Upgrades & a happy new year
Looks like I haven’t written anything since a few weeks. Why? I don’t know to be honest. Maybe because I was hiding from Christians and their Christmas crap or because nothing interesting and blog able happened lately. (And no, K-ON season 2 isn’t worth mentioning. There are more qualified series, deserving another season out there. K-ON is just a moe blob, fanservice anime. It’s way to overhyped.)
I was quite inactive on the blogosphere lately, for several reasons I will discuss in 2010 for sure. Sorry for that.
Now on to the topic:
As some of you might know… my bandwidth sucks big time. Until now that is. The chaps from Telekom Austria finally noticed that I would need more speed here in the middle of nowhere in the Austrian countryside. And as soon as it became available I ordered:
The AON Super Kombi!
- 30Mbit down, 3Mbit up
- AON TV + HD package (with a movie library ~300 movies available atm)
- Phone of course
Delicious boxes get! Thompson VDSL router, splitter, AON Mediabox, Ruckus Media Acess Point.
Everything set up and ready to go… no wait, unfortunately NOT.
My home network as it was planned:
And how it looks like at the moment:
The problem is that the AON Mediabox has to be connected to port 3 or 4 on the Thomson router. And as the Netgear router didn’t allow me to just tunnel trough, I have to use it as WLAN acess point. I’m able to share media from my PC to the Mediabox, but only if the PCs are in the same IP address range as the Mediabox of course.
So far so good. There’s another little problem though. The Thomson gateway has no option to open it’s NAT. Why is this important? To do several things, for example play Steam games, especially Modern Warfare 2!
You can open the ports manually via the router’s web interface usually. Unfortunately those Telekom idiots decided to lock all of the useful features with the latest firmware. Wrote an Email to their tech support and looks like they are still deciding if they should provide me with the former firmware or not…
Oh and as for the bandwidth: I didn’t expect to get 30Mbit out of this line but at least 16-25.
But I only get 14Mbit down und 1Mbit upspeed atm. ORZ
Yah, it’s better than the former 4Mbit, but still not enough… there is nothing I can do about it though. Only noticing it when I’m downloading stuff anyway.
The rest of the package works as it should. Really love the Mediabox. (The black box above. That thing on top is one of the wireless Ruckus media access points.)
IP TV is really great. It comes with a bunch of nice features…
…like a movie library containing ~300 movies (some of them in HD)and TV channels in HD…
…news, weather forecast, traffic and what not as well as recorded news shows of the last few days, hundreds of international radio stations and what have you.
But the best feature is the possibility to share stuff from any PC.
I can simply add the directory or any specific file via the “Telekom Austria Media Client” on my PC.
And there it is on TV.
Unfortunately *.mkv files aren’t support so far. Which means all that lovely HD stuff can’t be watched on TV. Would be great, because SD crap looks not that good on a 52” TV.
They also provide 1GB of online space where I can upload files and access them via the Mediabox on the TV or via any other device for example my iPhone.
Last but not least: A Happy New Year to all of you out there. Thanks for the support in the last year and I’m looking forward to hang out with you guys in the future too.
Looks like I will have a rough start though, as some K-ON fanboys are already plotting something against me for sure, Mr Clarkson wants to hit me with a hammer as I downloaded all those TopGear episodes and some Telekom tech support guys are trying to detonate my router remotely with their new firmware.
Oh and by the way: What’s up with all those “anime of the decade” posts and such? A decade goes from January, 1. xx01 until December, 31. xx10! Still one more year to go!
Happy New Year already! ^^
Personally, I love “K-ON!” and am quite excited about the second season! It’s ok if you aren’t a fan of the series, to each is own you know? ^^
Come on, give in to the cuteness of Mio moe moe kyun and Azunyan!
Smithy´s last blog ..K-ON! second season coming
“Unfortunately *.mkv files aren’t support so far. Which means all that lovely HD stuff can’t be watched on TV. Would be great, because SD crap looks not that good on a 52” TV.”
Just buy a WDTV-Box. It works perfect with MKV and scales SD Stuff to Full HD nicely too.
The new Version (IMHO WDTV-Live) should be network-friendly. And its cheap: AFAIK around 110.- € or so.
Happy new year!
Internet with more bandwidth is alwaye better. We changed ourselves from 16 to 25 mbits from 2-3 weeks ago. But I have some errors with the ping too. Even the Technican was here and setup some things. Unfortunatly I wasn’t at home. Only my mother.
The Box is nice, but don’t like the idea that my TV goes via Internet. Why? Your “SD” Program needs 6mbits to work normally. For HD you already need 10mbits or even more. And when your Internet is down, then your TV too. That’s why I don’t want such a thing and stay with my cable tv and cable internet.
We have those “Ruckes” at Telekom too. Pretty expensive such things. Cheaper would be to buy an AC and set it up as a repater.
GREW´s last blog ..December Loot
Happy New Year!
It’s great that you finally get a better connection. I’m always more concerned of the upload speed, I have 10mbit up now which is good enough (~20 down). The mediabox looks nice though, but the thing I hate the most about these systems is that they never support .mkv’s, softsubs and DVD ISO/IMG’s. But I’m sure we’ll see some great solutions to this in 2010!
yonasu´s last blog ..COMA-CHI
@Smithy
Hm, the world isn’t just black or white, so I wouldn’t say I don’t like the show. It’s just all that fanboyism without any backing that bothers me. Yah they are cute but the story… well is there any?
@Fred
Yah, I know it of course. But 110€.. nope. Cause I would need an additional external hardrive too. And I always have to copy stuff from my PC to the external just for that. I’ll go for a HTPC once I have some money. One with a BR drive would cost around 350-400€. A better investment IMO.
@GREW
6Mbit? o_O Usually I have around 12-14Mbit, the Mediabox turned on or of doesn’t have much effect, at least none that is noticable.
AC? Eh, what?
Cable TV is a little bit 1980 in my opinion. It’s basically just standard TV. You can’t scroll trough upcoming shows, mark them and such. If you have no internet.. hm then you are doomed anyway. But when did you ever loose your interwebs connection?
@yonasu
Yah, my upload speed sucks… but on the other hand you are living in the city. I could get 100Mbit lines here in some cities too.. so well, the situation is a little bit different.
I know what would be the best solution but would cost money of course.
mmm, Erotik channel..~~~Lol.
Happy New Year bro!!
phossil´s last blog ..Happy New Year
@GREW
6Mbit? o_O Usually I have around 12-14Mbit, the Mediabox turned on or of doesn’t have much effect, at least none that is noticable.
AC? Eh, what?
Cable TV is a little bit 1980 in my opinion. It’s basically just standard TV. You can’t scroll trough upcoming shows, mark them and such. If you have no internet.. hm then you are doomed anyway. But when did you ever loose your interwebs connection?
Well, our service /Telekom/ works like this:
You need minimum an 16Mbits bandwidth that you can watch TV via Internet. 6Mbits are for the Reciever if its working.
Accses Point.
Well, if you install an Digi-Box like you, you can have the same things. KabelBW already offer them.
Don’t ask when. It happens at time you want to play or something like that! It’s everywhere and nowhere!
GREW´s last blog ..December Loot
Do wonder how much is the 30Mbit line there…
Upgrading the internet before the New Year, what a great way to start 2010!
Happy New Year _Hikky!
Oh I totally forgot that you own a little sister!
I can see alot if Otakus raging there XD
Happy New Year Hikky!
Happy New Civilian Year!
And you’re wrong about the decades, for the same reason the 19th century is 1800-1899. You don’t start counting years with “1″, you start at “0″, so the first decade is 0000-0009 AD, which is ten years. Likewise, the first century AD is not 101-200(or 100-199), but 00-99.
That IP TV looks hot. I still only have 2.5 Mbit download, and to be honest, I’m not too bothered by it. Sure, 5 Mbit download would be nice, but it’s not like I can’t do without. Also, they are currently working on expanding the super fast internet infrastructure, don’t remember its name, which allows 100 Mbit download, which is currently only available in the center of the country. But it seems only the cable guys will get it to our territory in the upcoming year, and it’d cost much anyway, heh.
Guy´s last blog ..Geek Music – Carol of the Old Ones
@zh3us
The whole package costs ~45€/month.
Yah, the new year starts quite good. ^^;
@Blowfish
It’s not like in anime… completely tsundere and not moe.
@Guy
As we pointed out on MSN, you were wrong. The 19th century for example goes from 1901-2000. There was no year 0.
As for the speed: You can’t do anything about it, I know that very well. Are you living in a city?
No, I don’t live in a city :-/ So I’ll wait, and wait, heh.
Guy´s last blog ..Geek Music – Carol of the Old Ones
Happy New Year hikky~
Nice upgrade, even though it didn’t quite work out the way you wanted to.
Ahh if I didn’t mention it, I also dread the prospect of another season of “K-off”, like you said, it’s not the existence of the show that bothered me (I can just not watch it right?), it is the overwhelming acceptance of the show and the rampant fanboyism that get me.
Wolfheinrich´s last blog ..1:4 Kos-Mos Version 4 Pre-painted (Cast-off-able)
I must say, the IPTV-Box from the Deutsche Telekom have a much better looking Menu^^”
I know, the functionality counts. That “Ruckes” are so expensive, cause they use the 5Ghz frequency.
Anyway, 14Mbit/s per second aren´t bad and VDSL also^^
Happy new year.
Wolfheinrich, I think people want to have fanboyism, in fact, it makes them feel good, both to be a part of something, and to lose their inhibitions and go wild. Just like adults who like being fans of sports teams and/or drinking alcohol
Guy´s last blog ..Loli (Puppy) in a Box!
happy new year, always nice to start the new year with tech loot.
PS no bashing K-ON it’s crap but it’s likable overhyped crap
Jamaipanese´s last blog ..Top 10 Posts on Jamaipanese.com from 2009
Not happy with 14Mbits? I’m more than happy if I can reach close to 14 but 7.5Mbits is the fastest our cable link can go because of the distance from our local exchange. I’ve noticed upgrading to ADSL2+ wouldn’t make a difference since the hardware at our local exchange hasn’t been upgraded yet. :S
I really like ur new setup. A very well organized wireless network.
I know it’s awfully late, but happy new year. ^^
Optic´s last blog ..Music Monday ~ Kanako Ito – Sky Kuraddo no Kansokusha