Verizon FiOS Set Top Box Issues

Firmware download hoses up HDMI port

Verizon pushed down a firmware upgrade for their set top boxes on December 1st, and for the last week anytime you hit the guide function you were forced to see a message touting the new interactive services that the upgrade was enabling. You then needed to hit the OK key to proceed to the program guide, which was a pain, but a relatively small pain compared to the real problems that the upgrade caused for me.

Since the upgrade, my Motorola HD QIP 7000 set top box power cycles constantly when I try to shut it off. It wouldn’t be so bad if the box wasn’t in the bedroom, but it is.

The first night I noticed it, I had fallen asleep with the TV's sleep timer on, only to be awakened by a “Click”. At first I thought it was the TV turning off at the predetermined time, but it kept happening. Click, pause, Click, pause, Click, pause, over and over and over. It was very annoying.

I finally got up, flipped on the lights, and watched as the box first turned on, Click, then cycled through a couple of error code screens (8888 followed by ----), briefly showed the channel display, then… Click, shut itself off, only to repeat the process in an endless cycle. I had to unplug the darn thing so that I could finally get some sleep.

Next day I called Verizon and as soon as I mentioned the 8888/---- error codes, they knew what the problem was. Seems the new firmware update they’re so proud of breaks the HDMI port. When the QIP 7000 is connected via HDMI cable to a TV, and the TV is switched off, the box takes leave of its senses. Everything is fine as long as the TV is on, but once you shut it off, the box starts cycling. Sure enough, when I unplugged the HDMI cable from the TV, the box fell silent.

The good news is, they know what the problem is.

The bad news is, they don’t have a fix for it yet.

Until they do, you need to switch over to a set of component cables. You can also use coax or composite cables, but only component and HDMI give you a Hi Def signal on these boxes. The tech support person apologized for the inconvenience and promised to overnight me a set of composite cables. He also said that once the problem was fixed and I switched back to HDMI, I could hang on to the composite cables, compliments of Verizon. Wowzers, such a deal…

Before I hung up, I asked how they were going to notify me when the problem was fixed. I got put on hold for a minute, and when the tech returned he informed me that I wouldn’t, I should just check and see if the HDMI cable works every once in a while. Nice.

I should mention that I haven’t had any problems with my HD DVR QIP 7216 downstairs; it works fine, HDMI connection and all. This problem seems to be strictly limited to the HD QIP 7000 model, although there’s also a possibility that the problem is with specific types of TV’s. I’ve got the 7000 connected to a 1 year old Vizio and the 7216 connected to a 3 year old Samsung. HDMI connectors and cables are required to be backwards compatible between versions, and the tech never asked me what type of TV I had, so it’s probably not an issue, but you never know. If I get ambitious maybe I’ll try swapping the boxes, just to satisfy my own curiosity.

As soon as the new set of component cables arrived I hooked them up, and the problem is now solved. No more power cycling, and I actually think the picture is a little bit better than it was with the HDMI cable.

How is that possible? Well, it’s hard to explain, but the quality of the picture is determined in large part by how the components (TV and cable box) process the signal being received. There’s a great write up here on the eacoustics forum that explains it better than I can. The quality of the cables also factors in, and the component cables I received today appear to be of much better quality than the HDMI cable they originally gave me.

By the way, while I was waiting impatiently for the arrival of my new component cables, I was unplugging the HDMI cable before I turned things off. It’s a better temporary solution than unplugging the set top box. If you leave the box powered down you’ll not only miss the guide updates, you’ll also miss the fix, when and if they ever send it.

Theo Gets Scutaro, Kraft Getting Chickens

The Sox continued their time honored holiday tradition of buying a new short stop every season with the acquisition of Marco Scutaro. When reached for comment, Theo said his long term goal is to set a Major League record for most players on the payroll that play for other teams and most players at a single position during a given GM’s tenure.

I think he’s already got both of them in the bag. Way to go, Theo!

In other Boston sports news, Robert Kraft has applied for a permit to raise chickens. In a statement to the press, Mr. Kraft said:

"Funding for the Stadium Footbridge has been removed from the stimulus package, and we see this as an innovative way to fund the project. For years my friends have been telling me about the wonderful times they have at this little chicken ranch in Nevada, so I figured why not open one up here. I’m sure the money saved on the flights will be spent on eggs and such. We’ve even been toying with the idea of painting little Pats helmets on the eggs. Very unique. Our slogan will be “Brown Eggs Are Local Eggs, And Local Eggs Are Pats.” I made that up."

And so did I. All kidding aside, although the Sox do seem to be a bit obsessed about finding the “right” shortstop, Scutaro may turn out to be a good acquisition. He’s definitely an offensive upgrade at short, and he really flashed some leather last year, but I liked having Gonzo back. He was a proven commodity from a defensive standpoint, and contrary to peoples fears, he turned out to be no slouch at the plate, either. All in all, I’d rather see them concentrating their efforts on resigning Bay.

As for Mr. Kraft and his chickens, whatever that man wants to do is all right with me. He’s a great guy and he’s done so much for both the franchise and New England in general, that I couldn’t find it in my heart to begrudge him over a few chickens. If he wanted to start an Alpaca farm, I’d be first in line for a big fuzzy hat and matching sweater. They’d be awesome for those late December games…

And speaking of games, don’t be jumping ship on our Pats just yet. I think we all tend to forget that this was a Brady-less team last year, and there’s going to be some fits and starts as they all readjust. Are they a consistent “top tier team”? Of course not, did you really expect them to be? Can they pull it together and close out the season on a high note? Yes, and that would be more than I expected of them. Hey, I’ve watched some pretty bad football over the years, and I’ll tell you this; a team that’s 7-4 with 5 games to go, and a virtual lock on the AFC East, is worth watching.

That is all.

Happy Black Friday!

One of the best things about the Thanksgiving holiday for me is Black Friday, but not for the reasons you’d think.

I love it because it’s one of the few days each year when we have the day off and nothing pressing on our agendas. The day is usually ours to squander as we see fit, and that is a very rare commodity these days.

Our ideal Black Friday involves sleeping in, followed by lounging in our PJ’s, consuming mass quantities of coffee, and pondering the eternal question; “Is it too early to start on those leftover desserts?” The answer, my friends, is that it’s never too early.

What I don’t like about Black Friday is fighting the crowds at the malls and the big box stores in search of bargains. Been there, done that, have the T-shirt. Although there are some great bargains out there, the really good ones (like $179 laptops) are always in short supply, and you need to be in line on Thanksgiving Day just to be a contender when the store opens on Friday. No thanks.

It’s not worth it to me to miss out on Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family and the annual after Thanksgiving slouch fest, just to get a good deal on some material item. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I can afford to pass up any bargains, it’s just that we’ve found out that: A) The downtime is more important to us, and B) A lot of the deals are available online.

Last year we were in need of some Apple products for the holidays, so I thought I'd check out their Black Friday sale and maybe save a little coin. Apple loves to shroud their events in secrecy, and this one was no different. They sent out an email a few days before the holiday that said to check out their website on Friday morning for great deals, so when we awoke, fashionably late, we got on line and found that there was indeed a substantial savings on quite a few items.

Being as it was already late, I called our local Apple retail store to see if the lines were out the door. I found out that they weren’t, but I also found out that the Apple store won't give you a corporate discount along with the Black Friday sale price. That was a bit of a bummer, but the sale prices were still good enough to make us want to saddle up and head down there. That’s when the very helpful sales associate suggested that we log in to the Apple site through our discount program and see if we could get our discount and the sale price that way.

Guess what? We could!

I should have tried to purchase it online right from the get go, but I had some preconceived notion that the best deals could only be had in person. Boy, was I wrong. We ended up getting some great deals, plus the shipping was free. Major items coming directly from Apple (like Macs and iPods) arrive very quickly, usually in just 2-3 days, even if they need to be engraved. By the way, my iPod has “Stayed home on Black Friday and still got this cheaper than you!” on the back.

So, it seems that in this weakened economy Cyber Monday has now become Cyber Weekend for most online merchants, and that’s good with me. Don’t spread it around too much though, I still like to see those shots on the news of the people in line outside of the malls, wrapped up in parkas and trash bags, waiting for the hunt to begin. Now that’s entertainment.

Ooh, gotta go. The news is coming on again!

Pats Whomp Jets 31-14!

Rex and Sanchise cry all the way home. Film at 11.

Full game recap here on BDC.

Problems Creating Clips In Google Reader

Clips are little “boxes of info” you can create in Google Reader that neatly display your most recent news feeds on your website, blog or Facebook page. You select the feed folder you want to display the content of, click “create clip”, and then customize it to your liking. When you’re satisfied with the look and content, you simply copy the HTML code Reader has created for you and embed it on your web page. The result is a neat little box containing the “x” most recent posts from any given feed. You can see the results over in my right hand border (Tech News, Patriots News, etc.).

Recently I started having problems creating clips. I’d click on create a clip, and nothing would happen except for an “errors on page” message at the bottom of my Explorer window. What’s supposed to happen is that Reader pops a small window that allows you to configure your clip. This was extremely frustrating for me, as I had a clip that had stopped updating. It either contained some bad code, or the source of the feed had stopped sending updates, and I wanted to replace it. There’s not much entertainment value for my readers when the same 5 headlines have been in my Celtics News clip for close to a month.

I did some searching through the Google Reader help files and came up empty, although I did find that people were having a similar issue with the “email a link” function, which is part of the same tool set as “create a clip”. The answer there was to create an exception for Google in your pop up blocker settings, and after reading it, the light went on inside my head.

I remembered that there had been quite a few security fixes pushed down for Explorer recently, and I also remembered that links in my received Gmail documents had started requiring me to “temporarily allow pop ups” too work. Hmmm, a pattern perhaps?

Yes!

I went into pop up blocker settings, added Google to my allowed sites, and Viola… create a clip was working again!

The screen shot above shows my blocker settings now. To access the settings window, go to “Tools”, “Pop up blocker”, “Pop up blocker settings”, then add the address www.google.com

As you can see in the screen shot (click to enlarge) this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this. You can also add wildcards as I did with Verizon. Some of their pages use www22 instead of plain old www, tricky devils, so I entered *.verizon.net.

So, my Celtics news clip is working again, I’m happy, and maybe I’ve just made you happy too!

I’ve Been Waiting All Day For Sunday Night…

Only to be bitterly disappointed.


That is all.

Gigaware In-line Control With HD Radio For iPhone

As soon as I pull the trigger on the Griffin Navigate I talked about in the previous post, I find this: the Gigaware In-line Control with HD radio for iPhone. It allows remote control of your iPhone or Touch, and when used in conjunction with the Gigaware HD Radio app it doubles as an HD tuner.

Sounds great in theory, but I’m cool with the Navigate for now. The Gigaware costs a whopping $79.99 and it doesn’t have an LCD screen like the lower priced Navigate. The app only works on devices running iPhone OS 3 to boot, and I still haven’t made that jump on my Touch. That also means that it wouldn’t work with my 3rd gen Nano, and that’s the device I like to carry around when I’m traveling light. Plus the few user reviews available list poor HD reception and noise distortion as major issues.

So, as nice as it would be to have HD Radio on my iPod, this isn’t the device for me, at least not yet. I’ll wait ‘til the reviews and the price get better.

To Add An FM Tuner, Or Not To Add An FM Tuner…

That is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to wait, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and add one now?

The device I speaketh of is my iPod Touch, and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that I suffer is that when I’m out and about, like today, and the Pats (insert your favorite team here) are on, I need to carry my little micro AM/FM radio with me. Apple didn’t see fit to bestow upon my Touch an FM tuner, so I have little choice in the matter. They added one to the latest generation Nano and iPhone, but sadly, not to the Touch.

Luckily, there’s an FM tuner that works with the Touch, iPhone and 3rd gen and up Nanos, The Griffin Navigate. It’s a slick little inline remote with an OLED screen, and it doubles as an FM tuner. It can also be used with Griffin’s free iFM Radio Browser app that will look up all the available stations in your area and auto program them into your Touch or iPhone. Pretty cool!

Ay, but here’s the rub; 9to5Mac and other sources are reporting that there’s a dormant chip in the 3rd gen Touch, that when activated will allow both Wireless N and FM receive and transmit. Hmmm, sounds a little like their Bluetooth chip that an upgrade, for a price, to OS 3 gave greater functionality to. It’s been hypothesized that Apple may unveil this little on board extra as soon as this January.

So, is it worth shelling out 50 bucks for FM tuner functionality today, when the device may be unnecessary in a couple of months?

For me, yes. I have a 2nd gen Touch and a 3rd gen Nano. The Navigate works with both devices and neither has the dormant onboard capability, but if you own a new 3rd gen Touch, nuh-uh. Wait awhile, and you may save yourself some money. 50 bucks will buy you a pretty decent dinner, or a couple of my T-shirts!

By the way, the Patriots bested those knaves from Miami today, and I would have missed our plucky knight's great moment of victory, were it not for the lowly FM broadcast.

What say you now, Master Porter?