A follow up to share what I learned. The Smart HDTV is now working and delivering streaming movies to our bedroom via the WiFi. The only wires to the HDTV (Vizio) is the house A/C electricity. 1) Don't change the WiFi password in a router using the WiFi interface, use a Ethernet interface. This is based on experience with 5 year old Netgear (low end) Router still 54 mb capable 802.11n? I tried and the Router ended up locked up. The password change may gone astray in any case the Router could not access the internet for connection to either the Ethernet or the WiFi. Lights on the Router showed both the Internet and WiFi okay. I replaced with a newer Netgear which supports 150 mb and has more Internet based features. 2) My Smart HDTV (all?) does provide for inputting all keyboard characters via an on-screen keyboard(s). I got in trouble because the number only input on the hand controller made me decide to change my Router password to all numbers, which I did on the new Router. Still better, much faster putting in numbers from the channel keypad than to use the "Hunt and Peck" on screen keyboard. The (my) HDTV does not have a touch screen so one has to click the pointer around the keyboard to pick out inputs. This into my view only after I entered the all numeric password and hit the "OK" - the next screen was the subject keyboard - which I no longer needed, but did need later when logging onto Netflix. The operation involves being in a data field, input any leading numbers (best) from the hand held keys then hit the "OK". An on screen keyboard then appears. If nothing more is needed, i.e., all numbers, click down to the "Enter". Side benefit: then new Router specifies Windows 8 compatibility - the old one was XP, maybe Vista qualified and some older Routers have problems with newer OS. The HDTV showing a Netflix movie had no detectible breaks (buffering?). I thought maybe that is because of the new Router, as my W8 computer had (and still has) some breaks in Netflix streaming, not sure about other services. The W8 laptop still exhibits this problem. One last start up issue on the HDTV. After logging on to my WiFi I pushed the Netflix button on my controller and Netflix started to load but failed. I started over again, it failed again. I then tried the Amazon application and it too failed. I then when into "chat" with Netflix technical support (they came on quickly) after the exchange of information on the situation on my end the support person typed, try youtube, so I did, and it come up/worked. I typed back the smart HDTV must be learning or youtube is more fault tolerant, No response, but I then tried Netflix and it worked and continues to work.

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is carried on the upper bandwidth of a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line. This is why you can be on the Internet via your DSL connection and still carry on a telephone conversation even though you only have one phone line. If you aren't using a DSL filter, you shouldn't really be hearing static on the line. It would be more of a steady "hissing" sound. And if you do have a DSL filter, properly installed, then the DSL shouldn't cause any extra sounds on your POTS line. If I were you, I'd do the following -- first, have your husband disconnect the red wire that he connected to the other red wire. Any problems caused by the problem on the line on the highway wouldn't have anything to do with the red wires, so if your service was OK previously without those being connected (and because your husband doesn't really know what he connected), they should be undone. Then, check to see if the static has been eliminated. If you still have static after the red wires are undone, then physically unplug EVERY phone in the house from the jacks. Then, one by one, plug in a phone and check to see if there is static. Often a phone will "go bad" and cause static.

Exactly. That's why my phone is 8 years old. It has no bells and whistles, just calling. Since I operate a business from home, I'm not out and about as much as most, and while I'd like to have email and web options on a new phone for when I am away, I can't justify paying the $20-$30 for those options, plus more for a new calling plan. IF I use 150 minutes a months, I'm lucky. And with my current, discontinued $35/month plan, I don't want to pay more per month for the same plan just because I got a new phone. So, I will keep this one until it dies. So far, it's working great and the battery lasts 5-6 days even when the phone is on (but not used), unlike most batteries today which last 2-3 days. I looked into the pre-pay plans and that's not for me even though I don't use many minutes.

Most of the higher end houses I work on, I try to warn the customers of cable, phone, sat installs and tell them it is best to basically keep the installer out of the house as much as possible. Home run all the rooms back to a central board or enclosure and terminate everything and buy equipment (like cable amps, network switch). Bring out the main RG6 and Cat5 feed to the outdoors and let them take it from there. Homeowners get confused when they are paying me $100 plus per drop when the cable company says $30 but just have to remind them what $30 gets them ($5-10 worth of cable, the service van's expense, $5-10 for the labor). Then there have been a few times they've still attempted to mess with my work or run new wire. One day the cable tech cut off every termination I made (same connectors as theirs) I got to the job and he told me that their connectors have a blue ring and mine are red. If his supervisor came out, he would know he didn't do any work because of the connector color. Most of the time the techs are just baffled to see our board with 4 to 60 RG6 cables all cut to the inch and cleanly labeled and the hierarchy of splitters correctly designed. They're used to zip tying a ball of cables and splitter to the ceiling.