If your furnace is a mid-efficiency model, and the money for a new, high efficiency model simply isn’t in the budget, a retro-fit might be in order.  If your furnace still has plenty of life left in it, the retro-fit could be a good way to save on natural gas prices.

One way to increase efficiency is to install an intermittent ignition device.  However, these units require professional installation and cost about $250.  Even though they can save you some in natural gas costs, they generally won’t pay for themselves for about a decade, so it may not give you the return on investment that you’re looking for.  Another down side is that they may not save you anything if your equipment is too old.

One viable alternative may be shutting the furnace’s pilot light off in the spring and turning it on in the fall.  This will definitely save you money in the short term since there’s no real investment – other than a little bit of sweat and time.

Another option may be to reduce the heating capacity of your furnace.  First off, you’ll need to make sure that the modifications don’t violate building codes or void any manufacturer’s warranty.  If the furnace is old, the warranty shouldn’t be an issue, but if it’s a newer model, you’ll want to check it out.

This is not a simple operation, so a professional will definitely need to be called in.  What they are going to do is reduce the size of the orifice on the gas burner and the baffles, if needed.  Again, this is something that should only be attempted by a qualified professional, but the modification should cost less than $100.  And, it will definitely give you a substantial return on investment since the modification can save you up to 15% on the cost of gas.

Retro-fitting your furnace won’t net you the huge savings that installing a new, high efficiency furnace will, but it won’t cost you thousands of dollars either.  It all comes down to what you can afford to do, but retro-fitting can be a great way to save money on natural gas while you save up for the new, high efficiency model.

Let’s say you pay the gas company an average of about $175 a month – higher in the winter, lower in the summer – over the course of a year.  That’s an annual savings of $315, which means the modification has paid for itself in just about four months, and if natural gas prices go up, you’ll be saving even more.

In an effort to break into one of the fastest growing entertainment sectors in recent history, Amazon has launched its own online video service.  It’s an obvious attempt to try and capture some of the revenue and traffic associated with a service that has been largely dominated by Netflix at this point, but competition seems to bring about the best in innovation.

A letter addressed to customers has been posted on Amazon.  The letter, from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos,  says Amazon Prime members will have unlimited access to the 5,000 movies and TV shows in the Amazon library.  Amazon Prime membership currently requires a $79 annual fee and allows members to use “free” 2 day shipping on most Amazon products.  The letter also states that Amazon’s online video service will not be an additional fee, so if you’re an Amazon Prime member check it out.

Of course, there are a couple of side notes.  First, if you’re not an Amazon Prime member you can always join.  Second, you’ll need the technology.

In order to stream video through Amazon Prime, you’ll need a high speed Internet connection and a compatible viewing device.  you can see the rather exhaustive list of acceptable devices over at Amazon’s video page.

There’s new news from the good folks over at Comcast cable TV.

An article from Multichannel News claims Comcast will launch its 24 hour Xfinity 3D channel on Sunday, February 20.  Following in the footsteps of its forerunner, ESPN 3D, Comcast’s Xfinity 3D channel will carry original content, shows, concerts and movies.  ESPN 3D actually went 24/7 earlier this week.

The launch is definitely promising and it turns out the kickoff is actually more of a puck drop.  According to Multichannel News, “Xfinity 3D will go live at 6 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, Feb. 20, with the 2011 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic, an outdoor matchup between the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. That’s to be followed at approximately 8 p.m. by an MTV World Stage concert by Kings of Leon from the O2 World in Hamburg, Germany.”

Are you ready for the big launch?  See if you can get Xfinity 3D by comparing plans and prices for Comcast cable TV using our “Savings Widget” at the top of the page.

The Allconnect scam advisory, or the Allconnect Consumer Scam Advisory as it’s more appropriately known, aims to keep you informed of potential scams.  More importantly, the advisory hopes to help you learn how to avoid the scams in the first place.  The most recent scam advisory revolves around the supposed “free phone service” being offered in Arkansas.

The story says the state Attorney General issued a consumer warning after the scam came across his desk.  He went on to add that, while there is help available for those in need of low cost phone service, beware of any advertisement claiming free phone service.

Mathew Lasar posted an interesting article to Wired over the weekend.  It offers a look inside the other ongoing battle in the realm of cable TV providers.  As Lasar points out, net neutrality and the NBC / Comcast cable TV merger have stolen the headlines recently, but the debate over online video, specifically through products like Google TV, continues to cause problems.

The main issue appears to be some form of virtual turf war.  On one end, cable TV providers feel like Google TV is attempting to block them out of the online video revolution.  On the other, Google TV and its partners feel like their products and services will free up the last entertainment frontier.  Both sides make valid points.  Both sides also make some pretty weak points.

One phrase that keeps popping up from the cable TV providers is “consumer confusion”.  They believe that allowing services like Google TV to compete head to head with cable TV providers, potentially opening the doors to watching “illegal content”, will confuse TV consumers.   Maybe it’s more likely that consumers won’t be “confused”, but that they simply won’t care where they get their content, as long as they still see their favorite shows.

Of course, online video services like Google TV claim to bridge the gap between traditional TV services and the wealth of content available on the Internet.  What they don’t seem to make readily available is that the Internet does offer all kinds of portals to potentially “illegal” content.  Sites like Hulu broadcast TV episodes with the consent of their creators.  Some sites offer the same content without any form consent at all.  With that in mind, the cable TV providers’ claims don’t seem so far fetched.  Perhaps they are being squeezed out of the online video market.

The bottom line is that you can’t stop technological advances.  Products like Google TV will continue to surface.  As we saw with the record industry, online music totally rearranged how we get our music today.  The same is happening to cable TV.  Like the music world, cable TV providers will struggle to work out how to remain relevant, but at least they aren’t the first to go through it.  Products like Xfinity TV and the menagerie of online video and DVR products from providers like DIRECTV are certainly a step in the right direction.  It’s just going to be a little messy while everyone figures out how to play nice.

If you watch movies online using NetFlix you’ll be interested in what they have to say about speed and delivery.  The movie rental company recently released a chart showing cable Internet providers and phone companies and where they rank in terms of delivering HD titles using NetFlix online.  While it may seem like a risky move, it may be just the type of prodding our cable Internet providers and phone companies need to pick up the pace.

The chart illustrates online performance in kilobits per second over the last few months, since October 2010.  It looks like Charter, Comcast cable TV, Cox and Time Warner Cable are the consistent top performers.  So what does that tell you?  Well, it looks like cable Internet providers are consistently providing faster service to NetFlix online customers.  However, none of the US cable Internet providers can top the Canadian providers.  It looks like our neighbors to the North are delivering faster Internet speeds.

Ken Floreance, Director of Content Delivery at NetFlix, does a good job of putting the speeds into perspective.  Ken says the “top HD streams are about 4800 kilobits per second. Clients may switch through a number of bitrates as they ramp up to the highest stream, or shift down from the highest stream if they cannot sustain play at that rate due to throughput constraints. No client would sustain a 4800 [kbps] stream from start to finish (there would at least be a few smaller streams averaged in for startup) but the higher the sustained average, the greater the throughput the client can achieve, and the greater the image quality over the duration of the play.”

Sp you likely wouldn’t experience blistering speeds from start to finish, but the US could certainly stand to see a higher average throughout the industry.  Ken plans on updating monthly, so hopefully we’ll see a steady increase from sea to shining sea.