{"id":129,"date":"2005-03-02T22:33:43","date_gmt":"2005-03-03T03:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techory.com\/blog\/im-done-feeding-the-cable-pig\/"},"modified":"2006-12-11T09:12:40","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T14:12:40","slug":"im-done-feeding-the-cable-pig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/im-done-feeding-the-cable-pig\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m Done Feeding the Cable Pig!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I made a call that I have been waiting a long time to make. I called the Mediacom<\/a> 800 number and said, “cancel all my services!” It felt so good! Then after work today I stopped by the Mediacom offices and returned my cable modem. I did a little dance as I walked out… finally rid of Mediacom! No more poor service. No more constantly increasing rates (Funny thing is, I just got a letter today saying they’re raising rates again!). You’re probably now thinking to yourself, “Scott, you’re crazy… what are you going to do for TV and high speed internet?!?” Well, I’ll tell you. I just got South Slope IPTV.<\/p>\n

My phone company in North Liberty is South Slope Communication Coop.<\/a>, which is part of Iowa Network Services<\/a>, a coalition of rural phone companies in Iowa \"amino<\/a>that have combined their powers to do things that some of the larger phone companies aren’t able to do (or at least aren’t able to do quickly). Right around the first of the year, South Slope started offering television services in addition to their phone service (which I already had) and DSL internet services. I played with the numbers and for about $12 more per month I could get more than seven times the number of channels I currently have (not to mention superior service). I jumped at the chance and signed right up to switch my internet over from Mediacom cable to their DSL and my TV to the their new IPTV system. Last night the the tech guys from South Slope came and got me hooked up.<\/p>\n

The new TV services isn’t really cable or digital cable since it doesn’t come into my residence via coax. It’s probably closer to digital cable than it is to anything. The new video\"amino<\/a> service is IPTV (no, not the place I used to work<\/a>) Internet Protocol Television. It’s a new way to deliver video services that is slowly catching on as more phone companies are getting faster lines and jumping into video delivery. The video is delivered via the phone line instead of coax cable. The phone line connects to a box (with little blinky lights on it) similar to a DSL modem, and from there it sends the signal via an ethernet cable to the cable box which is hooked to the TV. The cable boxes (I should probably say IPTV boxes) are made by a company called Amino<\/a>. I got the AmiNET 110<\/a> which is just a simple cable (IPTV) box. This company also offers a pretty sleep DVR system as well, the AmiNET500<\/a>. Unfortunately South Slope doesn’t support this yet. They told me they’re looking into it. So now I have somewhere near 155 channels plus music channels and video on demand movies. So many channels I don’t know what to watch… not that I really watch that much TV anyway. It just overwhelming compared to the approximately 21 channels I had with Mediacom basic service before (that includes 3 shopping channels and 2 CSpan channels – so it’s more like 15 channels total!). I had a few issues getting my ReplayTV working, but eventually got it configured<\/a>. So far the TV has been working well, and the internet has been flying… and best of all, it’s not Mediacom!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I made a call that I have been waiting a long time to make. I called the Mediacom 800 number and said, “cancel all my services!” It felt so good! Then after work today I stopped by the Mediacom offices and returned my cable modem. I did a little dance as I walked… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}