The Problem with Triple-Play Providers

I am a cable quadruple customer. VoIP, broadband, TV and the reason I switched from standalone VoIP to cable had to do with dropped packets on my network. After spending days trying to figure out what the problem was with the network I finally threw in the towel and went with cable because I figured they would now own any problems I had. Surprisingly my problems went away as soon as I switched, leading me to believe that either my old cable modem was at fault or the ATA from my VoIP service provider which intercepted every packet on the network.

Yesterday I wrote about Jon Arnold’s analysis of Vonage and I said it would be sad if Vonage was to go away. Quite simply, pure-play VoIP companies do a better job in general of providing VoIP service than the integrated players. They generally give you access to features you can’t get from the larger triple-play companies. I mentioned specifically the fact that pure-play VoIP providers allow things like a do-not-disturb feature allowing you to set times when callers are told that you aren’t taking calls. This is great when you have people who like to call very late at night or early in the morning.

In addition, they allow you to take your ATA with you anywhere and some like Packet8 allow you to upgrade inexpensively to video calling and even give you access to an application allowing you to make VoIP calls easily from your cell phone.

Recently, I have found yet another area where cable services are lacking. As I mentioned, I watch time-shifted TV via a DVR and have found that the device sometimes stops recording before the program is over. In other words you miss the last 30 seconds to a minute of your favorite programs. To date, I haven’t found a way to solve this problem and calls to the cable provider did not help.

But still, one wonders if the engineers at Scientific Atlanta/Cisco use their own products or is my cable provider to blame? Did they tell Cisco to *not* record a few minutes on each side of a program to save hard disk space?

Since I have never used a TiVo, I have to take the word of my colleagues that TiVo has a feature allowing you to record a few minutes before and after your program to ensure you don’t miss anything.

For people that don’t know any better, integrated services such as triple-play work but I wonder if customers begin to realize how much better pure-play services can be, would they still use integrated providers? I know I am now seriously thinking of switching to TiVo.

  • Court
    February 20, 2008 at 9:32 am

    If the DVR from your cable company doesn’t have the ability to start or stop a few minutes to hours early or later, I would be very surprised. I have been through three through various cable companies and all of them had that ability.

  • Rich Tehrani
    February 20, 2008 at 10:27 am

    The best thing in the world would be that this is my user error. I did check the settings extensively and my cable company did confirm this cannot be done. I am very glad to hear that other cable companies do not have this problem.

  • MegaZone
    February 20, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    TiVo certainly has the ability to start recordings early and/or end them late – known as ‘padding’ to TiVo users. TiVo also has ‘Overlap Protection’, and ‘clipping’, which allows them to record programs that overlap by up to 5 minutes by ‘clipping’ the lower priority recording. (Of course, all current TiVo models are dual-tuner, so you’d need *three* simultaneous recordings to trigger this.)
    TiVo also has many features I’d expect you don’t have on your cable DVR, like WishList recordings. You can have TiVo search for programs by title, keyword, actor, director, and/or category.
    Or transferring recordings to or from a PC over a network – TiVoToGo. Broadband downloads – TiVoCast. Integration with Amazon Unbox. Playing your digital music and viewing your digital photos over a network. Accessing 3rd party content from partners like Live365, Rhapsody, Music Choice, etc.
    TiVo has loyal users because they simply supply better software and more features – a better service, worth the cost.

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