More Money Please!

I took my wife out tonight while my son Daniel set up the new MythBuntu OS on our Inspiron. By the time I came back, he had some good news: He got everything working including the wireless. And, some bad news: MythTV/Boxee needs $20 per year in order to give us a TV guide. I was a bit shocked about this because I figured that you could get this information from the Internet for gratis. 

For example, this information is readily available for free from TV Guide. There could be some terms of service that prevents you from scraping the TV guide listings, but then there's a Macintosh Widget that does this very thing. So, I am really surprised by this. It's $20 per year, and not per month, so it isn't an unreasonable amount of money, but it was surprising to see this never the less.

We are also finding some surprising limits. For example, you can watch 60 Minutes on the Web, but we cannot get it to be part of Boxee since it doesn't really have an Internet feed. The CBS station of Boxee doesn't have it, and there's no CBS News station (CBS News is a separate website from CBS). However, we did find Hawaii Five-O.

Tomorrow, it is to beautiful Secaucus to the PC Expo to pick up a TV tuner card.

More Toys Come!

We just got our Dell Inspiron 530S, and what a cheap piece of crap it is! People talk about the Apple Tax, the extra you have to pay to get that formally six color now monochrome logo. Well, there's definitely a reason for it. This is suppose to be a small compact version of the computer, yet, I don't think anyone will mistake this for a Mac Mini. The DVD tray sits about four inches behind the front door in the faux panel. The front door blocks the eject/close button.

Turning on the Inspiron sounded like a wind tunnel. After a minute, though, it did quiet down to a whisper.  There's a lower panel on the faux front that is push-to-open/push-to-close that has nothing behind it. The mouse and keyboard scream cheap-piece-of-junk. Oh well, it is still Intel Inside as the front sticker tells me. I did remove the Windows Vista/Basic sticker though. I am downloading and burning MythBuntu right now as we speak. We'll get it all loaded up.

Too bad we don't have a TV Tuner card. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Change is in the Air!

We got the first piece of equipment for our new digital life: A keyboard!

My son convinced me that we should order a wireless keyboard and mouse for our Boxee box. That way, we can use a keyboard when necessary. My wife was excited because it means she might be able to use that as her computer. We originally were planning on not using it as a computer. We were originally planning to put Mythbuntu on it which really doesn't include a desktop. However, I guess there's no reason not to put the full fledge Gnome desktop on the computer, but the resolution won't be very good. Especially if we keep our 13 year old CRT based TV.

On the other fronts: Dell called me to tell me there is a slight delay for my Linux box because they have to start the whole order from scratch. I had tried ordering a TV tuner without upgrading to Vista Home Premium. (The computer comes with Vista Basic). I explained that we were simply going to put another OS on it, so I didn't want to pay $150 for an OS upgrade which we weren't even going to use. Dell was unable to manually override the order, so we had to put in a new order. Fun!

Another problem. T-Mobile screwed up. I've had T-Mobile when it was Omnipoint which got bought by VoiceStream which was acquired by T-Mobile. T-Mobile has always given us great customer service, and had never failed us before.

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting the T-Mobile@Home service. However, we already have five phones on our family plan. Thus, we either have to drop a phone or get new service. The plan is to transfer my wife's phone number to my parent's account. They also have T-Mobile and a family plan, but only three phone numbers. Since my wife rarely uses her phone and doesn't do any texting, she will only be a $10 per month cost for them which I'm paying.

To do this is a bit tricky. First, I contacted T-Mobile and told them that I want to transfer responsibility for my wife's phone to my parent's account. Step two, my mom would call and let them know she approved. After that, T-Mobile transfers the number to my parent's account, then we setup the T-Mobile@Home service and transfer our current home phone number to the T-Mobile@Home service.

Step #1 was completed, and today my mom called T-Mobile. They told her I have to contact T-Mobile in order to authorize this change, then she would have to call up.  But, I had already authorized everything. I called T-Mobile back, and they confirmed I had already authorized the transfer. However, my mom will have to call back once again. This time, I'm calling my mom, then making a three-way conversation between me, my mom, and T-Mobile. Of course, my son Daniel recommended that I do this in the first place. I hate it when he's right. He can get so unbearable.

Verizon: Still Behaving Like a Phone Company

Even more bad news. Verizon, our phone company offers DSL at around 3Mb maximum. To get this rate, we'd have to pay $45/month. We could get a 1Mb service for $30 per month.

We need 1.5Mb service in order to use Boxee, and considering that our cable bills us $50 for 15Mb service, I simply cannot see how Verizon competes.

I could get a package deal: Phone and Internet for only $80 per month. That's $39.99 for the phone, a $6.26 Subscriber Charge, and a $1.29 Federal Universal Fee. By the way, the last two fees are interesting. The $6.26 Subscriber Charge (sometimes called a FCC Charge for Network Access) doesn't go to the government. It's simply a fee that Verizon uses to line their own pockets.

The $1.29 Federal Universal Fee is similar. The government does require Verizon to help subsidize the cost of rural phones, but it doesn't go directly to the government. Instead, it's Verizon's estimate how much it costs them to provide phone service in rural areas.

So, Verizon charges almost $50 per month for what I am now paying $35 per month for. I do save $10 on Internet, but I have to sign a two year contract.

So, the phone company is out of the question. It looks like I have to keep my Internet service with the Cable Company whether I like it or not.

Warning: Doing the Impossible Takes Time

I've had nothing but trouble with this project.

• First of all, my wife is upset over the idea of no land line phone. She will go with the cellphone only idea, but isn't too happy. Thus, we are not going with the cellphone only idea.
  
  There were several options I discussed with my son. We could get a cellphone base station like the dock-n-talk. When you dock your cellphone onto this device, calls are routed to landline phones connected to this device. We have a cordless phone with three extensions, so plugging that into this device would allow us to have three regular house phones. Someone would call my wife's cellphone, and we could answer the cordless phone. We can also dial out of the cordless phones, and the calls would go through the cellphone.
  
  Since my wife has a BlueTooth phone, she wouldn't have to plug her phone into this device. It would automatically connect to her cellphone whenever she's home. Disadvantage is that we're talking about a $200 device. Plus, I'd have to buy a new cordless phone set. We have one cordless phone with three extentions, but we have six phones in the house.
  
  We decided to go with the T-Mobile@Home service. I previously talked about the fact that we can't have more than five lines on our Family Plan, and this would count as one of the lines. We talked about making my oldest son pay for his, but that was silly. It would simply push the cost elsewhere.
  
  Instead, we are going to move my wife's cellphone to my parent's T-Mobile Family Plan. They currently only have three people on their plan, so they have room. Plus, my wife's cellphone usage is minimal, so my parents won't need more minutes. And, my wife doesn't use text messaging, so they don't have to add a text messaging plan to their service.
  
  I've talked to T-Mobile and my parents about this, and they are both okay with this.
  

• The $300 computer is now costing me over $500. We bought a $299 Ispiron 530s from Dell which started out at $299. It has a 2Ghz processor and a 320Gb hard drive, and 3Gb of memory, so it really does match our requirements. However, by the time I added the TV tuner card, the upgraded ATI video card, tax, and shipping, it is now over $500.
  
  Even worse, Dell won't let us put in the TV Tuner card unless we first upgrade to Vista Home Premium. Considering we will be wiping the OS off of this computer, and then installing Mythbuntu, it seemed kind of silly. I explained what I wanted, but Dell is unable to override the order, so the TV tuner card is coming out. Drats.
  
  Doesn't matter. There's a big computer expo in Secaucus this weekend, so I'll stop by there and pick up a TV Tuner card.
  

In the beginning, was the TV remote. And it was good.

Back in 1984, my wife and I listened to the news and heard about AT&T's historic decision to break itself apart into seven local and one long distance service. Before, there was Ma Bell. Ma Bell handled everything. She took care of your long distance service, your local service, and even owned your phones (you were merely renting them from Ma Bell). Now, there would be seven Regional Bell Operating Companies and Ma Bell would be a mere long distance company.

My wife asked me what this meant. I thought about it for a while, and I said it would mean that one day you'd be able to watch TV over the phone lines and make telephone calls over the cable lines.

I tell this story for two reasons. 1). So, you realize how old and decrepit I am, and 2). You realize how wrong I was.

Now, you might be saying to yourself "Hey, Dave, you're an absolute genius. That's exactly what happened! Today, the cable company offers you phone service and you can watch TV from the phone company!".

I would like to point out that this isn't exactly my prediction. Yes, I saw this coming, but I figured that we'd be doing all of this by 1994. What I didn't take into account was the fact that the two companies I mentioned, the cable and phone companies, are probably the most incompetently run corporations you can imagine. Heck, I took that into account! That's why I figured it'll take 10 years and not merely 2 or 3 years.

Now, let's run ahead a couple of decades to today. About a year and a half ago, I signed up for Optimum's Triple Play package. Phone, Internet, and cable from a single service, and all for under $100 per month. For the first year, everything was peachy. I had no problems with the service. Then, in June, when they increased our monthly bill by $60, we experienced our first major outage. I had no service for an entire week. I pleaded, screamed, threatened, and cajoled. CableVision was unable to get a service guy out earlier than that. CableVision seemed unable to understand that they weren't merely our cable provider, they provided our phone service. You know the little thing you'd use to call the fire department when your house is on fire?

Since then, we've experienced major outages at least every other month. And, several times per month, we experience service outages of several hours.

Last Saturday night, I had to log into my company's system to do some major maintenance. Imagine my surprise when my Internet and phone service were again down. This was more than an inconvenience. This was affecting my ability to do my job. I called customer service and torn into them, and CableVision sent out a senior tech on Sunday to see what was wrong.

You have to understand that CableVision had just sent out a tech on Sunday the week before. I've recently had my entire cable rewired. We had to move our cable modem, we had a guy come out on the pole near our house. We were promised that everything was all better. And, now this.

The tech came out, and spent about two hours figuring out the problem. His diagnosis is that our entire neighborhood had wiring problems, and the OptimumBoost service. The service I paid $10 per month extra for was causing problems. Even worse, I was not getting the benefits of this service since our neighborhood wiring couldn't support it. That's cable company!

Now let's go back to last fall when we finally got the Cable company to admit that they were charging us for OptimumBoost, but never provided the service. Seems that they have two computers systems: One bills you for the service, and the other requisitions you for the service. Seems like a funny thing happened. Their billing computer thought we were suppose to have OptimumBoost, but their requisition system didn't know this.

Anyway, the Cable company can get away with this behavior because they are a monopoly. If I want Comedy Central, whom can I turn to? If they want to raise their rates, reduce my service, or simply pull the plug, what am I suppose to do?

Well, I looked over the bill, and thought "Why in the heck am I paying for this service? Everyone in my family has cellphones, so why do I have a land line? We don't watch that much TV. Most of what my wife watches is on the broadcast networks. I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but those are available on the Internet. Why am I paying $80 per month for cable when I barely watch TV? Why am I paying $35 for a land line when we are already paying $80 per month to keep our family in cellphones?

Yesterday, my son Daniel and I downloaded Boxee. It is a free program that you can put on a small computer that will download many major programs over the Internet via broadcaster webpages and services like Hulu. A small Linux computer would be about $300. We'd need a highspeed Internet service, and a new antenna. However, in a few months, we'd more than make back our money.

We decided to go for it. Eliminate the cable TV and the land line. Try to get Internet service from elsewhere, and say goodbye to the cable company. We talked about various landline options. My sons and I live with our cellphones, so we wouldn't miss the land line. However, my wife doesn't like cellphones (too many buttons), so she wouldn't be too happy getting rid of our phone. I'll talk to her tonight about it. With the land line dropped, we'd save $34 per month. We'd have to up our cellphone minutes, but that's just $10 per month.

A possible option is something called T-Mobile@Home. It's $10 per month, and we are already T-Mobile customers. That would be perfect except that we already have the maximum of five lines on our family plan. In order to get that service, we'd have to make one of our cellphone lines a separate service.

We talked about making my oldest son pay for his own cellphone. After all, he's going to Graduate School next year, and I am certainly not planning to pay for his cellphone for the rest of his life. However, separating out the phone and adding texting would be about $40 per month. Plus the extra $10 for the T-Mobile@Home, and we're paying even more than before. The idea was to save money.

It looks like we'll be dropping our land line. That is, if I can convince my wife it is worth the savings.