Setting the Stage
We have closed, we have keys and now the fun starts. What we’re doing right now is getting bids from contractors and subcontractors for the renovation, as well as shopping for flooring, paint and accessories. Thankfully, Amy is a freelancer and thus can help out while I’m at work. Double thankfully, my office is less than a mile away from the house, so I can do quick trips over to meet with contractors.
Today I also wrote out a “What needs to be done” document that outlines overall things (like removing paneling, acoustic ceiling, etc) as well as room by room things that need to be done. The contractor that we met with today thought this was fantastic, and used it to jot things down as we did a walkthrough. I highly recommend this practice, as it also helps contain the stress.
As we’re still in preliminary work mode, I’m also researching some infrastructure things.
Dish, Cable or DirectTV?
For our TV, I’m trying to decide between Comcast cable, DirectTV or Dish. All services, I’d use their HD-DVR. From what I can tell, Dish is the furthest ahead in terms of HD options, and MPEG4 support. DirectTV has delayed their new MPEG4 capable DVR for a long long time, and I know that from experience, the DirectTIVO-HDDVR kind of sucks. Does anyone have any comments on the Dish box and service? I noticed their website mocks the infamous Comcast-tech-on-couch story, which I like.
Speakeasy, SBC or Cable?
I’ve been a Speakeasy DSL customer for a long while, at least four years now. Right now we have their 6.0 down / 768 up “naked” DSL service (no local phone service), which is great and reliable. They are usually pretty good when moving, minimizing downtime, etc. Stick with them? I think so.
Vonage, SBC or ?
Right now we use Vonage, and I’ve been a Vonage customer since 2002. However, with all the negative press they’ve received, I’m wondering if they are still the “defacto” VOIP service or if there is another provider that might work better. Any ideas?
We have had great service from Dish network for years, although our satellite receiver is getting kind of old (we have to use an IR adaptor to get our Tivo to work with it rather than the more responsive serial connection). They do offer their own DVR, but I cannot imagine giving up the usability of a Tivo (although that may change if they eliminate skipping commercials). We do not have any HD channels as most of the content we watch (Cartoon Network and BBC America) does not have HD programming, but as long as we record at high-quality the picture seems to scale fine on our 42″ plasma screen without unsightly noise or artifacts. They also have a range of portable media players that I would be curious to hear more about (do they require the Dish DVR?).
We did recently dump all of our premium channels in favor of a Netflix account and they gave us no problems, unlike Comcast.
time to move from vonage to a pureplay sip provider.
go to http://www.trixbox.com and turn one of your old servers (mine is a junker p3-1ghz-512mb ram) into a state of the art ip pabx using Asterisk.
Trixbox is a single iso automated install of asterisk (or you can go to http://www.asterisk.org if you want to code your own and do it the hardway).
This way you wont be limited to just a vonage service but can have a phone number in LA, NY, canada etc wherever.
you can also make it ring your home phone, office phone, laptop, blackberry whatever device you happen to be logged into at that time.
vonage is great for people who just want plug and play but voip offers far more functionality if you are ready for it.
if you need more info you can hit my server http://www.cognation.net/asterisk to see my configuration.
Cheers,
Dean
www/collins.net.pr/blog