JDPFu.com 2025

Yesterday, a Comcast tech spent almost 3 hours at my home. Primarily, he installed their VoIP device onto my coax network. Along the way, he fixed a few other things …

My wants:

1. Phone service
2. On-Demand to work (stopped working a few months ago)

What the tech did:

1. Found and corrected a nick in the main coax to the street (nick was on the street side, not my house side).
2. Added an amplifier to the coax network
3. installed a SIP ATA/UPS in my breakfast room (my request)
4. replaced a 10 year old cable to the digital cable box – he called it “blow back” on 1 end of it. That didn’t fix my on-demand.
5. replaced a coax splitter on the HDTV
6. Swapped out my old bundle for a new bundle – goodbye Dexter, hello Entourage.
7. He didn’t have an HD cable box in the truck, so he said I needed a new one.
8. All of us are on hold with the VOIP Install Team – 30 minutes! They finally answer and ask 5 trivial questions. This call was made using my new phone service.
   Cost $0, besides the $39 install of the phone service.

1. I log in to my old SIP service and forward all calls to the new temp Comcast number. Test. Working.
2. Log in to GC and remove the old number and add the new number to my global phone service. Test. Working.
3. Unplug my phone system from my ATA and plug into the house wiring. All phones are working.
   The voice quality is as good or better than BellSouth ever was. $19.95/month with unlimited local and long distance. Since I did a bundle (internet, digital cable, phone, hbo/starz) the monthly price is fixed for 1 year. It should be $130/month. That is what I was paying without hbo/phone, but I had Showtime. So, for the same price, I get phone. I’ll miss shotime, but not that much. Of course, they tried to get me to get it all for $158/month – all channels – sports, HBO, SHO, MAX, TMC, STARZ, IFC, etc. everything. Perhaps after I get some income, who knows.

This morning, I:

1. took the old HD cable box to the local Comcast and swapped it out. New box has firewire output too.
2. Plugged everything back in … fixed the connections … HBO isn’t working – except on-demand. It works now. Reboot. Wait … HBO channels not working.
3. Called Comcast … they answered quickly and immediately turned on the HBO and other services that weren’t working. Good.
4. In need to figure out how to connect my laptop to the firewire port and record unencrypted QAM shows in HiDef.
   Cost $0.

While I had them on the phone, I complained that my internet speed didn’t test out anywhere near the advertised speed 8M/384K – I get 2M/180K. Transferred to the internet department … he looked at my devices and didn’t see any issues over the last 2 months except the occasional reboot. No errors. Time to schedule a tech. Monday.