June 27, 2007 (Revised October 18, 2007)

Developer: Cavalier TV
Price: $65/month and higher, depending on options

Many phone companies offer DSL broadband internet services, and recent legal changes now allow telephone companies to offer television services to compete with cable television providers. With increased DSL speeds, internet digital television is now possible. In our region, Cavalier Telephone & TV has begun providing DTV as a package with either telephone, internet, or both.

Installation

During installation, everything was setup by a Cavalier technician at no cost. He split the phone line at the utility box, creating a dedicated phone line and a dedicated DSL line. A single DSL filter was installed at the utility box, eliminating the need for DSL filters inside our home. He added DSL-only phone jacks to provide internet and TV.

An upgraded DSL modem and router were installed, with one Ethernet connection for internet and three jacks for TV set-top boxes. Our Wi-Fi router and two Amino IP TV set-top boxes were plugged into the DSL modem with cables provided by the tech. Each Amino box offers three types of signal output: coaxial, composite (RCA), and S-video. All of our equipment has S-video inputs, so that was used for the connection between the TVs and boxes.

The tech entered a few codes into the set-top boxes, rebooted them, and our new DTV services were working. Each Amino box comes with a universal remote, which he politely configured for us before completing the installation. The installation and customer service provided by the Cavalier technician were excellent, and much better than we have experienced from any cable company.

Features

The basic service offers 115 channels of digital television and 55 digital music channels. Additional packages are available with more channels based on lifestyle, foreign language, sports, and movies. While HDTV is currently unavailable, we were told that it was in development and should be available by the end of 2007.

Each Amino box has options for "On Demand" pay-per-view movies, a channel guide, television schedules, program information, and a recent Caller ID listing showing the last 10 incoming phone calls. At the time of this review, no free "On Demand" content was provided. Pay-per-view movie selections were available, but none were recent enough to be of interest.

(October 18, 2007) The Amino boxes have no scheduled programming to automatically change channels at a selected time for recording. It is impossible to record programs on different channels when not present to manually change the channel on the Amino box.

Quality

The same problems that affect digital cable also affect Cavalier TV. Some channels are not as well encoded, with noticeable compression artifacts during scenes with frequent text or camera movement. There are also occasional periods of signal dropout, with pixelated Tetris-like display of video until the digital signal is corrected.

One interesting issue is a delay between input from the remote and response from a set-top box. Changing channels or activating other features often takes seconds, which makes traditional "channel surfing" impossible. After a few days we adapted to using the channel guide to browse through programs of interest, but even after changing our habits the delay was often somewhat annoying.

The digital music stations are varied enough to appeal to most tastes, although we noticed the music often starts "skipping" after playing for two or more hours. Even worse, a song's track information is often displayed as white on a dark background and the bright channel logos remain in the same position 75% of the time. This is a kiss-of-death for CRT televisions, since extended use will cause burn-in.

The on-screen Caller ID feature was initially amusing, since it means dedicated couch potatoes can remain seated without having to get up to see who called. The first time we tried to record a television program, we were no longer amused because the Caller ID display can not be turned off. It is unpleasant to have a persistent telemarketer's phone number repeatedly displayed throughout a recorded video.

One of the biggest improvements with the new service is the lack of inserted cable advertisements. While there are still just as many ads, they are not for local car dealers and the cable company. Not watching the same cable company ads several times each hour makes the television experience much more relaxing.

There are also fewer infomercials during early morning hours, and the originally scheduled programming by the cable networks is available — unlike with our previous cable television provider, which preempted the original cable network programming with infomercials.

Reliability

While we were hoping that Cavalier TV would be a radical improvement over digital cable, it currently appears to be a tradeoff. The overall quality is higher, but the reliability is not. The Amino set-top boxes sometimes appear to "freeze," no longer registering input from a remote or displaying content. This should not be confused with the sluggish behavior previously mentioned. These lock-ups can occur after various events.

• After changing channels, every so often the new channel will appear but then will be unresponsive to remote control. This is most common with digital music stations after a few hours of play.
  
  
• Engaging the channel guide will occasionally result in a black screen and no appearance of the guide.
  
  
• A set-top box may not respond after being unused for several hours (such as in the morning when we wake up).
  
  
• After a test of the Emergency Alert System, the on-screen alert message does not always disappear and the channel becomes "locked" without recognizing new input.
  
  
• Periodically the on-screen Caller ID will not go away, and the channel cannot be changed or other features activated.

Once an Amino box stopped responding for an extended time, the only solution we found was to unplug the power from the affected box for a few minutes, plug the power back in, and wait for the box to cycle through the boot process. We are uncertain if the troubles are from the Amino boxes, networking, server response, or a combination. One box would continue to work perfectly even if another box did not.

(October 18, 2007) The reliability problems have continued, with the Amino set-top boxes requiring a reboot at least once a day. About once a week that fails to correct the problem, and the DSL modem must also be rebooted by unplugging it for 60 seconds and then powering it back up. It would be significantly more convenient if there were power switches on any of the hardware devices.

Of course, some growing pains are to be expected for a new service. While all of these issues do not appear on a daily basis, we hope they are resolved sooner than later.

Results: Average

While we only gave Cavalier TV a rating of 3/5, it is important to note that our previous cable television provider would have been ranked lower. Even with the aforementioned technical hiccups, we find Cavalier TV to be an improvement over our previous cable service. The channel selection is rounded and diverse, and the pricing is attractive. Unlike our previous cable provider, there is no contract or minimum requirement for any of the packages.

It is a great thing to have an alternative to cable and satellite television options. Competition in the marketplace will only lead to better services. Once the technical issues are resolved and HDTV becomes available, Cavalier TV will be much more highly recommended.