Custom DNS for Unblock US Fritzbox 7390

UPDATE- Sonos/MOG US have made some changes so that this method no longer works and you receive "unable to browse music" error message. More details in the comments.

I have had some problems recently with MOG no longer working from my Telstra cable connection. My Sonos was reporting authentication issues with MOG, but I could still log in to the website when VPN'd to the US.

Visiting the MOG website showed that Telstra had partnered to bring MOG to Australia. It will be interesting to see the pricing to see the "Australia tax" when it is finalised in the upcoming months. Most likely this partnership has resulted in regional DNS configuration which was directing my queries to the Telstra MOG servers where authentication was denied.

Sonos devices use the DHCP configuration for their network configuration and there is no way to manually specify DNS servers so I needed to change my DHCP server (Fritzbox 7390) from giving out the Bigpond DNS servers and handout the Unblock-US DNS servers instead.

I found many guides on line on configuring custom DNS servers on the Fritzbox via telnet and editing the configuration file, however these changes did not seem to have any affect. My suspicion is that these settings work when using an ADSL provider, but using a LAN1 port via Cable modem did not have the settings apply.

It turned out that by applying a new beta firmware that you can now properly configure the Fritzbox to use custom DNS servers. MOG is now working a treat and Netflix is now working on all devices without having to set manual DNS servers on my devices.

Grays Online TV auctions...

I've just won a refurbished Sony Bravia HX925 TV at auction!

I was looking at the Sony models as they have a Motion Flow feature which apparently improves the picture of streaming services such as Netflix or lower quality movies and episodes.

The lowest new online price I could find for the same model was about $2,800 when I came across found four refurbished Sony Bravia auctions at Grays Online. It looks like both Sony and Samsung offload their refurbished and returned TVs via Grays.

Grays has an odd auction format compared to Ebay in that after the auction time has passed the status changes to "Going Going - Gone" for the next ten minutes where anyone has a chance to outbid you which will then reset the timer for another ten minutes until there are finally no more bids.

I was planning to initially bid on the HX820 model of which there were two available. However, I thought that I would start bidding on the HX925 and when that got too expensive I would switch my bidding to the HX820 instead.

My autobid on the HX925 was set to $1800 - remembering that Grays generally charge a 15% "buyers premium".

At the pointy end of the auction the HX925 was quickly bid up to $1500 at which point I went head to head with another bidder to the final price ($1,614) - waiting for that "Going, going, gone" status to clear was an eternity, but it was a great relief once it had been confirmed that I had won.

It turned out that my rival bidder had decided to do what I was planning to do and started bidding on the HX820 TV sets which had a slower start but were still slowly creeping up together. Eventually the two HX820 sets went for $1,629 (more than I paid!) and $1,599 more than 40 minutes later.

Checking the bid history my rival ended up outbid on both the HX820 sets.

Final sales prices:

The television comes with a 3 month warranty and in the next 10 days or so (delivery time to Adelaide)  I'll discover the downsides to getting the refurbished model. The description for "Refurbished" suggested there might be some small scratches or missing manuals. The two pairs of 3D glasses that is normally included may also be missing.

I'll update once I have received the TV as well as documenting my wire-frame picture mount installation.