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I now use a laptop to feed my HDMI jack my video's. The laptop has a modem on Com 3 that is capable of caller ID. I haven't been able to find a software solution for the laptop to display a number so I can sit in my Lazyboy and see if I want to get up to answer the phone.

....So your laptop is functioning as your modem, and your phone is therefore plugged in through the laptop? If that's right, does it not pop up a notification on incoming calls? Wouldn't that be on the screen anyway?

If your phone line isn't running through your laptop, I don't think there's much of a method to easily have your laptop tap into your phone line.

Is DirectTV still providing your phone line? Or did you get a new provider when you dropped them?

Ok, this is getting too complicated. I have a land line through At&t. It's $5 cause I retired from them. Laptop is just a laptop hooked to my router over my network. My phone has nothing to do with any provider other than At&t. My internet provider is $60 for 300mbs. If I got my phone through them it would be about $30-$40 more. My land line has gone dead about 2 times in 10 years. My internet goes down about 1-2 times a month. Plus the internet is sold off every couple of years or so. Nobody seems to want it. The cable was wrecked after a hurricane and wasn't replaced until 3-4 years ago. This is why I was on DTV for 18 years. Cable TV didn't exist for many years and then only lasted a couple of years and was destroyed. Hooterville doesn't need all this new fangled stuff.

If you Google "caller ID on PC" you will get a few entries but I haven't found any that work and I'm certainly not going to pay for stuff that doesn't work. I just assumed that FR would have someone that had done this before, but I forgot that 99% of people today have a cellphone stuck to their face 24-7 so they wouldn't have this problem. I guess I could pay $100 plus every month to get caller ID but that again would defeat the original quest to save money.

My laptop is functioning as a laptop feeding signal to my TV. it is plugged into a landline jack but doesn't display incoming caller ID to display to the TV.

DTV never had anything to do with the Phone except it DID display caller ID on the screen. I think it used the modem in the DVR to phone home to register rented movies that I never rented. The Caller ID was just an added feature.