Homechoice problems with a TiVO/PVR (HD recorder)

If you're thinking about getting Tiscali TV (née Homechoice) for TV, and you want to use it with a PVR or hard disk recorder/TiVO - here's my advice: don't.

A bit over a year ago, we signed up with them. The Video on Demand (VOD) service seemed exciting compared with going out to the video shop, and given our our poor freeview reception, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It also came with 8 megabit broadband, which was about as fast as all the other providers - since our local exchange was not covered by ADSL2 (up to 30 megabit).

But the reality was different. Getting them to install the box took two months alone. Each time we called, there was a different problem, and someone would call us back. No call. We'd call again, and someone would call us back. No call. Then someone would show up a random time and we'd be told they tried to visit.

When it was finally installed, we found the whole interface and menus are EXTREMELY clumsy, slow and hard to navigate (and I'm a techie!). Browsing for the right movie could take an hour, given how easy it was to hit the wrong button and find yourself at the start of a sequence involving another six button presses to get to the movie list again. If you pressed the wrong button you'd miss your chance and have to start again. It was extremely confusing.

And it only gets worse: the Homechoice (Tiscali TV) set top box puts itself into standby 'randomly' if it thinks you aren't watching the TV. How it does this is unknown, and it certainly doesn't work with your recorder. We tried switching plugs, leaving the TV on etc. Nothing worked consistently and nobody on tech support was able to give a solution that worked.

All this took about about 3 or four months, and 12 calls to customer service on their 0845 number (costing about £25 in calls, and many many hours - an average of 45 minutes per call sometimes longer). Often the call would end in them promising to call us back the next morning, or their manager. No call. Never.

Many of their representatives didn't know what a PVR or TiVO was, and it was only after a long long time that we got to speak to someone who told us that the standby was a 'feature' of the Homechoice box, and that we weren't the only people to have a complaint about it. It's apparently "a common customer complaint or reason for disconnecting".

So they kindly disconnected the TV service for us - cutting out the portion of the bill that would have gone to the TV package, and we continued the broadband service for another year to run out the contract.

I am a high bandwidth user, and I often noticed that I didn't get much faster than 400kb/s download speeds, but I assumed that was just the way the internet works - ie you don't often get the full 8 megabit because the peers or servers are congested.

Then I started to notice an upper limit on my download speeds. I figured the blend between TV bandwidth and broadband bandwidth could be twiddled (in favour of broadband since we weren't using it) - but when I called customer service they told me I had a 4 megabit.

The reason? 8 megabit isn't available without TV.

So we've been paying £20 a month for the past year and a bit for 4 megabit, when everyone else offers it cheaper... I think I'm switching to Bethere's 24 megabit now - thanks for nothing Tiscali!

Note: Apparently their set-top box might be fixed "sometime this summer, maybe" so that it doesn't go into standby at random (recording!) moments. Don't expect their support or sales to know if it does or doesn't though - they probably haven't heard of this common reason for Tiscali TV customers to leave...

voIP settings for UK Linksys/Sipura routers

I bought the wireless Linksys WRT54GP2 router (similar to the PAP2) about a year ago from Broadbandstuff.co.uk, and it has worked pretty well. I use it with my Sipgate SIP account, which gives me a free UK landline number.

This is pretty cool because I can have a London 0207 number for free, which rings my voIP phone when anyone calls it, no matter where in the world I happen to be.

For example, I could be sitting in Spain and my phone can ring on my London number, without costing me or the caller any more than if my BT landline at home just rang.

You can test it out with a software-based virtual phone you can download to your computer (Mac/Linux/Windoze) before you fork out hard cash for a router and plug that it into a real phone, but frankly this beats the hell out of any dorky computer-based solution like skype or gizmo, since you just use a normal phone.

The thing about the Linksys routers is that they are quite powerful and relatively reliable, plus you can usually hack/replace the Linksys firmware with various other third-party versions that do stuff like run a small Linux distro on it - useful if you'd like to log in remotely and do something apart from create security holes on your network.

Even if you just follow the Linksys firmware updates, usually there are quite a few new features coming out for them (e.g. wireless repeater mode in the WAP54G series) which. It took me a bit of tweaking to get the two phone ports working with a UK phone, and so I thought I might send you some notes, which you may want to try and/or print out and include with future shipments to other customers.


BASIC SETTINGS FOR SIPGATE.CO.UK

This should be similar for any of the many SIP services anywhere in the world.

Log into the device, as it says from the accompanying documantation, login as admin on the router's IP address (e.g. http://192.168.0.1) and change tabs to "Basic View".

Under the entry "Line 1" input the following information:

Line Enable "YES" SIP Port: 5060 Proxy: sipgate.co.uk Make Call Without Reg "NO" Make Call Without Reg "NO" Register "YES" Register Expires: 3600 Display Name: Your Name Password: Your SIP-Password Auth ID: Your SIP-ID User ID: Your SIP-ID Use Auth ID: "YES"

MAKING IT UNDERSTAND UK PHONE TONES


This is essential for all SIP (voIP) services with a UK phone plugged in, otherwise it won't even understand the numbers dialed on the keypad (and will make American ring tones etc).

1. There is a secret (undocumented) access page for these settings, use your router's IP address (e.g. 192.168.0.1) and add /Voice_adminPage.htm e.g.:
   http://router/Voice_adminPage.htm

2. The device will be configured for the US telecom system out of the box. This means that phones using this device will act have to be US phones unless we make some changes in the settings. This guide should work for most Linksys and Sipura devices.
   

   United Kingdom Regional Settings:
   
   Dial tone: 350@-19,440@-22;10(*/0/1+2)
   Ring back: 400@-20,450@-20;*(.4/.2/1+2,.4/2/1+2)
   Busy tone: 400@-20;10(.375/.375/1)
   Reorder tone: 400@-20;10(*/0/1)
   SIT 1 tone: 950@-16,1400@-16,1800@-16;20(.330/0/1,.330/0/2,.330/0/3,0/1/0)
   MWI dial tone: 350@-19,440@-22;10(.75/.75/1+2)
   CWT1 cadence: 30(.1/2)
   CWT2 cadence: 30(.25/.25,.25/.25,.25/5)
   CWT frequency: 400@-10
   Ring 1 cadence: 60(.4/.2,.4/2)
   Ring 2 cadence (BT Call Sign): 60(1/2)
   Ring 3 cadence (BT Ring Back): 60(.25/.25,.25/.25,.25/1.75)
   Ring 4 cadence: 60(.4/.8)
   Ring 5 cadence: 60(2/4)
   Time Zone: GMT
   FXS Port Impedance: 370+620||310nF
   Caller ID Method: ETSI FSK With PR(UK)
   Daylight Saving Rule: start=3/-1/7/2:0:0;end=10/-1/7/2:0:0;save=1:0:0
   

3. Now you should be able to plug in a UK phone and have it understand the numbers dialed.

Google Picasa on Mac OS X

On my intel-based mac, I have been experimenting with running various Windows programs directly (without the use of a virtual machine such as Parallels Desktop, Qemu, or VMware) via the Windows emulation library WINE. This is a project traditionally stemming from the need to run certain Windows applications such as MS Office on platforms like GNU/Linux. Now there is a commercial version available for the mac, which seems to run a huge number of programs quite nicely on OS X.

There is a free beta available currently here
www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac

I managed to install several pieces of software on my intel mac, including WinUHA, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, and Google's photo management software Picasa. Picasa looks particularly slick out of the bunch actually.


There is one odd thing when I run Picasa using Crossover - it finds my mac desktop and puts it up as a special heading "My Mac Desktop". This suggests to me that Google are already using the WINE library to port various bits of software including Picasa, and that Picasa specially recognises the mac desktop, either by the presence of certain hidden files, or perhaps by the relatively unique paths used by OS X systems (e.g. the /Users directory instead of /home).

Starbucks Card slurps my balance

One of my friends constantly complains whenever he's mistreated or short-changed by any customer service department and usually argues and persuades until he gets his way.

This is no mean feat - in the UK most customer service imagines themselves a bit like the soldiers in a World War 1 front-line trench. They definitely don't consider themselves as arbitrators, let alone on the customer's side.

My experiences with places like the USA, Australia and New Zealand are different - often the person you're talking to has the power to fix stuff up for you quickly and will usually respond well to questions like "well, do you think that's fair? Would you be happy with that?". Here in the UK (and to an even greater extent on the European continent) the response to those questions is usually "Well I'm afraid that's just our policy" - i.e. we don't think, we just operate. If you push hard enough they'll give you the address of a PO Box to write to, which is probably connected directly to a furnace which keeps their toes warm in winter.

So today I was curious to see how Starbucks, an American chain - reacts to a blatant screw-up on their part but on UK territory. Here's my email to them:

Hi,

I am writing to you to convey my initial experiences with your Starbucks card. I was a little sceptical at first as to why I'd want something like that, but then given I drink coffee at your store just about daily, and often have a quick coffee at airports when I don't want to mess around with foreign currency or pay through a credit card - it seemed sensible. Plus I'm the type of person who always likes to try out something new...

So yesterday I got one in Oxford Street, London and gleefully handed over about £8.60 in coins that had been sagging in my trouser pockets and jingling with each stride I took. I was given a nice shiny new card: [card number removed]. I then paid for my caramel machiatto (about £2.80) on the card. It took a few swipes and I wasn't sure what was wrong, but eventually I had my coffee and put the extra swiping down to the fact that it was the first use and probably needed a little practice or something.

Last night I went to the starbucks.co.uk website and tried to register my card, and got this message:

Browser error

We're sorry, your browser doesn't support the Starbucks Card registration pages of this website.

Please update your browser to Internet Explorer version 5.0 or above, or Netscape Navigator version 6.0 or above.

Thank you.

I am a mac user. I know I am not the only one because I see a large number of mac users sitting around drinking coffee and surfing the net every time I go into Starbucks. I know mac users are only about 10-15% of the population but they seem to be well over half of your customer base, at least the ones sitting in your cafes.. For your information Internet Explorer is no longer supported by Microsoft on the mac (since Firefox is basically better), and Netscape Navigator hasn't existed since about 1999. I am using Firefox, which is a very popular browser on both Windows and Macs. I can't see how buying a copy of Windows is a necessary requisite for keeping your coffee safe when my bank manages to work fine without it.

So I thought "I'll just make sure I don't keep too much money on my card , so if I lose it it's no big deal". Today I went into another Starbucks in Angel/Upper Street, London with a friend and proudly presented my card to pay for my coffee and hers.

EvEverythingooked fine until the barista said I had £0.06 left on my card. I thought she was joking. I explained I put over eight pounds on it yesterday and had only had one coffee on it. She asked if I had the receipts, which of course I did not. I said I didn't know you needed to keep the receipts. She said I needed to keep all the receipts. I said that sounded like more hassle than keeping cash. Everyone in the queue who overheard this agreed - who wants to walk around with a month's worth of coffee receipts and check your account balance all the time in case the card malfunctions???!

So where does this leave me? I would like to know what you suggest.

Thanks,
Joe

So now I'm curious to see what happens. Should everyone (Internet Explorer user or not) have to keep a bag full of receipts with their card and double-check their account online? Doesn't sound like convenience to me! What sort of experiences have other people had with their Starbucks cards?