Hi everyone,
We currently have WOW's UltraTV service that includes cable, internet and phone. As much as I like this hardware, we just continue to have silly problems with WOW the last year or so (digital break up on tv that takes weeks to resolve, the port forwarding on the gateway randomly not working, and most recently a provisioning problem that left some internet websites unreachable that took 3 weeks to resolve). While I like having a 6-tuner DVR, we can live with 4, and WOW's recent price increases put them well above what I can pay for Uverse.
I've been reading a lot about the service the last week, but I still have some questions I was hoping folks here could help me out with or could provide me with some first-hand feedback on your experiences. Here we go:
1. My biggest concern is being able to get at least 3 HD channels at once. I have a 10' projection theater in my basement, and recordings in SD just don't cut it on that screen. When I enter my address on the website to order, it lists up to 45mbps as the highest speed tier. I understand the bandwidth for tv and internet is shared, and I've seen posts indicating you want to be on at least a 25mbit profile to get 3 HD streams. Question: is there any way to know what profile you're eligible for before they show up to do the install? Can I find out if I'm eligible for the 45bmps tier before hand?
2. Regarding recording storage. It appears there's no options for external storage on the DVR. This is a bit of a bummer for sure. I guess this isn't really a question unless this is available now and the stuff I found Googling was out of date. We DVR a LOT on WOW, but I think that's partially because their HD on demand offering is rather lame (at least compared to Time Warner, which we had previously).
3. Regarding telephone. I am probably going to skip the phone and port our number over to Ooma; $35 for phone just doesn't seem worth it. (If we didn't have small children at home and want 911 service I would probably just use cell phones.) Anyone using Ooma or something similar, and what has been your experience?
4. I can't seem to find a solid answer on upload speeds for the internet. I found the 45mbps tier was 6mpbs up, but couldn't find the upload on the 24mbps tier. If anyone has a link to that information that would be great.
5. I have an Amahi server running, and have had to disable its DHCP because the WOW UltraTV media gateway has to be the DHCP server for the media boxes to work. Can the internet part of the service be set to bridge mode or pass-through so that I can use all the features of my server, or does it need to handle DHCP?
6. My Amahi server has the MediaTomb DLNA server running in it, serving up MP4s and MKVs I've ripped from my Blu-Ray collection (we only have one blu-ray player at the moment, and I wanted to watch these movies on any tv). I saw something about using Twonky media server with the Uverse equipment, so I'm guessing I will be able to access my server and watch my movies. Question: anyone doing this, and what formats are supported? My server won't transcode, so I'm wondering if what I have already ripped will be usable.
I think that's it. I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read my long post and provide me with any links for feedback to help me decide which direction I want to go. I had satellite in the past and would do it in a heartbeat if I didn't have huge trees blocking me to the south.
Thanks,
Gary
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