can i turn off the modem?

You might take a look at this thread .


It involves hacking the hard drive to change connection times.


Other than having to delete all those did not connect messages, and maybe having to stop it from trying to connect while you're watching something, it was no big deal for me anyway.

thanks. mostly i'm just worried that there might be a greater chance of the modem breaking prematurely as a result of it trying to connect unsuccessfully several times each night. since it will never actually connect on it's own i would have liked to prevent the unnecessary 21+ weekly connection attempts. guess i'll just have to hope it lasts.

I'd say most modem failures are from electrical surges. So since your not keeping the phone line connected all the time anyway, you should be OK. Even though I have mine hooked up to a surge protector, I unplug the phone line when its stormy. The modem can't be repaired without sending in the unit and without the modem, it's pretty useless. Course they like to update their schedules the last day, so you could end up missing something you want to record.


I used to connect twice a week, but I got a local # added last week.

Has anyone tried those Radio Shack wireless phone jacks? It's basically 2 boxes. One is near an existing phone line and the other is at an electrical outlet where you need the phone line. I've never used one myself, but this might be a better solution then just connecting up once a week.

i totally forgot about that option! i had looked into it a while back but had decided to skip it as i had dsl at the time and didn't want any more service problems. now that i've switched to cable i will look into it again. thanks for reminding me!

No problem, let us know if it works out for you.