[mossie]

I pay long distance since I don't have a local number access for my Showstopper to do its nightly dialin. I can get by with a 3 day guide as I'm never away more than that anyway. If I just connect my phoneline every 3 days to call in, will my phone bill be cheaper? Or if it calls in every 3 days will the connection last longer with more info to download and just defeat the whole purpose? Can you program those 10811 numbers in for the prefix for 5 c/min calls?


Thx

 

[Creech]

I only connect my Replay 2001 every 5-7 days. I don't have a telephone jack in the bedroom where it lives. I have not noticed that it takes any more or less time to finish a download based on how long its been 'out of touch'. I think that the unit has to download pretty much all the data every time to ensure that there are no changes in existing data--shows have changed time slots/been pre-empted etc.


I believe you can program in prefixes...you might want to do a search here to be sure. I think I remember a thread about 6 months back that explains exactly how to do it.


Cheers!

Matthew in CO.

 

[Ricardo]

how do you get connected to the internet?? maybe you would like to read this
Convert ShowStopper to completely manual operation?

or this
Maybe a long distance fix...

 

[riker]

Your phone bill will be cheaper because a good chunk of the time is taken by the connection setup time and the scanning for new data to download. If you skip all that, the extra time to download the extra data is less then the time you save by avoiding the connection setup. But, keep in mind it's not just the future you need to consider. Replay does not update it's listings until the DAY of the broadcast so your data will always be out of date. For example, the Buffy episode this week was extended by 10 minutes. That change to the guide did not show up until the morning of the showing. If you only dialed in every few days and missed that night's call, your Buffy recording would have terminated 10 minutes early and you'd have been really pissed I'm sure (If you like the show that is... bleck...). So what you save in money, you may lose in reliability of recordings. It's your call. But are you sure there are no local numbers? Others have indicated that they put in zip codes of neighboring big cities and often times get numbers in the list that are local to them but didn't show up under their zip code. Something to try some day.

 

[barmar]

If you only call in every few days, you'll miss lots of last-minute schedule changes. For instance, the extra 10 minutes on the musical "Buffy" didn't show up in the guide until the morning before the show.


For some reason, even though many of these schedule changes are in the news several days in advance, RTV doesn't pick them up until the last minute.

 

[mossie]

I don't think I would want just a manual setup, without any schedules, since I'm addicted now to the search features. And every 3 or even maybe 5 days between downloads, I think I can deal with. A very important show I want to watch I can just double check another schedule before recording.


There are no local numbers, but I pay about $27 per month extra for an area calling plan where I can call a replay number without toll charges. But I'm thinking about dropping the area calling since I don't use it for much else.


Anyone been able to connect with 243 zones using a calling card which first has to dial an 1-800 number?



Thx

 

[Ricardo]

two things,

1) you didn't answered my question, how do you get connected to the internet?? and

2) you didn't read the hole thread in Convert to manual operation where i explain a way to made local calls to your ISP doing a little modification on your software, so your unit will be not manual, it will be using your ISP account to get the data through a local call, if you access the internet through the phone or it is a cheaper option against long distance calls ($27 p/m)

 

[mossie]

Ricardo,


I use a dialup 56K connection, Win98.


Honestly, I became lost in the long distance fix thread. Until a more straight forward approach is layed out for the laymen, I'm afraid I'm stuck with long distance.


In the meantime I believe I'll try the calling card approach with the 243 zones force connect every 3 days for schedule downloads. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm assuming I can dial the 1-800 calling card number and enter my pin# and as soon as I hear the dialtone begin the net connect and hang up my phone and the replay should dial out. Shouldn't this work?


10 calls * 5 min * 3c/min= $1.50 per month I can live with.

 

[mossie]

Well I have been waiting til my schedule gets down to 1 day then doing a force connect to download new schedules. My connections have been lasting from 45 to 55 minutes the last 3 times I've done that. The last couple of nights I have left my phone line plugged in after a successful connect the night before, and my last 3 connect times lasted 6 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes. I have cable and dish network.


The only thing I can figure is that the entire schedule isn't downloaded every night. It must look at the schedule that I already have, and just updates it with changes, and downloads one more day of the schedule.


I'm not having any cheaper phone bills by calling in once a week; I might as well let it dial in every night.


I did find a cheaper long distance solution by using onesuite.com calling cards with the zip dial option (don't have to enter pin# when calling from my home phone). I plug in the 1 800 calling card # in for the prefix with 5 pauses. It's been working perfectly. 2.9 cents/min with taxes included is saving me some money. I use it for all my long distance now with the 1 800 # programmed in with speed dial. I figured out my 7.5 cent/min rate I was paying ended up being 10 cents/min after all the taxes were added in on my phone bill. So my long distance costs was slashed by 2/3rds.