Oddball Update

Today was Comcast’s third (and last) chance at sending a technician out to put working CableCARDs in my TiVo HD — last chance, that is, before I escalated it up to a supervisor. Fortunately, with about 15 minutes left to spare before the expiration of the appointment window, the tech appeared at the door.

The only problem was, I was in the middle of a 3-hour conference call at work, wherein we were training the sales and support staff on how to use the new online store and CRM system we’ve built. The meeting was important enough that I didn’t dare leave, but after waiting this long for a Comcast tech to show up, I didn’t dare send the guy away, either. So, what ensued for the next 45 minutes was a ridiculous series of events: Listening into a cell phone with one ear, the Comcast guy with the other ear. Manipulating the GoToMeeting on my laptop screen with one hand, and the TiVo remote with my other hand. All-in-all, more dexterity than I’ve been called upon to muster since I last picked up a pair of drum sticks.

Today’s cable technician knew nothing, repeat nothing, about CableCARDs, which was the first thing he admitted to me when he came in. He was an amiable fellow, but he possessed only the bare minimum knowledge of the job. Thus, I must thank the very helpful folks at the TiVo Community Forums for teaching me practically everything I know — for without that knowledge, today’s experiment would surely have ended in another failure. As the tech himself complained about how they send him out to do jobs that the customer could easily do himself by phone (yeah — assuming your employer would deign to let me talk to someone who’s actually trained properly!), I ran through the diagnostics screens and gave him instructions on what to do next.

We replaced both CableCARDs and started fresh. The first card worked pretty much straight away. The second one did not, but unlike my last installation appointment, this time I knew it wasn’t going to magically start functioning on its own. I prodded the tech to call back into the head-end and ask the woman there to read back the Card ID and Host ID numbers to verify they were correct. Sure enough, the Host ID had been miskeyed. So we got that fixed, and sent a re-initialization hit to CableCARD 2.

The init signal didn’t take, so the woman at the head-end (who was now talking to me directly through the tech’s cellphone, while he simply held it up) told me to take the card out and put it back in. After which, she repeated the initial setup on that card. This time, it started to work. I ran the channel test and confirmed I was getting everything I was supposed to, on both tuners.

At last! The CableCARDs are working!

While it looks like my TiVo hardware installation saga is at an end, I must now move to Phase II of this operation: Straightening out the billing. It’s hard to interpret the excessive abbreviation on the work order I received after today’s appointment, but it looks like there are at least two erroneous charges on my account. You may recall that during my first appointment, the tech thought he was supposed to bring me two high definition set-top boxes from the cable company. While I had customer support remove those instructions and the associated billing data, it looks like the charges for them are back on my account again. That is, if the work order is to be believed.

It also looks like they might be trying to charge me an additional outlet fee ($6.95) for my second CableCARD. The TiVo Community forums are filled with posts about this; Comcast’s billing system is written in such a way that it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to grant full services to two devices — even two CableCARDs being used in one box — without charging an additional outlet fee. Most of the time, forum members who have tried to get that A/O charge removed have wound up having their second CableCARD go dark as a result. Given how difficult it was to get CableCARD 2 working, I’m not sure I’m going to press the issue too far — in total, it’s still a net reduction in price from when I was leasing Comcast’s own HD DVR box.

I’ve decided to wait for the next upcoming Comcast bill, so I can pick out exactly what’s wrong and then make a call to support, well-armed with all the knowledge I need. I don’t trust a word the CSRs at Comcast say, so I’m not about to call them and ask what charges are on my account. Plus, they’d probably delete my goddamn CableCARDs again. (The rule of thumb when dealing with a cable company is, get them involved as little as possible. Actually, that seems to be a good rule of thumb in the service industry in general.)

But for now, I’m completely content to enjoy the content — presented with style, stability and trustworthiness — on my TiVo HD.

Tagged as CableCARDs, Comcast, TiVo + Categorized as Media, Media/Television