhh......


----------



## IJustLikeTivo (Oct 3, 2001)

smark said:


> That is because you can get CDV without the internet service.


OK, so I read the thread and I'm still not clear on this. My mom just ordered CDV and if I understand it, it pretty much just replaces the network connection outside with a VOIP and the stuff inside the house has no idea. According to the web site, faxes and modems should work normally. Under those circumstances, a TiVo modem should work, correct? My mother has one of my old lifetime series one Phillips Tivo units that I set up about 3 months ago and she is in love with the thing and terrified that she has just screwed up.

She called TiVo and they said no, but I think the thought she was just getting a VOIP phone and I Know they would not work.

Smark, You out there? ;-) Anyone else you can clarify this for me?

TIA


----------



## rjyj (Jul 23, 2006)

I just got my Direct TV HD DVR hooked up and I am unable to make the call through my comcast voice phone to set up the DVR. The call keeps on failing. Has anyone encountered this problem? How did you correct it?


----------



## smallzi (Sep 16, 2006)

so yeah...thanks for patting yourselves on the back for connecting wirelessly.

I personally don't want to pay for a usb wireless adapter just for this dvr, so i figured i would use comcast digital voip to dial out.

it just doesn't seem to work. 

I've only played around with this problem for a couple hours, but for now it doesn't look good.

comcast gave me an arris tm402p/110 modem which handles voip as well as regular ip.

The solution (i think) will lie in finding a prefix to limit the baud rate tivo connects at.

stand by...


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

smallzi said:


> The solution (i think) will lie in finding a prefix to limit the baud rate tivo connects at.


http://www.lingosupport.com/dvr.html


> Change the Set Dial Prefix setting to ,#034 (type in comma pound zero three four, do not type the quotation marks). This will set the modem speed to 28.8. If this does not work try ,#096. This will set the modem speed to 9600 baud.


I have Lingo and so does a friend of mine. He just last week tried this w/o success. But I thought I would share it anyways.


----------



## sdzc (Sep 4, 2005)

IMO Comcast DV is way overpriced (as are pretty much all of Comcast products).

I have Sunrocket's 2 year for $199 plan ($8.29/mo) and love it. The features are great. 

The only issues I have had with it has been when my Comcast Internet has been down (but that would have affected any VOIP provider, including Comcast themselves).


----------



## smallzi (Sep 16, 2006)

> Change the Set Dial Prefix setting to ,#034 (type in comma pound zero three four, do not type the quotation marks). This will set the modem speed to 28.8. If this does not work try ,#096. This will set the modem speed to 9600 baud.


As it turned out....neither of those prefixes worked for me either. I've found at this point that i get the best results using default dialout settings. Using those settings it successfully dials out about 20% of the time. strange


----------



## flcusat (Jun 10, 2003)

smark said:


> Note that he mentions his Tivos are wirelessly networked.


My In laws just switched to CDV service. My mother in law just called me to tell me that when she has the TIVO connected, she can't receive calls at the house. She can dial out without a problem but in order to receive calls, she needs to disconnect the TIVO from the modem. Any ideas?


----------



## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

flcusat said:


> My In laws just switched to CDV service. My mother in law just called me to tell me that when she has the TIVO connected, she can't receive calls at the house. She can dial out without a problem but in order to dial out she needs to disconnect the TIVO from the modem. Any ideas?


Does she have broadband internet? If so, have her disconnect the Tivo from the telephone line and connect through the internet.


----------



## flcusat (Jun 10, 2003)

Turtleboy said:


> Does she have broadband internet? If so, have her disconnect the Tivo from the telephone line and connect through the internet.


No, she doesn't just plain phone service.


----------



## flcusat (Jun 10, 2003)

Turtleboy said:


> Does she have broadband internet? If so, have her disconnect the Tivo from the telephone line and connect through the internet.


I'm sorry, I had to fix my previous post because it was wrong. With the TIVo connected she can dial out but to receive calls, she needs to disconnect the TIVO. One thing that I don't know, is, that if the TIVO is connected, if somebody calls her, what that person hears in their end is a busy signal or a continuous ringing.


----------



## mysticeti (Nov 20, 2007)

flcusat said:


> I'm sorry, I had to fix my previous post because it was wrong. With the TIVo connected she can dial out but to receive calls, she needs to disconnect the TIVO. One thing that I don't know, is, that if the TIVO is connected, if somebody calls her, what that person hears in their end is a busy signal or a continuous ringing.


Just out of curiosity, what general area does your mother live? I'm wondering if Comcast uses different hardware in different areas. Also, I wonder if they use different hardware for folks who are only getting CDV and not Internet?


----------



## ltkern (May 16, 2004)

Thinking about switching to Comcast Voice - I noticed older posts where they encountered some problems. I have been unsuccessful in networking my TIVO, so I just gave up for now and will continue to have TIVO dial-in for updates. Anybody having problems with the Comcast Voice setup?


----------



## arvoris (Feb 19, 2003)

I think I might have some input here. I just signed up for Comcast phone and internet service. Problem 1. Comcast does not get along with my wireless router. Problem 2. No one told me that would be a problem..and even if they had they wouldn't let me order their free wireless router until AFTER I was hooked up. So here I sit..a full week later..and still can't connect to TIVO for download of data. Twice I've managed to get it to connect...after hours of working with it. Add that to the fact that it also made my Google Toolbar act crazy...extremely slow IE loads...and the fact that my phone calls are constantly being dropped... TV Caller ID doesn't work because I have TIVO... I coudl go on but why bore you to death. Speeds so slow I had to upgrade to a more costly setup.  I'm not a happy camper.  The one saving grace was that I was able to set up a peer to peer in order to transfer programs between my TIVO's.

ARV



greg_burns said:


> Why, if they have HIS, aren't they connecting their Tivo's to the internet rather than trying to dial-out?
> 
> I suppose if they didn't have a home network setup, or a convient connection near their Tivo..., or running older software and needed to do initial setup via phone.
> 
> Just curious what the common circumstance is you've seen in the past with these folks.


----------

