Cutting the Cord

[Walter Dnes]

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 02:04:25AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote

> The design of the two look quite similar (taking off the Philips'
> cowling).  What makes the CM superior?

  I'm just going by my personal experience.  Maybe a cardboard box or a
milk carton to lift the PHDTV3 several inches off the table will reduce
inductance from the surface that it's standing on.  The profile would
then look similar to the CM 4040.

> So I look at TekSavvy. They offer a maximum of 25/10 ($40) on DSL
> and 28/1 ($47) on cable. No mention of FTTN.

  Anything faster than 6 mbits down and 800 kbits up that comes in via
your phone line *IS* FTTN, even if it's labelled DSL.  Bell must be
building out to single detached homes now.  I recently upgraded from
Teksavvy's "Highspeed DSL 6" to their "Highspeed DSL 7".  The 7 megabit
service is FTTN.

* Highspeed 6 * modem syncs at 6 megabits and speedtest.net shows *NET*
  a bit over 5 megabits

* Highspeed 7 * same modem syncs at 8.51 megabits and speedtest.net
  shows *NET* a bit over 7 megabits

* Notwithstanding the 40% faster download, Highspeed 7 is actually $2
  per month *CHEAPER* than Highspeed 6 for the 75 gig tier.  Go figure!

> (My existing service with Rogers is 45/4 for $97 with a 230GB cap
> that I frequently exceed)

  Teksavvy doesn't count usage between 2AM and 8AM for their limited
tiers.  I'm not sure if uploads are counted at all.  You have a choice
of 300 gigs and unlimited tiers at the higher speeds.

> > >    - Cable modem: Lifehacker recommends the Motorola SB6141
> >
> >   Check on Teksavvy's forum http://www.dslreports.com/forum/teksavvyfor supported DOCSIS 3 modems.
> 
> 
> And the Motorola above is on that list.

  I thought it was the 6121.  Maybe they mean the 6121 is the minimum
model they'll accept.  In any case, for cable, make sure you get a
DOCSIS 3 modem.  DOCSIS 2 will be deprecated, and not supported, very
soon.  I don't know about Teksavvy, but I've heard horror stories of
Rogers being very sticky about moving modems.  E.g. a used modem from an
Ottawa customer would not be supported in Toronto, even if it's the same
make/model/firmware.  Something about specific ranges of serial numbers
for a given market.  Cable uses DHCP, which works off of the MAC
address.  DSL and FTTN are based on the physical telephone line for
authentication.

> If I go with FTTN I'm gonna go with whatever modem the ISP wants
> to use.  Looks like I may need to rent it.

  My Thomson ST546 is good for DSL (including FTTN) for downloads up to
24 megabits, and uploads up to 1.2 megabit.  I got it back in the fall
of 2007 for 5 megabit DSL.  It works fine for 7/1 and should be OK all
the way up to 15/1.  For 15/10, I would need the next step up.  My
understanding is that Bell does some wierd non-standard stuff at the
higher speeds, so you need to rent their specially-tweaked modems.

> > * the tuner on my HDHR is weaker than on my TV set.  I.e. same antenna
> >   same location...
> >   - plug into TV; it gets the Toronto stations plus majors from Buffalo
> >   - plug into HDHomerun; it only gets the Toronto stations
> >
> 
> 
> Would doing it through, say, a Hauppage card cause any less loss of
> strength?

  I don't know.  The only thing I can suggest is reading comparisons at
review sites.  My model is a few years old, so it may have improved in
the meantime.  The current ads show a different-looking box than what I
have.  Speaking of which... the current model, even with 2 tuners, seems
to have only one antenna input.  Ignore what I said earlier about 2
antenna inputs.  That seems to have changed in the current model.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists