It all started with a Woot for a TiVo HD – pretty good deal, and I miss my TiVo so much. I had the DirecTiVo at my previous place, who had DirecTV coming into each apartment. I thought ‘Oh man, now that I’m on cable, I can just get the CableCards and I’ll be TiVoing in HD!’
Little did I know, Comcast would throw such a wrench in the works, I’m considering dropping Comcast and sticking a dish on my deck. I would even be giving up real TiVo for DirecTV’s HD-DVR, but I’ve heard decent things about it, at least. Anything would be better than Comcast’s terrible HD-DVRs and their puny HD service.
(The below is a rewording/repost from my TiVo Community thread)
Comcast was able to get a tech out more or less as soon as I got my TiVo unboxed (Friday). I left early from work to let the installer in and everything – I was really excited. Yeah, lame to have to make an installer come out for what should be a pretty simple operation, but whatever. The installer brought an M-card, stuck it in the box (he mostly knew where it went) and called in the numbers to the dispatcher, but due to some confusion, the card never authorized. The installer tried a second card to the same effect. After a couple hours (yeah, a couple hours of sitting around while the installer was on the phone or waiting for it to come up) he finally gave up, but set up a call for the next day to do some more troubleshooting.
Saturday, a rep from Comcast calls me back, and says they got their end straightened out for the card currently in my box, and I noted from the CableCard config screens that it indeed get authorization (but maybe not complete?). The issue is it never downloaded the channel data (it had a VCTID, but no VCT packets, and the diagnostic screens said no channel data downloaded). The TiVo would sit and time out on the blue-with-beachball ‘acquiring channel info’ screen. Comcast scheduled another installer to come out with more M-Cards and a couple single stream to double check.
Sunday, installer comes out and pretty much gives up before he walks in the door, says these cards don’t work anyway. I was still hopeful because the tech on Saturday said the cablecard ‘expert’ for the area would be in to help out, but it turns out he wasn’t. The installer procedes to put in one single stream card – call in the numbers, but did not wait for auth on the card. He promptly gave up, put a new M card in my box (without activating it on the head end) and gave me a ‘temporary’ Motorola HD-DVR (which I’m still using) to ‘tide me over’, and set up a note for the ‘expert’ to call me Monday. The installer (and overhearing him talk to his supervisor) said there is some nationwide issue in working with CableCard. At the time this seems rather ridiculous to me. Again, the installer said ‘you should just get rid of your TiVo because our equipment is really good’. BS. I wouldn’t have bought the TiVo if that were remotely true.
I called Comcast the next week to try to get the current M-Card going but they wanted to send another tech out. I told them fine, but send them out with S-Cards (based on the note in the thread that S-Cards seemed to work great). Friday afternoon the tech come out and set up the two S-Cards. He was pretty helpful as far as that went, but we still got nowhere. The cards got Connected and EnabledByCP, but no Auth line. I called back later in the night and they tried a couple more times to no avail.
The tech called me back the next morning, and said there are several others in my area with problems (similar or the same), and they’re working on the issue. This evening, I got a call from a supervisor at the local dispatch, and they said there is something going on in the area, and they’re working with Addressability and TiVo to work out the issue.
I had to contact the dispatch tech I had been talking to. He noted that Comcast in the local area had escalated the issue to TiVo and their Addressability departments. They were going to continue to try a couple things, and they asked if I’d consent to Comcast sending TiVo my account info so they could log into my box (they can do this, over NAT?) and debug. Of course I said fine – whatever I need to do to help get this working.
More time went by, still in the same state. I continue to receive OOB packets, but still have Unknown auth on both S cards.
Another email prompted a response saying that Comcast was now in touch with CableLabs, and this is a nationwide issue. Still a very dubious claim.
More time. I emailed and they responded saying they went and bought a TiVo HD, and absolutely reproduced the issue in their office. The latest is that they’re going to try to go get another set of cards from another market which is able to get activated and work in the tivo, then bring it to our market and see if they work in the TiVo here. It sounds pretty janky, but if they can get it working, all the better I guess.
It looks like it is definitely a problem in my area (Golden/Lakewood). I assume its the same group of techs working on the problems, but from my point of view, they haven’t gotten anywhere.
What have I learned from all of this? Well, a lot I guess. I know a bunch about how these CableCards work by researching in forums and such, and I know that companies like Comcast would rather CableCards go away so they are free to control every piece of their business and lock out competition. I know I can’t fault the local guys because they’ve received little to no training on anything CableCard related.
Last night I saw this TechCrunch article, where aparently folks get attention by complaining online (via Twitter too). Well hey, I’ll chime in here too then. I’m really frustrated that Comcast is unable to get my service working in a way they promise (and by FCC rule, I believe they are required) to make work. I imagine there are others in at least my area in the same situation, and it sucks. At some point, if I can’t get Comcast to get their crap together, I’ll be switching. I don’t really want to now that I have my TiVo, but its getting to it. So if you see a TiVo for sale on this blog, thats why. Its never been actually used!
