I’ve been with Centurylink one month now. I figured I’d write myself a report just to keep track and share results with you all as well for reference in case you also are thinking of switching to Centurylink.

Billing – 15.00 Internet installation fee was found on my bill. Did anyone care to tell me or make me aware of this in advance? No.

Tech Support – I have used their tech support on 2 post installation issues (on 2 separate incidents maybe 1.5 weeks apart).
A. TV images freezing up/locking up.
– Was told by tech support to unplug the Cisco DDR2200. I did for 30 seconds. I rebooted each stb in the house. This did not fix the issue, which resulted in a on-site visit.
– On-site tech noted the issues. Performed troubleshooting from the Cisco DDR2200 coax out and saw red on his meter. Went outside and tested each line into the home – all were good. Then tested through the splitter, no good. Replaced splitter (this was a one month old splitter I presume). The meter tested good from the Cisco DDR2200. We tried watching tv and the lockups remained. Next, he installed the latest firmware on the DDR2200. We tested again – all good.
The software version on the cisco is now at DDR2200B-NA-AnnexA-FCC-V00.00.03.45.3E. Unfortunately I did not capture what it was prior. (so this post will serve as future reference).

B. Complete loss of internet and cable.
– Before i realized i had a complete loss of my isp, i tried resetting my stb. No luck. I called into tech support. They had me check DSL and Internet lights on the Cisco 2200 and they were solid. They had me unplug the Cisco, wait 30 seconds and plug it back in. Not long after I heard the tv start spewing noise (which meant it had signal again and I tested internet and voila problem solved).

A couple items of interest:
1. The on-site tech mentioned that the Cisco’s get replaced often and shipped back to Cisco. Not good.
2. I’m noticing a trend with the Cisco 2200. Also not good.

Outside of the 2 issues above, the cable and internet have worked well. I am view much more hd then I did with Brighthouse. In my eyes the picture looks the same from both providers. I really enjoy the additional functionality I have with the Motorola set top boxes than I did with the Scientific Atlanta boxes provided to be by Brighthouse (seemed ancient). Changing channels is fast (was slow on Brighthouse), I like pausing tv in one room and picking it up in another (no competition from Brighthouse when I explained to them i was going to switch), I like the dashboard on my stb, I like to view diagnostic info on my stb which i can with Centurylink’s.

Still chugging along..

Brighthouse has been the only solution in our neighborhood that best fit our needs for the longest time, but it’s come time for us to try another carrier. Prior to recent, the other option we had was to get broadband and satellite tv (in Florida, no thanks). We had a Brighthouse solution which was composed of a hd dvr and broadband (10Mbps). Pretty straight forward solution but the price and the fact that another service is available offering a better package at a better price has got us thinking we will switch.

Centurylink started pushing a new service called “Prism” in our neighborhood recently so my wife and I decided to see what it’s all about. (click here for details)The service includes 2 boxes (1 hd dvr, 1 hd). They share the hard drive from the dvr so recordings can be watched in either room. Of course, broadband (10Mbps) is also included (wireless router also included).

After 1 week of testing the cable and internet I have to say I am pretty pleased and am going to officially disconnect Brighthouse this week.

Brighthouse: They were reliable. The cable was ok but had some jitter (Max Headroom type stuff) that would happen on occasion and I’d call in and they’d give me the same routine as always – we’re checking on that. That’s all I’d ever hear from their tech support. I did like that they had cable that did not require a box for every tv. Is it worth it though? We’ll see.. we have to give this other company a shot. I did call and see if Brighthouse would compete with the Centurylink package and what I got was an attitude from the sales person on the other side of the phone when I made my call. That kind of left me a little bitter – made me feel like they (Brighthouse) are arrogant and thought they had the better service (best thing since sliced bread comes to mind) and they may have it but it gave me the extra push to try someone else.

Centurylink: After a week of their service (broadband and cable) I have to admit I am pleased. I’ve called in a few times to test the support and they’ve answered relatively quickly and been supportive of my needs. I don’t like the fact that a box is required for every tv but I agreed to that. I don’t like the included wireless router (a Cisco 2200 that’s a/b/g). I’ve taken care of that by disabling the wireless and attached my own Asus rt-n56u. The other issue involved port forwarding to my internal network but I have since resolved that by enabling it on the Cisco. I was given the username and password (user:user) to the router and I poked around and tinkered with that to get it working as I desired. Dynamic DNS is also supported by the Cisco but I have a script I run on a linux box that handles that for me – so no need to make changes but nice to know the Cisco handles it.

That said, we’re moving forward with this.. Hello Centurylink… Bye Bye Brighthouse.

Update: When Centurylink performed the install I was taking care of my son which sets limits on the monitoring i was not able to perform over the centurylink installers. Because of that I missed :
1. One stb (set top box) was not configured. That was actually ok because it enabled me to test calling into tech support which went well. (ding for the installer tho)
2. The (unused) coax cables were nicely crimped with new ends but were left dangling. There wasn’t much thought put in by the current installer about my future business (ex:adding a cable box). They should have taken some more time, labelled items, and wired things up better – perhaps a larger splitter and connected cables or a dummy splitter for those loose cables.

Update 2: just took back the Brighthouse gear and cancelled service. While there 3 people overheard my conversation with the Brighthouse rep (specifically when i was asked reason for cancellation, my answer: ” you finally have a competitor” then the next question was, who; my answer was “centurylink”. The final question was why? I stated better offer then current Brighthouse offers which was 2 HD capable boxes, dvr, and 10mbps internet for under 90 bucks.. the brighthouse rep shook his head stating clearly we can’t compete with that. Two ladies started discussing Centurylink immediately while the 3rd person in the office met me outside to ask me more.

Goos stuff!!

Gartner: The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2012.
– Nothing really new here, in my opinion, but good to hear it once again.
Source:
Link

The 20 Most Innovative Startups In Tech
– Love to hear how tech is being used here. Some I had heard of like TaskRabbit, CodeAcademy, Quora, Kickstart (very interesting one, for me), . Hadn’t heard of Kaggle, Skillshare, Sphero (love this one) only 129 bucks by the way (Xmas present, hint hint), Dwolla (ingenious, get those cc companies!!), ZocDoc, BankSimple, Joor (like what was done here – used tech to breakdown a barrier, love it), and others – I’d name them all but the web page has some issues – hopefully it’s repaired when you head out that way.
Source:
Link

TechVenture 2011 Orlando
–Would love to attend this, sounds interesting. My link below takes you to the schedule..
Link

I’ve also been reading quite a bit about Steve Jobs from all over (book, 60 minutes, PBS Documentary, etc.).

Starting to see and read 2012 predictions… I’ll start with this one..
–Lots of goodies here, Cloud knowledge is HOT and only getting hotter (so true), Data Scientists, yeah hadn’t the clue but interesting.. especially if you are just choosing a career or turning yours around, Simplicity (its welcome, anywhere I can get it!), Mobile and Security _ I’ve seen these 2 on lists in the past and don’t guess they will drop off for sometime in the near future.
Link

Chuck

Thank you

and

Thank you Boston for starting a good trend. This is just plain good politics.

I’ve had this itch for a media center for a long time, but just didn’t get over the hump because of this or that – too much power consumption, too big a box, Windows, Linux, etc etc. Finally, I kind of settled for something and am happy I did…. I bought the Viewsonic VMP75. The driving force behind it was that I wanted to be able to play movies for my son in our family room without having to use the laptop we had been using in recent months.

So far I think I have had this device for roughly a couple months and wow, what a box. I do not have the network attached so I use it as a standalone device with a usb hard disk attached. The usb hard disk has tons of kids/personal movies on it in various formats and man, this thing plays them all with NO issues. I am extremely pleased about that – that was a huge concern on my list. I was under the impression I would have to convert from one format to another or the sound wouldn’t play – yada yada.. none of that. This thing eats (plays) movies for lunch – actually, at this house 24×7 It also shows photos and plays music off the hard disk as well.

Whenever I create new home movies or rip a movie to hard disk, I save them on a folder on my laptop and when I get to it, I disconnect the hard drive from the vmp75, connect it up to my laptop and copy them over and reconnect the drive to the media player. It’s not that often that this happens which is a good thing – but I have to say I am anxious to test out the network connectivity but from what I have seen in general, I’m thinking I will not be too impressed with streaming my personal video to this thing (will post my opinions on that here as well).

So far, I have been extremely impressed with the playability of the movies, sound, picture, etc. All good news. The media player just plays the files in the folder continuously so when one movie finishes, it moves right on to the next one – which is great. Keeps my son on his toes for what is next

The price of this device was just under 70 bucks, which is not bad at all…power consumption is at 6.5W, which is also a plus. This device is an appliance so it loads up (it does have a rather lengthy boot up process, but that’s minor because we don’t boot it that often) to a nice simple easy to read and operate gui with simple remote control operation. So far, for using this device as a standalone (non-networked) device, I am really liking it.

I tossed around the ideas of getting another PS3, another laptop (older one), wii (well that idea went down the tubes no thanks to the last lightning storm we had), blu ray disc player with integrated media player,etc but for the price I took a gamble on this Viewsonic media player and quite honestly am happy I did.

Hopefully soon I will get the network on it up and running and let you know how that works because this box has a lot more to offer then just playing movies, photos and music from a hard drive.

Chuck