# Using VOIP for Daily call?



## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

I want to ditch my standard phone line (which is only really used by TiVO to make its call) and switch to a voip provider such as Sipgate. I will use a Voip adaptor such as the Linksys Pap2.

Will the daily call work over Voip? If you have got it to work can to tell me how and which provider you are using (it would need to allow 0800 numbers I presume?)

Thanks for any advice.


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## roydonaldson (Nov 4, 2003)

I'd not look at doing this. VoIP is great for voice, but to do fax, or modem (which Tivo is), any jitter or packet loss will drop the connection. You really need fax or modem relay working to get this to work across VoIP successfully.

I'd suggest keeping it either pluged into a phone line, or get the ethernet card and do an internet based daily call.

Roy.



Paul555 said:


> I want to ditch my standard phone line (which is only really used by TiVO to make its call) and switch to a voip provider such as Sipgate. I will use a Voip adaptor such as the Linksys Pap2.
> 
> Will the daily call work over Voip? If you have got it to work can to tell me how and which provider you are using (it would need to allow 0800 numbers I presume?)
> 
> Thanks for any advice.


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## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

Thanks Roy. Getting an ethernet card just for the daily call would be an expensive way to go though. I'm interested in whether anyone has successfully done this and if so what percentage of calls are successful (and which provider).

TiVO is old technology now as we all know so I don't want to spend money on it when it is likely on it's way out in a year or two for HD.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Paul555 said:


> Thanks Roy. Getting an ethernet card just for the daily call would be an expensive way to go though. I'm interested in whether anyone has successfully done this and if so what percentage of calls are successful (and which provider).
> 
> TiVO is old technology now as we all know so I don't want to spend money on it when it is likely on it's way out in a year or two for HD.


But Tivo is so much infinitely better with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM and a larger hard drive and you can do all that for about £120 now with a 250Gb drive.

All the other supposedly more modern boxes are still inferior in functionality.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

You can do the daily call over the tivo serial cable to your PC for near-zero cost if you are brave:
tivo serial setup


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## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

mikerr said:


> You can do the daily call over the tivo serial cable to your PC for near-zero cost if you are brave:
> tivo serial setup


Sounds complicated but I would have a go. However my PC is upstairs and the tivo downstairs. Laptop does not have a serial slot.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Paul555 said:


> Sounds complicated but I would have a go. However my PC is upstairs and the tivo downstairs. Laptop does not have a serial slot.


I would suggest that a Cachecard connected to your broadband router is much simpler and more reliable and also allows you to access your Tivo remotely using Tivoweb etc.

Do you have a Sky subscription? If so how much a year do you pay for that compared to a one off £120 or so to upgrade your Tivo? After all £120 is only about the same as the cost of an annual tv license.

See www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo for more info on what is involved.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Don't you have to keep the phone line to have the broadband connection?


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## Prat77 (Apr 14, 2007)

TCM2007 said:


> Don't you have to keep the phone line to have the broadband connection?


That's the USP of Virgin Media...

I'd give it a go over VOIP - it may be a little slow, but could work. Purchasing a cachecard and the rest is a little overkill if you're looking to keep costs down - may as well try a PSTN/VOIP adaptor (which you'll need anyway to continue to use a half-decent phone) first.


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

Prat77 said:


> That's the USP of Virgin Media...
> 
> I'd give it a go over VOIP - it may be a little slow, but could work. Purchasing a cachecard and the rest is a little overkill if you're looking to keep costs down - may as well try a PSTN/VOIP adaptor (which you'll need anyway to continue to use a half-decent phone) first.


I doubt it'll work at all nevermind slowly. There just isn't the bandwidth over voip.


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## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

TCM2007 said:


> Don't you have to keep the phone line to have the broadband connection?


Telewest now Virgin (that I have) removed the requirement for a compulsary phone line with Broadband some time ago.

I managed to get the Linksys Pap2 cheap from Ebay so I will try it while keeping my existing phone line. I will report back with the results.

May be some time though as this is coming from Hong Kong. Lets hope it turns up!

In the meantime I am still interested in all your opinions and whether anyone has got this to work.

Searching around the net there was some suggestion that fax machines might work so this could to?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

I'd also keep an eye on ebay for a networked tivo... its a buyers market at the moment, with networked & lifetime machines going dirt cheap (£150 for a lifetime+cachcard?)

Prices will most likely go back to normal after this month (holiday season..),
then you can sell your unupgraded machine back on ebay at £100


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> I'd also keep an eye on ebay for a networked tivo... its a buyers market at the moment, with networked & lifetime machines going dirt cheap (£150 for a lifetime+cachcard?)


Cheapest I have seen is the £215 I paid and another that sold soon after that for the spec you mention. And that is plus £15 to £20 p&p

I have seen Lifetime Sub machines with only a Turbonet card and a smaller hard drive around say 80Gb go for the kind of price you mention. Also there was one with a hooky Status 11 evaluation sub with a Turbonet card and the original hard drive that went for arond £135 a couple of months ago.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

I don't keep track of them all, but here's a few out of my watch list (missed em!)

TiVo + 120GB drive + 512Mb CacheCard - £50 - 270143132853 (ouch!)
TiVo + 200GB drive + 512Mb CacheCard - £86 -230148058132
TiVo + lifetime + 512Mb CacheCard - £181 - 190115078655


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> tivo + lifetime + 512Mb cachecard - £181 - 190115078655


It only had the original 40Gb hard drive though, which makes me feel the extra £34 + £5 postage I paid was worth it for a 250Gb drive with Tivoweb properly installed and working and the drive properly formatted. Also a proper ethernet socket on the case too.

Obviously a 40Gb drive is damn all use with a Cachecard and 512Mb of RAM and it looks like someone has taken the original large hard drive out, which would make me concerned as to whether this install even ran reliably. Either way you would have to get hold of a new hard drive and go through the upgrade process which to most people is a lot more than £39 extra of their valuable time..........

However cheap the other machines appear you obviously have to allow for the fact that a Lifetime Sub is £199 more.


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

Paul555 said:


> I'm interested in whether anyone has successfully done this and if so what percentage of calls are successful (and which provider).


 :down: I did try this for about a week, but after no connection succeeded I went back to using the normal phone line. Sorry.


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## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

steveroe said:


> :down: I did try this for about a week, but after no connection succeeded I went back to using the normal phone line. Sorry.


Damn. Which provider was that please?


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## mccg (Jun 18, 2002)

I never got my VoIP connection (with Draytel) to work on my Sky box.
I mentioned this over at Digitalspy, and most people who had tried it had the same results.
I think 1 person managed to get it working, but it was not reliable.
I'd expect the same from TiVo

I dropped my phone line a year ago, as I don't use it. Only had it because it was part of ntl TV, so when I went to Sky, I just kept ntl BB.
Sky was installed before I dropped ntl, so still had the phone line connected for the required callback. I know I'm breaking Sky regs by not having a phone line connected... but it works OK.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Paul555 said:


> Damn. Which provider was that please?


My impression is that modem tone does not seem to be supported on any voip connection. I suspect the way it compresses all the quiet bits in the call etc may be the problem.

Getting a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM plus a big 250Gb or more hard drive would be a far more sensible way to go.

Consider yourself lucky that you can have broadband without paying for a phone line at all. Out here in the countryside I have to pay for a BT wholesale provided phone line (whoever I pay the phone bill to) to support my broadband connection, even if I make all my calls by Voip.

Good old Ofcom supporting its business friends in the entrenched monopoly operator once again...............


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mccg said:


> I know I'm breaking Sky regs by not having a phone line connected... but it works OK.


You aren't breaking them so long as you have completed the first year's contract.


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## tefster (Mar 15, 2004)

> My impression is that modem tone does not seem to be supported on any voip connection. I suspect the way it compresses all the quiet bits in the call etc may be the problem.


The problem is normally the combination of the data-compression applied to the analogue waveform and the shift in the timebase that occurs when the resulting data gets turned into a packet transmission. Modems and faxes have fairly wide bandwidth requirements and expect constant transmission delays without any jitter. VoIP calls don't normally provide either of those. I've tried faxing over VoIP and even with the widest bandwidth codecs it was rarely successful.

There's a good article on modem/fax over VoIP at http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html


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## Paul555 (Mar 20, 2004)

tefster said:


> The problem is normally the combination of the data-compression applied to the analogue waveform and the shift in the timebase that occurs when the resulting data gets turned into a packet transmission. Modems and faxes have fairly wide bandwidth requirements and expect constant transmission delays without any jitter. VoIP calls don't normally provide either of those. I've tried faxing over VoIP and even with the widest bandwidth codecs it was rarely successful.
> 
> There's a good article on modem/fax over VoIP at http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html


I've had some time off today so I have been searching around. It seems that US Series 1 owners have this problem doing the daily calls with VOIP too. Some never get this to work, some do using some tricks suggested by Vonage CS reps.

First to use dialling prefixs as suggested by someone here.

,#019
,#034
,#134

choosing one of these slows the modem down (do these work for UK Series 1s though?)

*99,

puts the VOIP adaptor into the right mode to hog the bandwith I think. The commas are important as it will instruct TiVO to pause.

Next some have found that an inverted or reversed ADSL Broadband filter works. The works for faxes too aparantly which is where the idea came from.

Here are some links if you are interested

http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=167909

http://customersupport.tivo.com/Sea...rOfResults=24&ResultsPerPage=5&isFormSubmit=1

Faxing with Vonage

Maybe I will ask TiVO CS themselves what's the number?


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

Paul555 said:


> Damn. Which provider was that please?


That was with Vonage though one of their supplied Linksys adaptors.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

BrianHughes said:


> I doubt it'll work at all nevermind slowly. There just isn't the bandwidth over voip.


If you have a perfect internet connection (ha ha!), and a top notch VoIP adapter it could vaguely be possible, but I wouldn't bet anything on it, and in my testing I couldn't get it to work with my 24 meg connection and telecoms grade VoIP line. All you need is one wobble, and the connection goes.

So if you've got the above and providing your VoIP provider supports G.711A (not U) you have a vague chance as that is the exact same scheme that landlines in the UK use and so it gets dumped onto the BT network unchanged. However, they tend not to, as it's vastly more bandwidth hungry than the G729 that most in practice use.


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## ndunlavey (Jun 4, 2002)

Presumably the problem is not the bandwidth but the packetisation, and the lack of guarantee that packets will arrive in the right order on a circuit without an adequate Quality/Class Of Service setup. For voice we cope OK - we get occasional split seconds of graunch or motorboating, and carry on, but modem connections, even with resends and corrections, are a bit more fragile.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Yup, I can't really grumble with voice - I've been using it for over a year now, with a UK number being delivered to Sweden and as far as anyone is concerned they are dealing with me in the UK.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

But so far as modems are concerned the moral of the story is clear that if you get rid of your landline you need to move on to only using IP based data communication technology that can use your broadband connection.

Seeing as how not having a BT landline saves you at least £132 a year whereas I in the countryside am not permitted that option by Ofcom (due to having to pay BT for a voice service with them I don't even use in order to get broadband) surely the best bet is to put the £132 towards the £80 or so now needed for a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM, as and when the discount Ebay seller starts selling them again after his summer holidays are over.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

A turbonet at 9thTee.com is $69.25+$26.25 shipping = $95.50 delivered or a cachecard $94.95+$26.75=$121.70 delivered. Assuming you don't have to pay duty and handling charges at the current exchange rates that brings them in at about £50 or £60 respectively.

If your VOIP tests fail then the option is there at the lowest price its been for a long time.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

AMc said:


> A turbonet at 9thTee.com is $69.25+$26.25 shipping = $95.50 delivered or a cachecard $94.95+$26.75=$121.70 delivered. Assuming you don't have to pay duty and handling charges at the current exchange rates that brings them in at about £50 or £60 respectively.


Yes but the Ebay seller based in the UK was offering a Cachecard (not Turbonet) and 512MB of RAM delivered from the UK for about £82 the last thing I saw.

And don't forget that if you order direct from 9th Tee in the USA then the customs may decide to levy duty if you are unlucky and this will cost you about £20 extra due to Parcelforce International also levying a £12 admin fee if they have to pay any duty on your behalf on an overseas item.

That cheap Ebay deal is not currently there but I suspect the seller may be away on their summer holiday.


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