Official Time Warner Cable Thread

[Fingerlakes Dave]

Hi.
Previous Adelphia customer. Now TWC.

A few questions:
1) Is their HD worth the price vs Direct TV/Dish? :confused:

2) Any insight on whether a series 2 Tivo will record and playback a HD program? (even if at a lower quality). ;)

3) Digital Explorer package w/HD vs regular cable +HD? Are the extra digital cables, most of which I don't want and one I boycott, worth the price?
Is there really anything woth watching on 100++++ channels? :eek:

[abredt]

I am going to be downgrading my HD DVR from time warner(It sucks) and getting just standard box from time warner los angeles. I want to buy a new tivo series 2 box. Is set up and reliability pretty good for using tivo with the Time warner boxes? I used to have replay tv and it rocked, but Tivo finally won me over. Thanks for the help

Do you really mean TiVo 2??

TiVo2 works fine with TW cable. You connect the output of the cable box to the input of the TiVo and an IR cable from the TiVo to the front of the cable box to change the channels.

If you mean TiVo 3, you don't use a cable box at all.

CB

[hornblowercat]

It makes no sense to me that Time Warner does not have a consistent policy for this across the board.

I'm not defending TW but no cable company is consistant across the board. It's ridiculous, different prices, different lineups inconsistant quality of service.

[pmiranda]

Do you really mean TiVo 2??

TiVo2 works fine with TW cable. You connect the output of the cable box to the input of the TiVo and an IR cable from the TiVo to the front of the cable box to change the channels.

If you mean TiVo 3, you don't use a cable box at all.

CB

FYI, it depends somewhat on the cable box you get. I can tell you that my SA3100HD doesn't seem to output any SD video on HD channels. I do remember the SA8300HD I had before the S3 would downconvert HD channels to the SVideo output while still outputting component video.
You may get more information on an S2 forum.

[JKay]

Time Warner Cable Exec Canned Over Customer Complaints
Time Warner Cable has disconnected its chief Southern California cable guy.
Roger Keating had been regional chief since 2003, but was forced out Wednesday after an avalanche of service complaints from customers.
Customers griped about Internet and e-mail outages, TV channel lineup changes and pressure to sign up for digital service.
Of particular irritation were the long and sometimes futile waits to reach a human on customer service lines.
More than 10,000 people have canceled their subscriptions since October.
Keating and his bosses say in a company memo that it's "a good time" for him to leave.
He'll be replaced by two Time Warner executives.

http://www.nbc4.tv/money/11270602/detail.html?taf=la

[Teeps]

It has been my experience that from time to time certain channels seem to become available that I don't pay for. For example the NBA channel was available and I'm not suppose to get that. I've also seen things (not on the S3) where Showtime on Demand became available even though I don't subscribe to Showtime.

Have you checked your list to make sure you're suppose to receive Speed?

Yes, I pay for speed and versus, and a bunch of other crap I never watch. This was a cable card problem.

[GargleBlast]

and no.. they didn't get me digital cable channels.

Time Warner Austin subbed out the install of my cable cards and he shows up with 2 wireless G cards..popped them right into the TiVo without reading the instructions (which I had given him). Curiously enough it didn't work but it took him about an hour to get someone on the phone to confirm they weren't cable cards (he was clever enough to know but still had to call his supervisor). Another 30 mins of him outside talking to his super before coming back in and having him talk to me.

They don't know when they are getting them from TWC because no-one can answer a phone at 9pm so now we wait again, at least there's no install charge but still.


- Jonn

1 HR10-250 soon to be on ebay due to DirecTV not letting me move house without new HR20.
1 Series 3, 4 days old and really cute.

[Fofer]

Time Warner Austin subbed out the install of my cable cards and he shows up with 2 wireless G cards

:eek:


GargleBlast wins the thread!

[asills]

Okay now that a lot of Dallas has removed the A/B lines and are now all A, what has been everyone's experience with the S3 and TWC Dallas's support of their CCs?

I just got TWC and am interested in the S3 after my TWC DVR just tried to record 29 repeats of a show that aren't correctly marked as repeats (I've only had this problem once or twice on my S2 on a few different providers; with TWC I've got this on 5 different shows now!).

So I'm curious now that it's A-only (at least in certain parts of the Dallas area) how is your S3 performing? I really don't want to plop down $700 for something that's going to have to be rebooted regularly or have CCs get unauthorized daily.

I actually don't mind not getting new channels if Dallas switches to SDV (unless they switch a large number of existing channels to SDV); I'm really most curious about stability and reliability of the S3 and the cards being given out in Dallas.

Thanks! I appreciate any information.

[Merejane]

Just wanted to report that not all the phone reps at TWC in NYC seem to have gotten the message that TWC does install cablecards in TiVos.

My new Series 3 TiVo, purchased from Costco.com, was delivered this morning. I called TWC in NYC (212-674-9100) to set up an appointment to have two cablecards installed. The first thing Crystal, the phone rep, did was to ask whether I purchased the TiVo from Time Warner Cable. I said "No," and she said that TWC could not install the cablecards because they will only do this for TWC equipment. (Hm, does that mean that if I wanted a cablecard installed in a television set, I would have to buy the tv from Time Warner??) I have to say I was pretty surprised -- I thought this issue was resolved a while ago.

Anyway, I told Crystal that TWC does, in fact, install cablecards in TiVos, and she said no, they don't. So I asked to speak with a supervisor. I was put on hold for just a few minutes, and then Crystal came back on. It was very weird. She had clearly been set straight, because she proceeded to go ahead and set up the appointment for me. It was as if we had never had the earlier conversation, where she had been quite adamant in her words and her tone that what I was requesting could not be done. I was kind of aggravated that she did not apologize or acknowledge in any way that she was initially wrong. But I wanted to get on with setting up the appointment, so I let it go.

I may, however, pursue this with a letter of complaint. But I'm wondering -- is anyone still getting the we-only-install-cablecards-in-Time-Warner-equipment line??

[Kablemodem]

When I called for cable cards all I said was that I needed two cable cards. They assumed they were for two TVs and didn't ask any questions. The installers had no problem with it either, but they didn't know how to do it, even though I showed them the instructions.

[gascantx]

Ok, I sent an email to TimeWarner Austin Cable support and got the following response. This seems incorrect... Are there really that many switched channels that Tivo S3 can NOT pickup in Austin?

Thank you for your inquiry. I apologize for the delayed response. Here
is a list of the channels that are not available with the Cable Cards:

Switch Channels as of 3/15/07


6 CITY
7 Guide
10 PACT1
11 PACT2
13 KAKW
14 KADF
15 ME-TV
16 PACT3
17 TSTV
18 / 380 CSPAN
19 ACC
20 / 255 KLRU2
21 WGN
22 AISD
23 KCWX
99 PIN
24 / 270 QVC
25 / 273 HSN
27 / 215 Oxygen
28 / 213 WE
29 / 217 Soap
30 / 545 E!
33 / 258 Travel
37 / 160 ABC Family
38 / 170 ION
39 / 180 Hallmark
40 / 520 TVLand
41 / 120 Nickelodean
42 / 101 Disney East
43 / 110 Cartoon Network
44 / 355 News 8 Doppler Radar
55 / 450 Golf
57 / 540 CourtTV
64 / 555 Tuner Classic Movies
72 / 570 MTV
73 / 585 BET
74 / 219 Style
75 / 623 Telemundo
76 / 622 Galavision
77 TWC77
78 Infor
102 Disney West
111 Boomerang
125 Nick Toons
261 LOGO
274 TV Superstore
275 Shop NBC
277 Revenue Frontier
278 Men's Channel
279 Healthy Living
281 Beauty and Fashion
284 iShop
285 The Mall Channel
286 Resort and Residence
287 PREVU Channel
295 The Word Network
348 News 8 Traffic
358 News 8 Weather
359 News 8 Weather Spanish
408 New 8 NonStop Sports
527 FoxReality
431 Fox Sports Atlantic
432 Fox Sports Central
433 Fox Sports Pacific
434 Fuel
435 NBA TV
438 CSTV
455 Tennis Channel
460 Speedvision
490 Outdoor Channel
601 CNN Espanol
602 Canal 24
604 DocuTVE
606 CanalSur
609 News 8 Weather Spanish
611 Toon Disney Spanish
612 Cartoon Spanish
613 Boomerang Spanish
614 Sorpresa
617 Fox Sports SW Espanol
626 TVE International
629 La Familia
630 SiTV
632 Infinito
633 HTV
634 Video Rola
635 Puma
636 MUN 2
637 MTV Tres
640 CineLatino
644 Discovery Espanol
645 HITN
649 EWTN Spanish
708 HBO WEST
709 HBOPLUS WEST
710 HBOSIG WEST
711 HBFAMILY WEST
712 HBCOMEDY WEST
713 HBOZONE WEST
714 HBLATINO WEST
723 CINEMAX WEST
724 MORMAX WEST
725 ACTNMAX WEST
726 THRILMAX WEST
738 SHOW WEST
739 SHO TOO WEST
740 SHOWCASE WEST
741 SHOW EXT WEST
742 BEYOND WEST
743 SHOW NEXT-W
744 WOMEN WEST
745 SHOW FAMILY WEST
748 TMC WEST
749 TMC XTRA WEST
761 Encore West
901 Sport PPV-1
902 Sports PPV-2
903 Sports PPV-3
904 Sports PPV-4
905 Sports PPV-5
906 Sports PPV-6
910 NBA
911 TEAM1
912 TEAM2
913 TEAM3
914 TEAM4
915 TEAM5
916 TEAM6
917 TEAM7
918 TEAM8
919 TEAM9
930 Game 1
931 Game 2
932 Game 3
933 Game 4
934 Game 5
935 Game 6
936 Game 7
937 Game 8
938 Game 9
939 Game 10
940 Playboy
941 Ten Adult/PPV
942 TenBlox
943 Ten Clips
952 IND 2
1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD
1675 Cinemax HD
1684 Starz HD


If you need any further assistance please send me an email. Thank you
again for the customer service inquiry.


Customer Care Specialist
Time Warner Cable - Austin Division

[cableguy763]

This list is simply not true. CableCards can get all channels under 78, just in the analog form. Anything above 78 on your list is indeed switched and CableCards cannot get them. Confusion has come about due to our finally going full digital simulcast. I will get with my boss so no one else gets this wrong information.

[gascantx]

So what you are saying is a Series 3 HD Tivo is useless on the Austin TimeWarner network since TW-Austin has basically stopped supporting CableCards. Correct?

[cableguy763]

There are MANY S3 users in Austin who enjoy the S3 experience, including me. Are you really upset about losing the west coast feeds of the pay channels? Or do you enjoy watching shopping or public access channels? That is what is switched for the most part. The only ones that I miss on the S3 are the sports channels in the 400's. That's why I have a stb as well. What do you think the majority of TWC's subscribers want? Full cablecard support for the 1000 or so cablecard users or more HD channels for the rest of the 299,000 subscribers? And how do you define "support" of cablecards? Technically TWC supports cablecards as required by the FCC.

[Fofer]

This is the first time I experienced a missing channel. My story is below:

I wasn't getting TNT HD on either cablecard this morning. I called Time Warner, they filled out a trouble ticket (in case more people were missing it, in which case they said it might take 2 days to return.)

I also asked the CSR to reauthorize my cards/account. She did. By the time we got off the phone, I was getting TNT HD.

[Peter000]

Is "reauthorizing" cards the same as giving them a 'hit?" Or re-pairing them? Or are they three different things?

[gascantx]

There are MANY S3 users in Austin who enjoy the S3 experience, including me. Are you really upset about losing the west coast feeds of the pay channels? Or do you enjoy watching shopping or public access channels? That is what is switched for the most part. The only ones that I miss on the S3 are the sports channels in the 400's. That's why I have a stb as well. What do you think the majority of TWC's subscribers want? Full cablecard support for the 1000 or so cablecard users or more HD channels for the rest of the 299,000 subscribers? And how do you define "support" of cablecards? Technically TWC supports cablecards as required by the FCC.

No the point is I can't get HD content on on Tivo S3 DVR. The TimeWarner DVR is a big piece of junk so I am stuck with standard def TV. It is very frustrating. Other cable providers are not using SDV and deliver a lot of HD content so there is obviously other ways to solve the problem and still support cable cards. I am a TimeWarner subscriber, but I truly dislike how the company has handled CableCards. It just reflect the true monopolistic culture of the company instead of an open and interoperable one. Basically I see TimeWarner as the "Microsoft"of the cable industry.

[cableguy763]

[QUOTE=gascantx]No the point is I can't get HD content on on Tivo S3 DVR.


You CAN get HD content on the S3. Just not the new channels that will be rolled out to compete with D*. What do you expect them to do? Not release any new HD or SD channels so the <1000 subs with cable cards can get them? OR implement SDV so that their 299,000 other subscribers that don't use cablecard to get what they want i.e. more HD, faster internet, digital phone and VOD?

[gascantx]

[QUOTE=gascantx]No the point is I can't get HD content on on Tivo S3 DVR.


You CAN get HD content on the S3. Just not the new channels that will be rolled out to compete with D*.

Ok, I am confused. You said earlier I can't get any content via Tivo S3 (cablecards) above channel 78 (all channels above 78 are SDV). So how do I get HD channels via TimeWarner Austin with a Tivo S3? Which channels can I get with the Tivo??? This makes no sense!!!!

[cableguy763]

These are the HD channels you can't get in Austin:
1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD
1675 Cinemax HD
1684 Starz HD

These are the HD you do get:
1501 579 KTBCDT
1511 573 KVUEDT
1521 585 KXANDT
1531 573 KEYEDT
1541 579 KLRUDT
1542 579 KLRUDT2
1617 387 DHD
1635 597 ESPNHD
1654 615 TNTHD
1656 615 UHD
1670 603 HBOHD
1678 603 SHOWHD
1687 597 INHD
1692 609 HDNET
1693 609 HDNETMV

[gascantx]

These are the HD channels you can't get in Austin:
1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD
1675 Cinemax HD
1684 Starz HD

These are the HD you do get:
1501 579 KTBCDT
1511 573 KVUEDT
1521 585 KXANDT
1531 573 KEYEDT
1541 579 KLRUDT
1542 579 KLRUDT2
1617 387 DHD
1635 597 ESPNHD
1654 615 TNTHD
1656 615 UHD
1670 603 HBOHD
1678 603 SHOWHD
1687 597 INHD
1692 609 HDNET
1693 609 HDNETMV

Excellent. This the exact inforamation I was looking for!

Thank you!!!

[Kablemodem]

Is "reauthorizing" cards the same as giving them a 'hit?" Or re-pairing them? Or are they three different things?

My understanding is that pairing matches up the cards with the TiVo so that they can be seen by the cable company. You can get some channels (I presume the unencrypted ones) at that point, but the cards need to be authorized to get all channels. I don't think everyone at the cable company understands that as when I call to tell them I am not getting most channels they say the cards are paired and everything looks good on their end, but the cards say they are not authorized. They need to "hit" the cards with an authorization signal to get them to work. It can take several attempts before the cards are successfully authorized.

[pmiranda]

No the point is I can't get HD content on on Tivo S3 DVR.

I think it'd be accurate to say you can't get new HD content on any TiVo in some markets. The new HD channels on satellite are MPEG4, new HD channels on cable in my town are SDV. The only channel I'm really bummed about going SDV is SPEED, which looked 5X better on my S3 than on either the TW DVR or my S1. There might be a few shows I wish I got on A&E HD, but so far, I'm not missing any compelling content. Hopefully there will be an upgrade path a few years down the road for an S4 or TW will get pressured (via Comcast) to license TiVo software to make their DVRs not suck.

[Fofer]

Time Warner Los Angeles here. Last weekend I turned on my S3 and got a message that a new channel was added to my lineup: MTV HD. It looks great and I'm happy to have it.

Hopefully more new channels (especially in HD!) will keep arriving, and hopefully they won't be SDV. :)

[cambist]

Time Warner Austin. It appears this is a hotbed of misinformation and confused technicians.

I was getting the QAM channels with basic cable and this past Sunday I lost Fox channel 1501 and two of the PBS channels on Tivo. I checked the signal and was getting 98% signal. I hooked up the cable straight to my TV which also has a QAM decoder and couldn't get Fox channel 1501. I called and explained. I was told someone would come out and check it out because they couldn't do anything from there.

I had to go to work, but my girlfriend is going to be home and I figure there's nothing useful going to likely be done the first visit anyway. So, two hung over looking 24 year olds come out and poke around for an hour and fix nothing. They call a supervisor when my girlfriend yells at them about their inferior DVR and poor service. He says she needs a cable box to receive that channel.

I called when I got home and explained to the person on the phone what happened. She then said I needed a cable box to get the channels I was talking about. I said there was no way I was required to get a cable box to receive basic cable channels and explained that I had explicitly asked when I turned in the horrible sa8300hd at the duval/mopac service center. She said she'd have to call a supervisor.

5 minutes later she's back on the phone and apologizes saying I am supposed to get the channels (that I know the FCC requires them to carry) if my TV can receive them.

So, now I get a senior technician to come out Saturday and explain to me personally why I've lost a channel on two different QAM capable devices and I'm not letting that guy go home until he explains it or finds an QAM HDTV where it actually works.... Should be fun.

[cableguy763]

Cambist- If you have ANY problems PM me and I will get the problems fixed.

[krbuck]

These are the HD channels you can't get in Austin:
1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD
1675 Cinemax HD
1684 Starz HD

These are the HD you do get:
1501 579 KTBCDT
1511 573 KVUEDT
1521 585 KXANDT
1531 573 KEYEDT
1541 579 KLRUDT
1542 579 KLRUDT2
1617 387 DHD
1635 597 ESPNHD
1654 615 TNTHD
1656 615 UHD
1670 603 HBOHD
1678 603 SHOWHD
1687 597 INHD
1692 609 HDNET
1693 609 HDNETMV

I want to be sure I understand the Austin situation. My wife and I were thinking of replacing our old S1 with an S3, but if its limited in that it will not accomodate any new channels, I probably need to wait or look at Dish's Vip622.

Are we pretty much stuck with this list in Austin?

[cableguy763]

I want to be sure I understand the Austin situation. My wife and I were thinking of replacing our old S1 with an S3, but if its limited in that it will not accomodate any new channels, I probably need to wait or look at Dish's Vip622.

Are we pretty much stuck with this list in Austin?
From what I understand, any new HD channel that TWC Austin broadcasts will be SDV. I am not in the position to say this definitely, but say ESPN2 comes soon I can't tell you where in the spectrum it broadcasts until we do it. You have to understand that TWC is in direct competition with D* and their "150 repetitive channels of HD". TWC is suing D* for making false statements in their commercials about HD offerings. So, to answer your questions in too long a reply, all new HD channels will be SDV, just a well educated guess.

[Fofer]

Yikes, if that happens in L.A... I'm dropping Time Warner and selling my S3, that's fo' sho'.

[cableguy763]

Yikes, if that happens in L.A... I'm dropping Time Warner and selling my S3, that's fo' sho'.
And go to what? Compressed HD with sat? 4 to 6 OTA channels? You have to admit, TWC is grabbing the bull by the horns and trying to win the HD battle.

[Arcady]

If you try to win the "HD battle" that way, you will lose the cablecard class-action lawsuit later.

[Fofer]

And go to what? Compressed HD with sat? 4 to 6 OTA channels? You have to admit, TWC is grabbing the bull by the horns and trying to win the HD battle.

Yes, I would rather have Dish (with the VIP622) or DirecTV (with the HR20) if that became the case. TWC's cable boxes are abominations.

If TWC wants to roll out SDV, then they'd need to come up with a better cable box DVR too to work with it. Yes, lots of HD is nice, but at what expense? If everything else about the TV watching experience (and that includes setting up season passes, time shifting, and managing my recordings) is uncomfortable and inelegant, I'd rather have *less* HD. And I'd just be annoyed if there were channels I was interested in watching but I couldn't access them because I had an S3 TiVo. Because you know I wouldn't be given any kind of pro-rated refund... TWC would just "solve" the problem by insisting I accept their crappy set top box.

Compressed HD with sat, with even a slightly better DVR (and hence, overall TV watching experience) is a compromise I'd be willing to make in that case.

[DeathRider]

From what I understand, any new HD channel that TWC Austin broadcasts will be SDV. I am not in the position to say this definitely, but say ESPN2 comes soon I can't tell you where in the spectrum it broadcasts until we do it. You have to understand that TWC is in direct competition with D* and their "150 repetitive channels of HD". TWC is suing D* for making false statements in their commercials about HD offerings. So, to answer your questions in too long a reply, all new HD channels will be SDV, just a well educated guess.


The D* commercials I see say "150 HD channel capacity", not that they actually have 150 HD channels.

[davecramer74]

And go to what? Compressed HD with sat?

have You even seen dish network? my cousins got it, it looks just as good as my comcast cable. And im all digital in my area. There is zero difference between the 2. he's got a 50 inch panasonic and the hd looks frigging great. I even tried switching to dish, but had no line of sight. Directv is another story. I ran it side by side with my cable, and ya, it looked like crap.

[davecramer74]

The D* commercials I see say "150 HD channel capacity", not that they actually have 150 HD channels.

They are going to have 80 or so 24/7 HD channels. The rest of these 150 are their sports ppv (nfl sunday ticket, mlb extra innings)

[pilott]

Ok, I sent an email to TimeWarner Austin Cable support and got the following response. This seems incorrect... Are there really that many switched channels that Tivo S3 can NOT pickup in Austin?

Thank you for your inquiry. I apologize for the delayed response. Here
is a list of the channels that are not available with the Cable Cards:

Switch Channels as of 3/15/07


6 CITY
7 Guide
10 PACT1
11 PACT2
13 KAKW
14 KADF
15 ME-TV
16 PACT3
17 TSTV
18 / 380 CSPAN
19 ACC
20 / 255 KLRU2
21 WGN
22 AISD
23 KCWX
99 PIN
24 / 270 QVC
25 / 273 HSN
27 / 215 Oxygen
28 / 213 WE
29 / 217 Soap
30 / 545 E!
33 / 258 Travel
37 / 160 ABC Family
38 / 170 ION
39 / 180 Hallmark
40 / 520 TVLand
41 / 120 Nickelodean
42 / 101 Disney East
43 / 110 Cartoon Network
44 / 355 News 8 Doppler Radar
55 / 450 Golf
57 / 540 CourtTV
64 / 555 Tuner Classic Movies
72 / 570 MTV
73 / 585 BET
74 / 219 Style
75 / 623 Telemundo
76 / 622 Galavision
77 TWC77
78 Infor
102 Disney West
111 Boomerang
125 Nick Toons
261 LOGO
274 TV Superstore
275 Shop NBC
277 Revenue Frontier
278 Men's Channel
279 Healthy Living
281 Beauty and Fashion
284 iShop
285 The Mall Channel
286 Resort and Residence
287 PREVU Channel
295 The Word Network
348 News 8 Traffic
358 News 8 Weather
359 News 8 Weather Spanish
408 New 8 NonStop Sports
527 FoxReality
431 Fox Sports Atlantic
432 Fox Sports Central
433 Fox Sports Pacific
434 Fuel
435 NBA TV
438 CSTV
455 Tennis Channel
460 Speedvision
490 Outdoor Channel
601 CNN Espanol
602 Canal 24
604 DocuTVE
606 CanalSur
609 News 8 Weather Spanish
611 Toon Disney Spanish
612 Cartoon Spanish
613 Boomerang Spanish
614 Sorpresa
617 Fox Sports SW Espanol
626 TVE International
629 La Familia
630 SiTV
632 Infinito
633 HTV
634 Video Rola
635 Puma
636 MUN 2
637 MTV Tres
640 CineLatino
644 Discovery Espanol
645 HITN
649 EWTN Spanish
708 HBO WEST
709 HBOPLUS WEST
710 HBOSIG WEST
711 HBFAMILY WEST
712 HBCOMEDY WEST
713 HBOZONE WEST
714 HBLATINO WEST
723 CINEMAX WEST
724 MORMAX WEST
725 ACTNMAX WEST
726 THRILMAX WEST
738 SHOW WEST
739 SHO TOO WEST
740 SHOWCASE WEST
741 SHOW EXT WEST
742 BEYOND WEST
743 SHOW NEXT-W
744 WOMEN WEST
745 SHOW FAMILY WEST
748 TMC WEST
749 TMC XTRA WEST
761 Encore West
901 Sport PPV-1
902 Sports PPV-2
903 Sports PPV-3
904 Sports PPV-4
905 Sports PPV-5
906 Sports PPV-6
910 NBA
911 TEAM1
912 TEAM2
913 TEAM3
914 TEAM4
915 TEAM5
916 TEAM6
917 TEAM7
918 TEAM8
919 TEAM9
930 Game 1
931 Game 2
932 Game 3
933 Game 4
934 Game 5
935 Game 6
936 Game 7
937 Game 8
938 Game 9
939 Game 10
940 Playboy
941 Ten Adult/PPV
942 TenBlox
943 Ten Clips
952 IND 2
1639 Fox Sports HD
1660 A&E HD
1664 Music HD
1675 Cinemax HD
1684 Starz HD


If you need any further assistance please send me an email. Thank you
again for the customer service inquiry.


Customer Care Specialist
Time Warner Cable - Austin Division


I received a list somewhat like this from a tech the other day. I am also most certainly not getting ALL channels under 78 (most notably 23 31 32). I think the tech said just the opposite (that I wouldn't get any of them under 78).

[malvarez]

I received a list somewhat like this from a tech the other day. I am also most certainly not getting ALL channels under 78 (most notably 23 31 32). I think the tech said just the opposite (that I wouldn't get any of them under 78).

I received this list when I first got my cable cards for my Series 3. I checked all the HD and 700's, and I can confirm that the TIVO can't get them. What a bummer. All of those movie channels can not be recorded. But what is really annoying is the HD movie channels that can't be received or recorded. :mad:

[krbuck]

I received this list when I first got my cable cards for my Series 3. I checked all the HD and 700's, and I can confirm that the TIVO can't get them. What a bummer. All of those movie channels can not be recorded. But what is really annoying is the HD movie channels that can't be received or recorded. :mad:

Argh. This is really a deal-breaker for me. Its especially tough to swallow since I'm a big Tivo fan. I'm really just to the point where I want to time-shift HD and though my S1 with lifetime service is still chugging along, its getting pretty long in the tooth, and I'm watching more and more time-shifted shows in SD when I should be watching them in HD.

The Vip622 is looking like the only other alternative - if only the S3 could record all current and forthcoming HD channels from TW cable!!! What a shame. :(

[asills]

Well, I got all my information ready (model number) and got prepared to yell at someone. I said I needed to order two cable cards and they happily told me it was $11 to install and $2.95 a month for each and then asked if I needed anything else (after asking a few times how my day was going).

Let's see if the install goes as smooth; I'll post an update when it's all done.

[WSP]

TW Austin

I am in Austin using cable cards. I can receive all of the channels below 100. These are the analog channels and have been remapped to digital. Some have been remapped to 17xx, such as 06 to 1706. When to say goto 06 you get 1706.

[cableguy763]

TW Austin

I am in Austin using cable cards. I can receive all of the channels below 100. These are the analog channels and have been remapped to digital. Some have been remapped to 17xx, such as 06 to 1706. When to say goto 06 you get 1706.
You are still just getting the analog channels though.

[WSP]

TW Austin

The channels above 102 (Disney West) in the list can be received on a cable card. The are analog. They appear to have mapped the channels such as 215 (Oxygen) to the analog version, 27 (Oxygen). The channels below and including 102 (Disney West) appear to be switched and cannot be received on a cable card. The only channel that I wish I could received and cannot get in this list is 1660 A&E HD.

[krbuck]

TW Austin

The channels above 102 (Disney West) in the list can be received on a cable card. The are analog. They appear to have mapped the channels such as 215 (Oxygen) to the analog version, 27 (Oxygen). The channels below and including 102 (Disney West) appear to be switched and cannot be received on a cable card. The only channel that I wish I could received and cannot get in this list is 1660 A&E HD.

That's really the only channel right now I'd miss were I to get the S3. What worries me is that as the HD list of channels grows over the next few years, that they will not be available in HD on the S3 box.

Is the Vip622 the next best option for a HD DVR out there?

[Fofer]

That's really the only channel right now I'd miss were I to get the S3. What worries me is that as the HD list of channels grows over the next few years, that they will not be available in HD on the S3 box.

Is the Vip622 the next best option for a HD DVR out there?

IMO right now, yes... and if I see TimeWarner in my area pulling the same SDV nonsense and preventing me from getting new (or old!) HD channels on my S3, that's the direction I'd likely be going in, too. I wouldn't be happy about it, and it's not TiVo's fault, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

[smileLP]

Time Warner Manhattan

has anyone experienced weird lines or shadows in the background when watching HD channels?

i DON'T get these shadows w/the T-W box, but when i got rid of their box and went to a tivo S3 (lots more recording time, after u pgrade by weaknees), i started getting the shadows

any similar experiences? (any solutions???) : )

thanks

[rgura]

I have been using My TiVo S3 since January without too many issues. However in the past 3 weeks things seem to have taken a turn for the worst.

All of the my digital music channels seem to drop in and out about once every 30 seconds.

Frequently when I schedule something to record, the TiVo records a "partial" program, usually 1 minute or less.

Occasionaly the HD channels drop out entirely.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I had a TWC tech come out and check things out, he says my TiVo may have gone bad...sounds like BS to me.

Rob

[cableguy763]

I have been using My TiVo S3 since January without too many issues. However in the past 3 weeks things seem to have taken a turn for the worst.

All of the my digital music channels seem to drop in and out about once every 30 seconds.

Frequently when I schedule something to record, the TiVo records a "partial" program, usually 1 minute or less.

Occasionaly the HD channels drop out entirely.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I had a TWC tech come out and check things out, he says my TiVo may have gone bad...sounds like BS to me.

Rob
Can you tell me if you are getting channels 840 or 1521? These are on two different ingress freqs. in Austin. If they are pixelating, sound dropouts you will probably get them worse on these channels. Or, how does channels 7,18,69 look on your analog tv's? Another way to see if you have some noise on your cable lines.

[cambist]

Cambist- If you have ANY problems PM me and I will get the problems fixed.Thanks for the offer, but the problem magically resolved itself without any changes on my end (after a week without Fox) much to the surprise of everyone involved. Maybe Fox just started broadcasting an entirely black screen on their QAM channel in the area for a week and no one noticed but me? I guess I kinda' doubt that. :p

Oh well, hopefully since they had no clue they fixed the problem this doesn't happen too often.

[vstone]

TWC in Myrtle Beach, SC: lost clear QAM channels between FEB 12 and FEB 14. To make a long story short they wouldn't believe me until I had theme talk with a dealer who was having to reset the TV sets (at store and at salesmen's homes) about twice a week. First they though it was the head end in Columbia, SC. Now they're waiting for info from Scientific Atlanta, who makes the cable equipment. As of tomorrow morning they will have been waiting for two weeks for SA to fix whatever the problem is. Affected some, but not all customers.

A similar situation exists in Greensboro, NC since about March 9, but has cleared up for some, some, but not all, channels showed up for others.

[krbuck]

TW Austin

The channels above 102 (Disney West) in the list can be received on a cable card. The are analog. They appear to have mapped the channels such as 215 (Oxygen) to the analog version, 27 (Oxygen). The channels below and including 102 (Disney West) appear to be switched and cannot be received on a cable card. The only channel that I wish I could received and cannot get in this list is 1660 A&E HD.

Exactly my feelings (re: A&E HD). What stops me from pulling the trigger on an S3 is the probability that any new HD channels coming in to TW Cable Austin will similarly unavailable for recording via the S3. As a longtime Tivo user its really a big downer to have to look to other options such as the vip622 on Dish.

[Merejane]

So it's been a week, and TWC NYC has not been able to get the cablecards in my Tivo S3 to display all the channels I should be getting. Both cards work, but I get only about a third of the channels I should get.

There are two techs here right now. The person they're talking to over their walkie-talkie thing asked them to check the dates on the cards. The date on one is 12/28/04; the other is 5/10/06. The guy on the walkie-talkie said that cards from before 5/11/06 are no good. He sent over two new cards; they're trying to get them to work even as I type.

My question: has anyone heard about cards before a certain date not being any good (i.e., not able to get authorization to show all the channels subscribed to)???

This is very frustrating!!

[BruceShultes]

My question: has anyone heard about cards before a certain date not being any good (i.e., not able to get authorization to show all the channels subscribed to)???

This is very frustrating!!

That is the same thing that happened to me when my cablecards were first installed.

The one dated May 2006 authorized and received all channels with no problems. The one dated Feb 06 never completed a firmware update.

The installers replaced it with another May 2006 card and everything worked correctly.

[BruceShultes]

For about a week, I have been getting an occasional 0.0 recording.

Yesterday, I could receive only some HD channels. After a re-boot, everything was fine.

Today, no cable channels were viewable on either tuner. This time a re-boot did not fix the problem.

I called TW and after they re-hit the cards, everything seems to be working again.

[T-Shee]

That is the same thing that happened to me when my cablecards were first installed.

The one dated May 2006 authorized and received all channels with no problems. The one dated Feb 06 never completed a firmware update.

The installers replaced it with another May 2006 card and everything worked correctly.
Same thing here. There was also a credible theory that if the Scientific Atlanta cards were ever installed and firmware updated in another device, TV, etc. that the cards would ultimately fail.
My first two sets failed and, indeed, were not initialized/updated in my S3. They were both replaced and the third set was new, brought to life in the S3. They work 99.9% of the time now - I still get a spontanous HOST ID grey screen popping up about once a week - not fun in the middle of a show.

[Merejane]

That is the same thing that happened to me when my cablecards were first installed.

The one dated May 2006 authorized and received all channels with no problems. The one dated Feb 06 never completed a firmware update.

The installers replaced it with another May 2006 card and everything worked correctly.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Well, the installer managed to get hold of two new cards, but he couldn't get them to work AT ALL. He finally just gave up and left, at 6:30 PM. He tried to blame it on the TiVo, saying that it was unlikely that two sets of cards wouldn't work. Well, first of all, the old cards did work fine for a lot of stations -- I just didn't get all the channels I was supposed to.

As to the new cards, I asked the installer to at least write down the card ID numbers before he left. After he left and I looked at what he had written down, I saw that it was all letters -- no numerals. I think he got them from the physical card itself, not the cablecard ID # that appears onscreen. So I think he was giving the office people the wrong information when he called in to have the card authorized.

I am so frustrated!!!!! Before the installers came today, I did get a lot of channels. Now, I get NO CHANNELS AT ALL!

Honestly, I think I could have done this myself if only TWC would let me. I would call in using a phone, which would not constantly cut out. (The installers today had a hard time communicating with whoever they were talking to; the call quality was just not good. In retrospect, I wish I had suggested they just use my phone.) And I can read directions, so I would not give incorrect information!

I hate TWC.

[SCSIRAID]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Well, the installer managed to get hold of two new cards, but he couldn't get them to work AT ALL. He finally just gave up and left, at 6:30 PM. He tried to blame it on the TiVo, saying that it was unlikely that two sets of cards wouldn't work. Well, first of all, the old cards did work fine for a lot of stations -- I just didn't get all the channels I was supposed to.

As to the new cards, I asked the installer to at least write down the card ID numbers before he left. After he left and I looked at what he had written down, I saw that it was all letters -- no numerals. I think he got them from the physical card itself, not the cablecard ID # that appears onscreen. So I think he was giving the office people the wrong information when he called in to have the card authorized.

I am so frustrated!!!!! Before the installers came today, I did get a lot of channels. Now, I get NO CHANNELS AT ALL! \

Honestly, I think I could have done this myself if only TWC would let me. I would call in using a phone, which would not constantly cut out. (The installers today had a hard time communicating with whoever they were talking to; the call quality was just not good. In retrospect, I wish I had suggested they just use my phone.) And I can read directions, so I would not give incorrect information!

I hate TWC.

If those are SA cablecards... there are two sets of numbers on the card... one is on top and is all letters and the other on the bottom is letters and numbers. The one on the bottom is the MAC address which is what the headend needs in addition to the numbers on the Host ID Screen.

I must say that TWC Raleigh has been very good to me....

[Merejane]

If those are SA cablecards... there are two sets of numbers on the card... one is on top and is all letters and the other on the bottom is letters and numbers. The one on the bottom is the MAC address which is what the headend needs in addition to the numbers on the Host ID Screen.

I must say that TWC Raleigh has been very good to me....

Thanks, that is helpful. Yes, they are SA cablecards. The installer was giving the headend the number on top, which is all letters, no numerals. He kept saying he also needed an IP address, but he seemed to have no idea where he would get that information. Maybe he was referring to the MAC address -- the bottom line, which is letters and numbers -- but didn't know to look at that. He was really puzzled about this IP address thing, and the headend people were not helping him at all.

I'm glad, at least, that TWC Raleigh has been good to you!

[Merejane]

Same thing here. There was also a credible theory that if the Scientific Atlanta cards were ever installed and firmware updated in another device, TV, etc. that the cards would ultimately fail.
My first two sets failed and, indeed, were not initialized/updated in my S3. They were both replaced and the third set was new, brought to life in the S3. They work 99.9% of the time now - I still get a spontanous HOST ID grey screen popping up about once a week - not fun in the middle of a show.

Thanks, this is also helpful. I'm pretty sure that the replacement cards were not new. The installer went downstairs (I live in an apartment building) to get the cards from another TWC guy who brought them over. When my installer came back upstairs, he just had a couple bare cards in his hand; they weren't in any kind of wrapping. So maybe that's another part of the problem.

I wish the installer and headend people knew as much about cablecards as all of you seem to know!

[Merejane]

So far so good. The TW tech finally showed up tonight, and didn't seem wounded when I showed him TiVo's CableCard instructions. Trouble was, although he followed the instructions to the letter, he then left before I could do guided setup.

Before he did anything else, he put a new connector on the end of the cable coming out of the wall, then reattached it. At one point I asked why the TV didn't seem to be receiving a signal, and he suggested it was because I hadn't yet run guided setup, but that everything should be fine once I was done with that. Then he left.

So I started guided setup--and about halfway through, I glanced at the back of the TiVo box--and realized that he'd plugged the cable into the Antenna In port. Which explains why there had been no signal.


(The above quote was from a post made on 12/7/06. The underlining was added by me.)

OK, it's me again, the new TiVo S3 owner who had TWC NYC install two cablecards last week. The cards worked fine on the channels that came through, but I was not getting all the channels I was supposed to. So two installers came out today, and they could not get the cards (they put in a new set) to work at all -- I had no channels. They finally gave up and left.

So I fell asleep on the couch tonight and woke up a little while ago. For some reason, I looked at the back of the TiVo, and sure enough, I saw they had unplugged the cable from the Cable In port and plugged it into the Antenna In port! I could not believe it!

I plugged the cable back into the Cable In port, and got an onscreen message that the firmware was updating. Not too long afterwards, I finally got a signal on both cards. Now, I am back to where I was before the techs came out -- getting some channels, but far from all.

Sigh.

[cryptmagic]

Question for TWC NYC customers, how much are you paying for your cable cards? I was looking to get two tivos so i need 4 cards, and supposedly TWC has a wierd pricing plan.

[T-Shee]

Question for TWC NYC customers, how much are you paying for your cable cards? I was looking to get two tivos so i need 4 cards, and supposedly TWC has a wierd pricing plan.
If you can afford two S3 units, the monthly charge for 4 cable cards shouldn't be a deal breaker:

As of 4/1/07, it's $1.75 per card, plus $2.00 outlet fee per Tivo box. That adds up to $11.00. Subtract the monthly charge for each cable box that is returned to TWC and you should come to about $5.10/month additional after the cards are installed.

There's a one-time installation fee of about $40, reasonable considering how many times they'll be coming to your place to get these to work, unless they've gotten their act together in the last 3 months, which i doubt.

Examine your cable bill the following month. TWCNYC tried to double-bill for the outlet charges: its $2.00 per S3 box, NOT $2.00 per card as they tried to charge.

[Merejane]

Question for TWC NYC customers, how much are you paying for your cable cards? I was looking to get two tivos so i need 4 cards, and supposedly TWC has a wierd pricing plan.

I am a TWC NYC customer. Here's a cut-and-paste from my online account showing the charges relating to my recent (and not yet fully successful) installation of two cable cards in one TiVo S3:

03-28-07 INSTALLATION CHARGE $ 30.30
03-28-07 CABLE CARD ADDL OUTLET 03/28 TO 04/19 $ 3.14
03-28-07 CABLE CARD $ 1.29
03-28-07 DTV ADD'L SET @ $2.50 EA $ 1.85
03-28-07 CABLE CARD ADDL OUTLET 03/28 TO 04/19 $ 3.14
03-28-07 CABLE CARD $ 1.29
03-28-07 DTV ADD'L SET @ $2.50 EA $ 1.85

Laying it out a little more clearly, the charges per card seem to be:

$1.29 for the cable card itself
$3.14 for a "Cable Card Addl Outlet" (for part of the month), and
$1.85 for "DTV Add'l Set" (I'm not sure how that relates to the "@ $2.50" that I see; maybe it's for the partial month)

That's $6.28 per card, for a total of $12.56; presumably it will be more when I have to pay for a full month. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

I understand from T-Shee's post that I should challenge at least one of the double charges (for the "cable card addl outlet," I guess), but what's with the other double charge, for the "DTV add'l set"? Does anyone have any insight into these charges? I have searched TWC's not-very-helpful website and cannot find anything there.
____

P.S. BTW, I did not turn in my set-top box. I had them split the cable to the tv and run it to a second tv in my bedroom. I use the set-top box on that tv, with my old S2 TiVo. The fee for that set-top box is included in my $99.95 Entertainet Pack. (According to my online statement, that $99.95 covers "Basic Service, Remote(s) @ $0.25 Ea, Standard Service, Converter(s) @ $7.40 Ea, ., DTV, Road Runner Online Svc.")

[gteague]

i'm in dallas/fort worth with time-warner. the tech came late in the day on wednesday.

after some hassle and general clueless behavior on the part of both the field tech and the dispatcher, the tivo recognized both cards eventually in spite of their best efforts in the opposite direction.

one card worked perfectly although i did have to call to get 4 hd tier channels activated again. i'm pretty sure the other card worked perfectly also, but i can't be absolutely sure. i spent about 3 hours tweaking and setting up future recordings.

at some point after midnight i realized the 2nd card wasn't showing premium channels and i called back in and was on the phone with the tier 1 support off and on for 6 hours. at some point early in the morning i decided a good move would be to use the tivo function to wipe everything out and start over.

bad move. after that, neither card will show premium channels and, for some reason that seems random to me, also about a dozen or two channels in other tiers that aren't encrypted--for instance, about half of the digital kid channels.

after much research my guess is that this cleared out some of the original authentication/encryption keys and i spent all day thursday trying to find someone authorized to redo things from scratch. time warner will just absolutely refuse to let such person work directly with the customer it seems. if we had unions here i'd swear it's some halfarsed way to protect the techs who have nothing to do in this process except read a couple of strings of numbers correctly.

early thursday morning the dallas center told me i could go to the cable office in arlington and pick up two new cable cards. but when i arrived they refused to provide any. they did promise to have a tech do a 'go-back' between 4 and 6pm, but no tech showed up. i called dallas again and two different supervisors promised to have someone capable of performing this operation from scratch who had complete authority call me back. no one ever did.

what a bunch of farked up hosebags. i reminded them that i had paid them $130 a month for years and yet when i ask for support i get lies and the bums rush. unfortunately i'm unable to get satellite service, so i can't even threaten to leave.

anyone who is considering the tivo s3 needs to not need the service. in other words, keep what you have until (or, better, if...) you get cablecard working. you will pay out the nose for the tivo box and pay more for the service and when you ask tivo for help they claim they are at the mercy of the cable company. someone needs to remind them that their sales are at the mercy of the cable company if they continue to refuse responsibility for helping folks get the service installed.

/guy

[Merejane]

[W]hen you ask tivo for help they claim they are at the mercy of the cable company. someone needs to remind them that their sales are at the mercy of the cable company if they continue to refuse responsibility for helping folks get the service installed./guy

I empathize with your problems with Time Warner Cable; I have had three installers come out, and I have yet to get all the channels I should be getting. But my experience with TiVo Support has been good, so far at least.

After the last installer left, having given up trying to get the cards to work the way they should, I called TiVo Support and asked whether they would be willing to help the next installer (scheduled to come here tomorrow). They said absolutely, and that they do that often. They will talk the installer through the entire process, troubleshoot, explain things like the Diagnostic Screen, etc..

My concern is not with TiVo, but that the TWC installer will not agree to deal with TiVo. Every installer who has been here so far has refused to even look at the TiVo instruction sheet, insisting they know what they're doing. Which is just ridiculous, because if they knew what they were doing, how come my cable cards STILL don't pick up all the channels I subscribe to?

Has anyone here had TiVo Support work, over the phone, with the TWC installers? If so, how did it go?

[gteague]

I empathize with your problems with Time Warner Cable; I have had three installers come out, and I have yet to get all the channels I should be getting. But my experience with TiVo Support has been good, so far at least.

After the last installer left, having given up trying to get the cards to work the way they should, I called TiVo Support and asked whether they would be willing to help the next installer (scheduled to come here tomorrow). They said absolutely, and that they do that often. They will talk the installer through the entire process, troubleshoot, explain things like the Diagnostic Screen, etc..

My concern is not with TiVo, but that the TWC installer will not agree to deal with TiVo. Every installer who has been here so far has refused to even look at the TiVo instruction sheet, insisting they know what they're doing. Which is just ridiculous, because if they knew what they were doing, how come my cable cards STILL don't pick up all the channels I subscribe to?

Has anyone here had TiVo Support work, over the phone, with the TWC installers? If so, how did it go?

i was told the menus that contain the diagnostics are generated by the cablecards (it seems to be true) and thus tivo knows nothing about what is in those menus. what a load of crap! i was on the phone nearly two hours arguing with a nice lady at tivo who would not budge that no one at tivo who knew anything about those screens and cablecards in general was available to talk to customers.

/guy

[SCSIRAID]

i was told the menus that contain the diagnostics are generated by the cablecards (it seems to be true) and thus tivo knows nothing about what is in those menus. what a load of crap! i was on the phone nearly two hours arguing with a nice lady at tivo who would not budge that no one at tivo who knew anything about those screens and cablecards in general was available to talk to customers.

/guy

I believe Tivo is telling you that the content of the Cablecard 'CP' menu's are beyond their control. That content is 'owned' by the cableco and their equipment providers.

They should be reasonabally aware of what is in them though.... However, the content and meaning of that content varies from provider to provider... like Comcast.. some require pairing and some dont... If Tivo starts making assumptions and takes actions relative to those menus.. its gonna bite them so they likely dont want to get involved in those menus at all.

[mbarcus]

I have TWC here in Cincinnati and they added Universal HD yesterday to cover the Masters in HD. However, the channel is not showing up on my S3. Is there something I need to do to get it to show up? I've had the S3 connect back to Tivo hoping for an updated channel lineup....but nothing. Any ideas?

[cableguy763]

try a channel scan, or you might have to get your cards rehit.

[mbarcus]

The S3 won't let me do a channel scan...it says that is only when I have an antenna connected or when I don't have cablecards installed. I'll call TWC now....is there something specific I should ask them to do or just ask to have my cards "rehit"?
Thanks.

[psulur]

I had been in a correspondence with Guy ("GTeague") but I thought I'd share this warning to anyone in the DFW area with an A/B dual input cable line (which applies to most of the Dallas Metroplex, at least currently). Hopefully this can be useful for anybody considering a S3 purchase (as I will now have to send my unit back 2 days after placing my order). This problem was alluded to by username "box646" on page 7 of this thread back in September, but it's actually even worse than described there -- see below:

I'm in the Dallas area (near downtown in the Turtle Creek area). Unfortunately, I realize now that I will be forced to return the Tivo unit and get a refund. I have been living in areas with the A/B switch (dual line input). If for some reason you're not familiar with this evil scourge, it renders suboptimal any dvr that you may purchase (i currently use a replay tv unit) because the available channels are split on A and B. Most of the "good" channels are on A but there are some very relevant channels (espn2, comedy, fx, history, and many more) that are on B. If I want my replaytv unit to record something on B, somebody needs to be home turn a switch from A to B and back to A after the program is done -- obviously impossible. So I simply miss out on B channels. I have had a cable box with digital cable in the past (during a free trial) and that did not require A/B switching (all channels were available without a switch, which is what happens in the normal world). I guess it was a naive of me, but I had simply assumed that cable cards would be the same way, but unfortunately it is not (you still have the A/B switch). I was even willing to tolerate that until they get rid of this A/B system (which they have been promising for years but apparently is really happening finally at some point in november '07 -- don't hold your breath though), but I found out tonight that ALL of the HD channels (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc) as well as any premium (HBO) and in-demand (e.g. NBA League Pass) are on the B side. So that basically makes the Tivo useless. I now have to get the TWC crappy dvr (so that I can maintain basic cable on my other TV's and still use my replaytv, which is not compatible with satellite) and return the Tivo unit. Unfortunately the S3 Tivo unit is not worth it at this time, and at least I'm happy I realized this before I opened the box. If they get rid of this A/B crap anytime before the early fall, I may think about jumping to Tivo again. The only silver lining is that maybe by the time they get the A/B merged, the S3 price will have dropped some more (currently about $600).

[Fofer]

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet. Perhaps it's just a local (Los Angeles) promotion?

This weekend HBO and Cinemax are having free previews. Including HBO HD and CinemaxHD. I'm not currently a subscriber to either of these, but I was able to tune in just fine this morning, I set up my S3 to record/cache a few upcoming movies to enjoy for the future. Also set it up to record the season premiere of Entourage.

I saw mention of this a few months ago in my cable bill... and sure enough, this weekend it's in effect. I'm not sure why TWC didn't promote it more effectively. But there you have it.

Now go set up those recordings!

[pl1]

This weekend HBO and Cinemax are having free previews. !Just HBO here. Comcast/Boston It's in an ad for the Sopranos.

[cokyq]

No free preview here in Dallas mid cities, time warner cable.

[spolebitski]

Has anyone had any luck with the TiVo S3 and TWC cable service? A CSR told me that I would not get any channels above 99 (HD Channels are located in the 500's). I just want to know if buying a TiVo S3 is worth it with the TWC service.

Another option is AT&T if this service in Wisconsin ever gets the go ahead, but we need to wait and see about this.

[Arcady]

I had a Time Warner guy come out to install new service. He hooked up a Motorola DVR (which works but is really frickin' noisy) and a standard box (to use with my S2 unit) and two cablecards for my S3. When he walked in with the boxes, he slammed them down on the floor. Not a good sign. Then I told him my TiVo needed to connect to the internet to get info before I could insert the cable cards. So he connected my new cable modem first, then I finished guided setup while he hooked up the two cable company boxes.

So I showed him the sheet about cable card installs in the S3, but he didn't seem to feel like reading it. He says he has never seen a S3 before, and has only put cards into TV sets. This is when I knew I needed to try and take over the setup of the S3. I got ahold of the cablecards and made him go thru the steps. The cablecards looked like they had been already used... not a good sign.

We put in the first card and tried to activate it. Got a 161-something error. Uh-oh. Tried with the other card. Same thing. Tried both cards in slot two. Neither one worked. He says the dispatcher will not give him extra cards, so he has no more to try. I agreed to have someone come back out another day and try again.

Here's the thing. I discovered that the new place has an additional coax connector on the wall that apparently runs to an OTA antenna somewhere. I get all of my locals OTA perfectly through this. I think I may just cancel the cablecard nonsense and use the S3 for OTA and analog cable, and use the Motorola POS for digital cable. (I'm gonna try to swap it for a box that doesn't sound like the hard drive is dying, though.) I don't really care about the 4 channels (or whatever it is) that I need cablecards to receive.

With the money I will save without using the cablecards and additional "outlet" (pure BS) I can basically pay for 3 years of service on my S2 box. The few programs I can't get on the S3 will appear on their crapola DVR.

The whole thing still costs less than DirecTV + a DSL line, even with the TiVo fees.

[stevereis]

I'm in the Dallas area (near downtown in the Turtle Creek area). Unfortunately, I realize now that I will be forced to return the Tivo unit and get a refund. I have been living in areas with the A/B switch (dual line input). If for some reason you're not familiar with this evil scourge, it renders suboptimal any dvr that you may purchase (i currently use a replay tv unit) because the available channels are split on A and B. Most of the "good" channels are on A but there are some very relevant channels (espn2, comedy, fx, history, and many more) that are on B. If I want my replaytv unit to record something on B, somebody needs to be home turn a switch from A to B and back to A after the program is done -- obviously impossible. So I simply miss out on B channels. I have had a cable box with digital cable in the past (during a free trial) and that did not require A/B switching (all channels were available without a switch, which is what happens in the normal world). I guess it was a naive of me, but I had simply assumed that cable cards would be the same way, but unfortunately it is not (you still have the A/B switch). I was even willing to tolerate that until they get rid of this A/B system (which they have been promising for years but apparently is really happening finally at some point in november '07 -- don't hold your breath though), but I found out tonight that ALL of the HD channels (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc) as well as any premium (HBO) and in-demand (e.g. NBA League Pass) are on the B side. So that basically makes the Tivo useless. I now have to get the TWC crappy dvr (so that I can maintain basic cable on my other TV's and still use my replaytv, which is not compatible with satellite) and return the Tivo unit. Unfortunately the S3 Tivo unit is not worth it at this time, and at least I'm happy I realized this before I opened the box. If they get rid of this A/B crap anytime before the early fall, I may think about jumping to Tivo again. The only silver lining is that maybe by the time they get the A/B merged, the S3 price will have dropped some more (currently about $600).
I lived with a CableCard and B-side only on input to my HDTV for several months. I am in Richardson and was lucky enough to be in the first area upgraded to single-line, about the same time that the S3 came out last fall. Since October, I have been box-free with the S3.

FYI, the A-side is analog channels only, so you should be able to get all the digital channels from the B-side and into the S3. In my case, I had an S2 TiVo and an HD box so I could get all the channels but only had true HD from the TV - no DVR features - until the upgrade.

[stevereis]

...Here's the thing. I discovered that the new place has an additional coax connector on the wall that apparently runs to an OTA antenna somewhere. I get all of my locals OTA perfectly through this. I think I may just cancel the cablecard nonsense and use the S3 for OTA and analog cable, and use the Motorola POS for digital cable. (I'm gonna try to swap it for a box that doesn't sound like the hard drive is dying, though.) I don't really care about the 4 channels (or whatever it is) that I need cablecards to receive.

With the money I will save without using the cablecards and additional "outlet" (pure BS) I can basically pay for 3 years of service on my S2 box. The few programs I can't get on the S3 will appear on their crapola DVR.

The whole thing still costs less than DirecTV + a DSL line, even with the TiVo fees.
Where are you located in DFW? I assume you are in an area with the single line upgrade. The reason I ask is because the pricing structure is changing. Until last month, I was still on my old billing plan with $5.95 outlet fees and $0 CableCard costs. Recently, when they encrypted the 2 new HD channels they added at the end of last year (HDNet and UHD), plus 2 that I had been getting (ESPN and InHD) and moved them to the new $3/mo HD Tier, I called to complain. The rep then gave me a new bundled package - "Watch N' Surf Bundle" with Digital Cable + Internet for a reduced rate. The total cost was lower so I took it. Now my bill is showing $2.95 for each CC but no additional outlet fees. Overall, my monthly cost went down about $12 with this instead of up by $3 and that's on top of the $13/mo I saved when I added the S3 and returned my HD box.

Under the new plan, CCs are $2.95, a digital box is $4.95, an HD box is $7.95 and a DVR is $12.95. I am in Richardson, so not sure how prices in other DFW regions stack up: http://www.timewarnercable.com/dallas/products/prices/default.html

[cokyq]

What? Who said S3 would only tune up to ch 99? I have S3 with TWC and TWC provides cablecards which allow S3 to tune all digital channels, particularly the HD ones! Otherwise what would be the purpose of having cablecard slots!

[asills]

Ordering: the CSR on the phone was very accomodating to me ordering the cable cards (I said "I need to order 2 cable cards") and gave me my new bill total and scheduled the installer to come out ($11 install, $2.95 per card).

Install: the installer was knowledgeable in CCs and overall knew what he was doing. He had trouble with the TiVo remote (couldn't find Select or Clear) but overall knew what he was doing.

The whole process took about 45 minutes from start to finish; they installer had to request the hits a couple times and had to repeat all the numbers over and over again (which made me start to feel like it wasn't going to work) and eventually the CCs started receiving channels.

He left, I repeated guided setup (I had it working in analog mode for a week) and lo and behold I'm getting all my HDs and Cable channels (well at least all that I usually try to watch).

Overall I had a great experience, 6+ months after TiVo hit the streets.

[pilott]

TW Austin

I am in Austin using cable cards. I can receive all of the channels below 100. These are the analog channels and have been remapped to digital. Some have been remapped to 17xx, such as 06 to 1706. When to say goto 06 you get 1706.


I wish this was the case for me. I only get a handful of the channels below 100 (networks plus 1 or two others). I tried tuning to channels in the 1700s and got no luck there at all. I cant even tune to them using the test channels screen in the cablecard menu.

I cannot believe that we can't get Food TV or HGTV (among others), even in analog form (without bypassing the Tivo altogether).

[Merejane]

I empathize with your problems with Time Warner Cable; I have had three installers come out, and I have yet to get all the channels I should be getting.

A follow-up to my earlier post: Installer #4 was the charm. He figured out that the last installer (#3) had swapped the cable cards after calling the numbers in, so that the card that was originally in slot #1 was now in slot #2, and vice versa. I have no idea why Installer #3 did that. He was the one who had also switched the cable from the Cable In jack to the Antenna In jack so that I was getting no channels at all. I think he was basically clueless about the whole thing.

Anyway, Installer #4 swapped the cards back so that they were in the correct slots, and voila! -- we now get every single channel that we subscribe to. I had just about given up hope, but now . . . I am happy.

It shouldn't take four tech visits, but I do think it's worth it to persevere until TWC gets it right. So I would say to pilott that you really need to call TWC and tell them you're not getting all your channels, and insist they fix that.

[Gloftoe]

But I don't suppose I could have a setup like I currently have (TW digital cable box connected to a Series 2 Tivo) using a TW HD cable box and a Series 3 Tivo, could I?

That'd be too easy, and I'm sure it won't work.

This cablecard issue that Time Warner Austin is shoving down our throats stinks to high heaven.

[cableguy763]

But I don't suppose I could have a setup like I currently have (TW digital cable box connected to a Series 2 Tivo) using a TW HD cable box and a Series 3 Tivo, could I?

That'd be too easy, and I'm sure it won't work.

This cablecard issue that Time Warner Austin is shoving down our throats stinks to high heaven.
What cablecard issue are you referring to? TWC isn't shoving anything down your throat, you have several choices. Is a TWC salesman sitting there holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy an S3?

[Gloftoe]

What cablecard issue are you referring to? TWC isn't shoving anything down your throat, you have several choices. Is a TWC salesman sitting there holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy an S3?
Maybe I jumped too quickly with my post.

I would love a Series 3 Tivo, to use with my Time Warner Cable service. But I would also like to receive all the channels that I currently receive, minus the PPV and OnDemand stuff. I've tried to go through everything in this 54 page thread, but I'll admit it was getting kind of late and maybe I mistook some of the postings here.

[davecramer74]

What cablecard issue are you referring to?

he's in austin, they went to SDV. Cable card users cant get a bunch of channels in that area.

[Austin_Martin]

he's in austin, they went to SDV. Cable card users cant get a bunch of channels in that area

There's also an issue in Austin with cablecards that we haven't been able to tune channels 1-99 since the daylight savings change. The channels can be tuned on the equivalent 100-999 channels, but it's very annoying. I wonder if this would have been fixed by now if it were an issue with the time warner boxes....

[pilott]

It shouldn't take four tech visits, but I do think it's worth it to persevere until TWC gets it right. So I would say to pilott that you really need to call TWC and tell them you're not getting all your channels, and insist they fix that.

I had 4 the first time and two the second time (after several channels went bye bye after a month of working fine) along with several hours on the phone. The last guy who showed up (30 minutes past his 5 hour window of course) just gave me the paper of channels I wouldn't be getting (though I did get some on the list) and left without even pretending to troubleshoot the problem.

I kinda figured I was just going to have to bide my time until there is an alternative to TWC monopoly, however, reading this thread it seems like others are getting the channels that I am missing. So I guess it is back to another 3 hour call to see if I get lucky enough to get connected to someone who knows what is going on.

[pmiranda]

There's also an issue in Austin with cablecards that we haven't been able to tune channels 1-99 since the daylight savings change. The channels can be tuned on the equivalent 100-999 channels, but it's very annoying. I wonder if this would have been fixed by now if it were an issue with the time warner boxes....

I haven't had any trouble tuning the lower channels on my S3 here in SW Austin.

The only channel I'm missing (that I care about) as a result of SDV is SPEED, but it's always been treated as a second-class channel by TW, so I kinda expected to get screwed again over it. That reminds me... I gotta go make sure the cable box I'm being forced to rent to watch it is still tuned to it so I can suck up some SDV bandwidth...

[jwc_austin]

Being a devoted Austin TiVo Series 2 owner with a new HDTV, I've been following this thread closely.

I got the TV a month ago and decided to give TWC a chance with their box before making any decisions about upgrading to Series 3. Initially, I couldn't get an HD-DVR from them because they were out of stock. My wife asked to get on a waiting list and the woman behind the counter wrote her name down on a post-it. We did get the regular HD STB though so at least we could watch some additional HD content other than OTA. We continued to use the S2 with it, and switched sources on the TV between TiVo and the TW STB whenever we wanted to watch HD. No time-shifting HD though.

Skip ahead four weeks, we call and find out they have HD DVRs in stock. So last night I hooked it up. First off, being used to the TiVo interface, I could tell after a couple of hours that I was going to hate the HD DVR. I'll skip the details, and just say I rely heavily on some functions that I assumed would be available on the TW DVR but aren't.

I'm not going to get a TiVo S3 until the SDV issue clears up, so here's my question (finally):

Would it be possible to use the S2 to record with and control the channel switching of the TW HD DVR, and use the TW box only for recording HD programs? I'm going to try it tonight so I'll find out eventually, but I'm concerned about the mess that could arise if the DVR starts changing channels on its own or records two programs at once, etc. I never use on demand or PPV so I could care less about that. I just want to feel confident that everything will be recorded. What are the downsides of this set up, if it even works?

I realize it will be remote control hell, switching channels with the TiVo remote and the cable remote, and switching source back and forth with the TV remote.

Ugh. Can't everyone just get along?

Wish for TWC: Please improve your DVR interface! Please!!! I'm trying hard to give you a chance.

Wish for TiVo: Please tell me that you have a plan to resolve the SDV issue in a new product that I can buy soon. I'm trying hard to continue supporting you!

[pmiranda]

Would it be possible to use the S2 to record with and control the channel switching of the TW HD DVR, and use the TW box only for recording HD programs?

This will get you SD recordings of those programs on the S2, but the HD-DVR would not record those programs. You would run into a problem if the HD-DVR was recording two programs at the same time the S2 wanted to record a third. A dialog would pop up on the HD-DVR telling you about it, but you likely wouldn't be around to resolve the conflict.
For this reason I still have a plain HD set-top that my old TiVo controls.

[Josh Willis]

Well here goes nothing. I was a long time Tivo user up until the point that I moved to Austin 2 years ago. Since Tivo didn't have an HD option at the time I went with Time Warner's DVR and have really missed my Tivo ever since. Well I just moved to a new place here in Austin so I took Tivo up on the $499 Series 3 offer and it should be here this afternoon.

So Friday I called TW to request 2 cable cards when the tech comes out to turn on the cable at my new location. They asked what they were going into and I told them. I then got the standard response that they do not allow their cable cards to be installed into anything that isn't a TV. So after hanging up and calling back 3 times I finally got a CSR that didn't ask what they were going into, and the tech is supposed to be out on Wednesday morning. So, my question is what are the odds the tech is going to install the cable cards in my Tivo when he finds out what they are for. I know there are plenty of Series 3 owners with TW in Austin, but after all the resistance I received from the local CSR's I just wonder how much of a headache this is going to be.

Cableguy763: any recs on how to make this go smoothly?

[pmiranda]

I then got the standard response that they do not allow their cable cards to be installed into anything that isn't a TV.

That's a load of BS and everyone here knows it. I was lucky that the CSR I happened to talk to knew what a S3 was and was actually enthusiastic about it. Unless CableGuy pulls some strings for you, you'll probably get a contract installer, not a tech, and they might not have a clue what they're doing. As long as they leave you two cablecards that happen to work, you will normally be able to get everything going over the phone if they give up and go home. Make sure the back of your S3 is easily accessible until all your channels have been working for a few days.

[Austin_Martin]

I haven't had any trouble tuning the lower channels on my S3 here in SW Austin.

You're lucky. I have no idea what channels I can receive anymore. There are a few that tune in the 1-99 range. I seem to have hundreds of channels, but when I try to tune anything in, I either get a "not suscribed to this channel" , or even worse, just blank screens.

I soo wish we had some competition in the cable industry here.

Can you imagine the outrage if regular time warner customers couldn't receive most channels? But when I phone, they say it will be fixed soon, don't worry. They've been saying that for over a month now.

[2farrell]

I soo wish we had some competition in the cable industry here.



You and millions of other people.
Other than a few lucky Cities, for most folks there is no such thing as competition on Cable. You can choose Satellite, but then your shiny new S3 won't work with that.

[Justin Thyme]

I looked at the back of the TiVo, and sure enough, I saw they had unplugged the cable from the Cable In port and plugged it into the Antenna In port! I could not believe it!
How very odd. My TWC installer had the same difficulty. When he showed up, I had the S3 all ready at the screen ready to insert the first card and he decided that the 95% signal was not good enough so he fiddled with resplicing the connector.

What I did not see until after he left in frustration that he too plugged the cable into the antenna connector.

[mbarcus]

For those of you in the Cincinnati market.....TWC added Universal HD (channel 972) a couple of weeks ago just in time to cover the Masters in HD. Of course, Tivo didn't know this and I have been working with their lineup change department for nearly two weeks now to get them to add it. Well, finally last night I got a message from my S3 that a lineup change has occurred....and it was UHD on channel 972. A little too late to watch the Masters, but hopefully there will be some decent content on there.

Did anyone else in Cincy have this issue?

[rdrrepair]

Has anyone in the NY area gotten a PPV Channel on their S3 via a website? I keep reading that "All I did was go onto the website and order it up" but I have yet to see a TW Website with a PPV interface.

Please point me (links please) to a TW (In any part of the country) website that allows you to order PPV via the website or phone call.

I did use the search feature. I also called TW and was told it couldn't be done. If this is the case, why do we keep hearing that "All I did was..."?

[Fofer]

I did use the search feature. I also called TW and was told it couldn't be done. If this is the case, why do we keep hearing that "All I did was..."?

I called TWC and the CSR told me I could order a PPV show over the phone (just not anything from the "inDemand" channels.) A standard PPV order over the phone would be fine, he said, and then I could just set the TiVo to record from the Guide Data.

I still haven't found a movie or event worth trying that with, though.

[Roderigo]

A standard PPV order over the phone would be fine, he said, and then I could just set the TiVo to record from the Guide Data.

You also have to be careful about copy protection with PPV channels. This is one place where it's legal for the cable company to use Copy Never (so you have to watch it within 90 minutes of being recorded)

[rdrrepair]

You also have to be careful about copy protection with PPV channels. This is one place where it's legal for the cable company to use Copy Never (so you have to watch it within 90 minutes of being recorded)Looks like UnBox is "Our PPV Provider". At least with the UnBox on TiVo you have 30 days to start viewing and/or 24 hours to complete the viewing. I don't want to get into the short comings of UnBox, I just wanted to see what my real options in this area are.

[evillines]

I am in Dallas, TX and my neighborhood still has Time Warner on the old A/B system (with a promise to have this fixed end-year???). Can I even use the series 3 with this since part of the cable channels come from cable A and the others from cable B -- I presume that you aren't putting one cable into the antenna input and the other into the cable input? And I've heard that you can't run cable and antenna at the same time. Would love anyone's thoughts on this! Thanks!

[asills]

I am in Dallas, TX and my neighborhood still has Time Warner on the old A/B system (with a promise to have this fixed end-year???). Can I even use the series 3 with this since part of the cable channels come from cable A and the others from cable B -- I presume that you aren't putting one cable into the antenna input and the other into the cable input? And I've heard that you can't run cable and antenna at the same time. Would love anyone's thoughts on this! Thanks!

The antiquated A/B system won't work with the Series 3. It wouldn't work with the Series 1 or 2 either if you didn't use a cable box. Since the Series 3 doesn't control a cable box, you're out of luck.

If you don't mind ditching either A or B (A should be older analogs and B should be 100+ right?) then I assume it could work, but I wouldn't bother. I would personally (and have before I moved into a neighborhood in Richardson without the A/B switch) stick with their DVR if you're doing HD, or a Series 2 with a plain old cable box otherwise.

[evillines]

I would be fine using anttenne for primestime and cable B for HBO, Showtime, sci-fi, etc (have to check the channel line up and see if they are above 100). But I have heard that if you slap a card in there it will become a single tunner tivo and kill the antena option?

[pilott]

I haven't had any trouble tuning the lower channels on my S3 here in SW Austin.

The only channel I'm missing (that I care about) as a result of SDV is SPEED

I can tune to the networks (but I have the HD versions) and I think two other channels below 100. I can't get to their 100+ counterparts either. I do get SPEED though :) (too bad I don't watch it though).

[DougJohnson]

T
If you don't mind ditching either A or B (A should be older analogs and B should be 100+ right?) then I assume it could work, but I wouldn't bother.

It works fine. I'm in Dallas with the old A/B system. If you plug in the A side, you get basically everything except the channels between 60 and 100. There are a few things I would like to see there, so I am looking forward to getting a modern cable system, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying what I've got.
-- Doug

[evillines]

Sorry If I am being dense, but when you look at the Dallas channel lineup would this get me the HD primetime channels and the premium HBO and SHowtime? I am looking at the channel line up from time warner and since the digital channels go up so high, not sure where the demarcation between a and b is. If you look at the basic line-up it's states a and b -- but assume this is digital which goes up into the I am assume this is still digital cable, so this goes up to almost 1000 channels.

[Josh Willis]

Well to follow up, here's how my installation went. I was pleased to find the contracted tech standing at my door bright and early at 8:30 AM. I showed him the Tivo and explained that both cards went into the device. He said that this will be the first time he's done one of these installs, but didn't balk at it for a second. He was also very pleased when I showed him the cable card installation instructions. Well he proceeded to go outside and hook me back up on the poll while I waited and when finished he came back in to start the CC installs.
I had it waiting on the Cable card screen, so he inserted the first card and we waited for the CC# and Host ID screen to pop up, which after 60 seconds or so, it did. Then he called TW dispatch to get it activated. After sitting on hold for 10 minutes he finally got someone on the line who activated the card. It then went directly to the "Updating Firmware" screen, where it stayed for at least 25 minutes. After that it went back to the zip code screen and we got back to the CC screen. We then inserted the next card and got the dreaded 161-2 error screen. He called his supervisor to confirm that that meant the card was bad, and then we waited an additional 30 minutes for said supervisor to bring a spare card. We then inserted the new card which went directly to the "updating firmware" screen. It stayed on this screen for 2 hours, until finally we assumed the card was bad and we plugged in the other spare that his supervisor brought. This one started working immediately, so he called dispatch to add the second CC# to the account. He then had to wait on hold for 40 minutes to talk to a live body to activate the card.
To sum it up, he arrived at 8:30 and left around 1:00. I felt sorry for the guy, as none of the issues were his fault, but he was in good humor about it the entire time. The Tivo has been working wonderfully ever since and it's FANTASTIC to have a Tivo once again after going 2 years with the abomination of a DVR that TW provides. The only issue I seem to have is some of my HD channels aren't coming in (non-SDV ones) such as INHD, HDNET,HDNETMV, DHD, ESPNHD, and so on. Universal HD has worked off and on, and TNTHD didn't work at first but now it's fine. I guess I need to call TW back and have them rehit my cards or something.

[evillines]

Josh -- Thanks for this. I suppose I should just bite the bullet and do it. I was getting good OTA, but I am paying for DirecTV and it's hard to justify the giant price I paid for this series 3 if I am not actually using it for cable. One more question, then I will send you flowers for being so nice, are you getting the the premium HBO SHowtime and local HD. Also what about Sci-Fi/FX. If I could get those and only those it would be worth it!

[Josh Willis]

Well I don't subscribe to HBO/Showtime so I can't tell you there, but yes I get FX and Sci-Fi. The lack of Sci-Fi would be a deal breaker for me. And yes, the local HD channels work fine.

[evillines]

That's good news -- I am picking up the phone to call Time Warner! Thanks for the Dallas POV!

[pmiranda]

I can tune to the networks (but I have the HD versions) and I think two other channels below 100. I can't get to their 100+ counterparts either. I do get SPEED though :) (too bad I don't watch it though).

If TTG ever works I'll trade you basic cable shows for races :-)

[cokyq]

Josh,

TWC in the mid cities in the D/FW area charges extra for the "HD Tier", $3/mo, and it adds the exact same HD channels you describe. You may consider calling them and checking to see if they are activated!

[Josh Willis]

Josh,

TWC in the mid cities in the D/FW area charges extra for the "HD Tier", $3/mo, and it adds the exact same HD channels you describe. You may consider calling them and checking to see if they are activated!
Oh it's activated as I had it before the cable cards. I'm also getting SOME of the channels in the HD tier

[cokyq]

Sure would like to see TWC in the D/FW area add NG HD. Would also like Sci/Fi HD but have not heard if it is available at all! Does anyone know?

[cokyq]

I also had the HD tier working prior to the TiVo installation. The HD Tier used to be free, now they are charging for it. When the tech came to install the CCs on my TiVO, they disabled them w/o telling me. A few hours later, when I went to watch UHD, I noticed they had been turned off and had to call again to have them reactivate them (and agree to the new $/3 month service charge).

Good luck...

[Josh Willis]

Well I just called TW and the tech said everything looked good on his end concerning the missing HD channels, so they're having to send another tech out tomorrow. :\

[astrohip]

TW-Houston (soon to be Comcast) charges $5/month for the HD tier. And AFAIK, no Time Warner anywhere carry NG in HD. :down:

[Arcady]

I just had a tech out here (DFW) and he installed two new M cards in my S3. It took quite a while (over 3 hours) but everything is working. I had to prod him when he kept giving the MAC address instead of the S/N of the cards. It also took about 30 minutes to get someone on the phone who knew anything about cablecards.

Why can't they have a small group that specializes in cablecards? Just send that guy out to do the few installs needed. Since every installer I have ever met acts like they have never even seen one before, the number of installs can't be that high.

[elenaran]

Question about the A/B system in Dallas w/ a S3. I'm confused by the previous posters on the subject. Are they trying to hookup analog cable or does the A/B split still apply to a digital cablecard setup?

[Arcady]

Well, one of my cards decided to stop decoding encrypted channels. I have a guy coming back tomorrow to swap it out...

[DougJohnson]

Question about the A/B system in Dallas w/ a S3. I'm confused by the previous posters on the subject. Are they trying to hookup analog cable or does the A/B split still apply to a digital cablecard setup?

The digital channels are above 115 on the A side of the cable, but not all channels are available digitally. Analog channels like TCM, FX, and the History Channel are not available on the A side of the cable, only the B. The set top box Time Warner supplies connects to both sides and remaps the B channels.

The S3 TiVo only connects to the A side, so the channels on the B side are not available to it.

-- Doug

[cokyq]

I did not realize parts of the DFW area are still using A/B. Here in the midcities we do not, neither does Grapevine.

[Greywacke99]

Its been reported over on AVS that Los Angeles area TWC subscribers should now be getting ESPN2HD on ch. 425. Have any LA TWC S3 users been able to tune in this channel? All I get is a TWC screen saying that a "Digital Receiver" is required to view this channel along with advertisements for the SA 8300. I don't think it's a SDV issue b/c according to an LA TWC employee that posts on AVS, there are no immediate plans to bring SDV to the area.

[Fofer]

Its been reported over on AVS that Los Angeles area TWC subscribers should now be getting ESPN2HD on ch. 425. Have any LA TWC S3 users been able to tune in this channel? All I get is a TWC screen saying that a "Digital Receiver" is required to view this channel along with advertisements for the SA 8300. I don't think it's a SDV issue b/c according to an LA TWC employee that posts on AVS, there are no immediate plans to bring SDV to the area.

Thanks for the heads up! L.A. area TWC'er over here. I wasn't aware of this channel. I just tuned in, and it's looking great!

Also good to hear that the LA TWC employee says there are no immediate SDV plans for this area. That makes me rest easier... at least for now. :)

[Ian]

Hi all-

Just got HD cable and an S3, my setup appointment was yesterday.

Time Warner cable guy came in the first half of the setup window and knew exactly how to set up the TiVo - says he's done quite a few recently.

The visit took 1.5 hours because of the time it took for the CC's to update firmware and initialize, but so far, so good!

-Ian

[Ian]

Hi again-

Now that I've just spend tons of cash on an upgraded S3, based on what I've been reading elsewhere on these boards, should I be worried about SDV?

Or are us NYC Time Warner users safe enough for the time being?

Any advice would be helpful - thanks!

-Ian

[evillines]

I am bidding on a series 2 with lifetime and network capabilities. I am going to run the pay channels and HD network channels into my Series 3 and the other non-digital (non cablecard) cable into the TIVO 2 (so I can at least watch Sci-Fi and F/X). Silly to go through so much trouble, but at leat it's a fix until they fix the A/B issue in my area of Dallas, TX. I have read a lot of reviews and people's concerns about TiVo 3 and the cablecard issue. The cablecard issue is obviously an issue much bigger than TiVo called DRM. However, I do agree that I should be able to use tivotogo to move on my own content and pull off the non-digital, non-cablecard content I got OTA. That is indeed a big pain the butt!

[WebPrincess]

I recently had this exchange with Time Warner in North Dallas, TX:

My email to them:
“I called today to request a cable card for a Tivo Series3 I am planning to buy.
The associate on the phone says you will not provide those to me because you have a similar product. I thought the FCC required that cable cards
be available for the Tivo boxes.

Please explain.”

Their answer:
“Thank you for contacting us with your concern. We do apologize for the misunderstanding, however the cable cards are to be provided for use of your digital television. We will not install the cable cards into Tivo services. We do offer a Digital Video Recorder, therefore, not needing a cable card.”

I sent all this to Tivo in hopes they will get onto Time Warner — but who knows how long that will take. I’ve started to look into FCC filings. But we all know how “fast” the government fixes things.

[CharlesH]

“Thank you for contacting us with your concern. We do apologize for the misunderstanding, however the cable cards are to be provided for use of your digital television. We will not install the cable cards into Tivo services. We do offer a Digital Video Recorder, therefore, not needing a cable card.”You can call TiVo customer support and get transferred to the cablecard group, and they will get on the line with you to your TW office and read them the riot act about cablecards

[stevereis]

I recently had this exchange with Time Warner in North Dallas, TX:

My email to them:
“I called today to request a cable card for a Tivo Series3 I am planning to buy.
The associate on the phone says you will not provide those to me because you have a similar product. I thought the FCC required that cable cards
be available for the Tivo boxes.

Please explain.”

Their answer:
“Thank you for contacting us with your concern. We do apologize for the misunderstanding, however the cable cards are to be provided for use of your digital television. We will not install the cable cards into Tivo services. We do offer a Digital Video Recorder, therefore, not needing a cable card.”
I have TWC in Dallas and did not have any issues getting CableCards. You might try just requesting 2 cards - say they are for 2 TVs if they ask. I think the installer will do the work once they're at your house.

[DougJohnson]

I have TWC in Dallas and did not have any issues getting CableCards. You might try just requesting 2 cards - say they are for 2 TVs if they ask. I think the installer will do the work once they're at your house.

My Dallas S3 is running happily with two cards from TWC. I just called and asked for two cards, without saying what I was putting them in. The installer didn't care.
-- Doug

[cdp1276]

Hi again-

Now that I've just spend tons of cash on an upgraded S3, based on what I've been reading elsewhere on these boards, should I be worried about SDV?

Or are us NYC Time Warner users safe enough for the time being?

Any advice would be helpful - thanks!

-Ian

I don't think you are safe for long and I believe you like myself in upstate NY already has many channels on SDV. Here is a link to our list of channels:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/rochester/products/cablecard.html

[mosleyh]

TWC in Charlotte, NC. I have a S3 with 2 cablecards that's been working like a charm for months. Now suddenly (2 nights ago) BOTH cablecards can't acquire any channels. "Cold hits" from TWC and reboots have no effect.

Anyone got any ideas?

[cokyq]

I am also in the Dallas/fort Worth area serviced by TWC. I had no problems obtaining two CCs for my S3. Though it was not a smooth installation, after two visits and lengthy phone conversations between the tech and their support staff, they finally got it working!

[jcfed]

hey mosleyh. I'm in CLT also. Same symptoms. Friday evening I noticed that I wasn't getting HBO so I restarted the machine. Big mistake. It came back up and the cards initialized but I get no channels. It sits at the "please wait acquiring channels." Calling TWC there is a message that set-top boxes may be having problems with the time being displayed incorrectly or channels missing. I think this impacts anything that gets "signals" from TWC.

Talking with tech support is worthless because they send a refresh signal to the cards which it does see (EMM count increases) but I believe the problem is that whatever they have on TWC's side that pushes out the signals is down. As usual the techs at the office suggest rebooting the machine by unplugging it (I humored them) and then they send a refresh signal. Doesn't work. Why they want to send out a truck is beyond me since all the tech will do is call into the office for help. So whatever server in TWC that sends out EMM signals appears to be down. Of course telling that to a tech on the phone is like speaking a foreign language...

[mosleyh]

hey mosleyh. I'm in CLT also. Same symptoms. Friday evening I noticed that I wasn't getting HBO so I restarted the machine. Big mistake. It came back up and the cards initialized but I get no channels. It sits at the "please wait acquiring channels." Calling TWC there is a message that set-top boxes may be having problems with the time being displayed incorrectly or channels missing. I think this impacts anything that gets "signals" from TWC.

Talking with tech support is worthless because they send a refresh signal to the cards which it does see (EMM count increases) but I believe the problem is that whatever they have on TWC's side that pushes out the signals is down. As usual the techs at the office suggest rebooting the machine by unplugging it (I humored them) and then they send a refresh signal. Doesn't work. Why they want to send out a truck is beyond me since all the tech will do is call into the office for help. So whatever server in TWC that sends out EMM signals appears to be down. Of course telling that to a tech on the phone is like speaking a foreign language...


Thanks for that. It's (somewhat) comforting to know that it's not just me. I'm going to take one more shot at tech support this afternoon. If I get any results, I'll post.

[Iceback]

I live in Charlotte and have experienced the drop of service to the cable cards as well. They are admitting that it is affecting all of their cable card customers, and I was told today it was some sort of software change on their end that may require a change out in cable cards. My Sony XBR2 tv that has a cable card and has lost tuning ability as well. Of course they couldn't get a tech on the phone who knew how to do anything other than re-hit the card, and after consultation with a supervisor, I was told they would have to roll a truck to fix the problem. I was quite upset, as they in essence were telling me that they changed something on their end that screwed up all their cable card customers, and would have to roll a truck to fix all of them. Smart customer service.... not. Let me know if anyone gets a fix over the phone. I am out of town all next week and could not schedule a truck roll until next Sunday. 'Til then, my series 3 that has run flawlessly since October, has been neutered.

[mosleyh]

Same here. No joy on the phone support re-try.

What's amazing to me is that they would knowingly waste the kind of money that they are. It's job security for the techs of course, but really. Giving the phone support folks the right tools, or at least an escalation path to someone who actually knows something would seem to me to be much more cost effective in the long term.

The phone support folks, besides knowing ZIP about cablecards, don't even have the ability to send a "cold hit"! I asked if they could verify the Host ID and what I presume to be the Data ID for my two cards. Again, no soap.

Remarkable.

[jcfed]

yup I just call in every few hours to see if the phone message has changed. I'm assuming that once that message about cable box problems goes away our problem will also be resolved. I do plan on calling tomorrow during regular business hours to see if I can get someone that is more experienced. I think I've accurately determined what the problem is I just don't think any of the front line techs can fix it this appears to be a system problem not an individual issue like they seem to be trained to think.

[Iceback]

I will try again tomorrow to see if I can get someone who knows cable cards on the other end. You would think if they were going to make changes to head end software that would affect the limited cable card customer base, they would have tried to call everyone and schedule an upgrade before it the change knocked everyone off line. Unreal...

[jcfed]

If it's a software upgrade on their end I wonder if erasing the current cards from their system and going through that again would correct the issue. I may try that this morning with the techs on the phone if I can get someone that knows cable cards. What I don't want to go through is the 2 day 7 cable cards to get setup fiasco that I had with TW when I first got the tivo.

[jcfed]

Problem is fixed. I just called into the service number and the message about problems with the set top boxes is gone. I checked Tivo and what do you know... everything is back. Of course the technicians swear that the messages were not related....

[Iceback]

Everything is back on here as well... Looks like someone of authority came on duty this morning, checked the weekend logs and flicked the appropriate switch. I will still hold my Sunday appointment until late Saturday just in case.

[carolinaherps]

Can you guys in CLT give some more details on what you did to get your boxes back up?

I'm in Chapel Hill, and my Tivo went out last Wednesday. I've since had 2 service calls where they've tried to delete/re-add the cable cards, tried a new card, etc. Now I'm waiting on a service call tomorrow where they are going to try "several" cards to find one that works. They insist that nothing changed on their end and that it's a problem finding a working cable card. Yet I can't believe that 2 cards would go bad all at once.

Did they say what type of "upgrade" they did on their end so that I can ask the Chapel Hill guys about it?

[Iceback]

Wish I could help you... I just turned on the tv this morning and everything was working properly again as if nothing had happened. They had told me over the weekend that the problem was on their end (as in software), but would require a truck roll to figure out what was up. Low and behold, this morning all 3 of my cards are working. Maybe you can get the Rock Hill supervisor to call the Charlotte supervisor and ask what they did. It's a mystery to me. I was a little reluctant when the series 3 arrived back in October, because of all the reported problems with the cable card installations... but it was worked flawlessly since they were installed, and this is the first glitch I've experienced.

[jcfed]

I'm in the same boat Carolina. It just started working for me too. Whatever was wrong had to do with the problems over the weekend. The techs on the phone were worthless.

[evillines]

It is with great sadness to report that I am returning my TIVO Series 3. I live in an area in Dallas with the old A/B channels and the process for getting all the content – not just HD content but even regular analog content on Sci-Fi, FX, etc. – just isn’t possible. Also, Time Warner has an HD DVR that will support this A/B system. It breaks my heart, but this and the lack of tivotogo make it really difficult to justify the price tag. I will undoubtedly repurchase my tivo when they get this A/B on to one system in 6/8 months (per Time Warner). In the meantime, I will have to deal with a sub-par DVR. Good luck to you all!

[carolinaherps]

I'm in the same boat Carolina. It just started working for me too. Whatever was wrong had to do with the problems over the weekend. The techs on the phone were worthless.

Yeah, the techs here are pretty useless too. Tomorrow is my 3rd service call for this problem. The techs think that it's bad cable cards. We'll see. I'm about to the point of selling the S3 on eBay and just going with DirectTV instead...

[Animgif]

While it took about 2 hours to get my new TW NYC cable cards ordered, they were installed this morning without incident. Not sure what I'm paying yet (the three times I called no one could tell me...they were all confused), I'll post it when I know.

[abredt]

I received a replacement T-3 from TiVo and have to swap out the old one. I'm in L.A.'s West Valley.

I will have to swap the cable cards too. I assume I'll have to call TW to reactivate the cards.

What exactly should I tell them to do? (No jokes please.) I had a terrible time getting them working originally.

Thanbks, CB

[BruceShultes]

There is a unique host-id assigned to each cable card slot on a Tivo S3. They will be different for each box.

If your cable company uses the host-id and the cable card number in their head-end setup, you would need to call them and tell them the new host-id associated with each cable card number.

Some cable companies seem to use the alphanumeric cable card identification stamped on the back of each cable card instead of the cable card number.

You might as well try to put the cards in the new box and see whether they will work first, before you call your cable company.

[SonicRanger001]

I just spoke with TWC.

I am currently in limbo as a DirecTV Customer.
I have an HR10-250 currently.

TWC Says the following:

1 DVR Box
1 Regular Digital Box
PLUS High Speed Internet
All the digital channels w/NO Premiums

$79.99 for 2 years.


I asked about getting CableCARDs for a Series 3 (which I don't own) she was clearly trained to talk me out of it and instead stick w/their crappy DVR.

So...do whats the opinion???
I dump the dish, sell my HR10-250 for about $250, BUY a Series 3 (additonal $12 month) and get the TWC programming package for 2 years.
Total about $92.00

Or stick with the superior (IMO) DirecTV and HR10-250 and my current DSL service.
Total about $110.00

It seems like a no brainer but...I love my satellites in the sky :(

Someone tell me some GREAT stories about TWC!

[kennedy]

Someone tell me some GREAT stories about TWC!
I made the jump from DirecTV to the TWC/S3 that you are considering. CableCARD install was a snap. The HD picture quality IMO is noticeably sharper than DirecTV.

Unless you are drawn to DirecTV by the NFL Sunday ticket or some other unique sports channel, you may find out that it wasn't the "satellites in the sky" that you thought you loved. It may have been TiVo. At least that was the case with me. I couldn't be happier with my decision.

Go ahead and do it. :up:

[A J Ricaud]

My experience with TWC is the same as kennedy's. I loved my HR10-250s but the picture quality from TWC/S3s is much superior.

[abredt]

There is a unique host-id assigned to each cable card slot on a Tivo S3. They will be different for each box.

If your cable company uses the host-id and the cable card number in their head-end setup, you would need to call them and tell them the new host-id associated with each cable card number.

Some cable companies seem to use the alphanumeric cable card identification stamped on the back of each cable card instead of the cable card number.

You might as well try to put the cards in the new box and see whether they will work first, before you call your cable company.

I inserted both cable cards and got no premium channels. So I called TW and gave them the Host ID for just CableCard 1 = Bottom slot and asked them to send a hit. They said it would take 1/2 hour to go through. When I test channels, I get a momentary look at my premium channel, then the screen goes back to the page that shows the Host ID.

Does that sound correct? CB

[Ian]

Animgif-

Congrats on your new S3 - I also have TWC NYC, and when you get a chance, can you please report back on how much dropoout/pixelization you get?

I'm not sure if it's my cable run or the TiVo itself, but I've been noticing tiling/pixelization about once every 5 minutes or so on some channels... curious to see what your exerience will be.

Thanks!

-ian

[Animgif]

Animgif-

Congrats on your new S3 - I also have TWC NYC, and when you get a chance, can you please report back on how much dropoout/pixelization you get?

I'm not sure if it's my cable run or the TiVo itself, but I've been noticing tiling/pixelization about once every 5 minutes or so on some channels... curious to see what your exerience will be.

Thanks!

-ian
I've had my S3 for a while...just got the cable cards, however. I haven't noticed much pixilation...a little here and there but certainly not once every 5 minutes.

[cambist]

Time Warner Austin turned off the QAM unencrypted version of Fox HD (1501) for me again. It's been off for two weeks again. :mad:

They did believe Fox was part of the basic cable package this time, so that's an improvement. The guy on the phone did try telling me the SD channel had the same shows. Me having to explain that I want to watch the shows in HD that I'm paying for didn't make me happy.

Hopefully the next service guy won't tell me that I need to use their DVR or cable box to get basic cable again. I still get every other HD channel on both my TV and the Tivo. I think I'll put the Tivo in a closet when they come over.

I could just get cable cards and not deal with all this, but I'm getting to the point where I don't want to give them any more money. I especially don't like the idea of spending money to fix something they should have working in the first place. Basic cable...

[abredt]

I've had my S3 for a while...just got the cable cards, however. I haven't noticed much pixilation...a little here and there but certainly not once every 5 minutes.

OK - I give up - what city do you live in?? CB

[Digital Hitman]

From Los Angeles (North Hollywood), CA:

I've had DirecTV and Tivo for too many years to count, have a HR10-250 (HD) in one room, and a Series 2 Hughes (SD) in another. I'd like to have the entire house set-up for HD reception (including adding 2 new hook-ups).

1) Can I add a cable card into my existing HR10-250, or do I have to get a new DVR?

2) If I switch over to a new Series 3 HD-Tivo, can I transfer over my existing lifetime service?

TWC is offering:

6 months of Digital Cable at $29.95 (then increases to $44.95)
3 months of Internet at $19.95 (then increases to $24.95)
1 free month of HBO
3 free months of Showtime
2 free installations / additional at $14.95

At the end of the day it is going to be pretty costly to switch over, and this hardly seems like a big incentive, especially if I have to buy a Series 3 Tivo and/or rent one of TWC's DVRs.

Any suggestions on what I might be able to negotiate as part of switching over, ie:

* Lock the $29.95 Digital Cable rate for a year
* Free HBO for 1 year
* Free HD for a year
* Waive all installation costs

All suggestions appreciated!

[A J Ricaud]

[U]
1) Can I add a cable card into my existing HR10-250, or do I have to get a new DVR?

No. HR10 is for DTV satellite only, not cable.

[/QUOTE]2) If I switch over to a new Series 3 HD-Tivo, can I transfer over my existing lifetime service?[/QUOTE]

Probably not. The window for doing so has ended. That said, I have read that some Tivo CSRs have allowed it. It's CSR roulette, though.

FWIW I switched to TWC/TivoS3s from DTV/HR10-250s. The picture quality is much better, there is more HD content; and, my monthly bill is about the same. The Tivo S3s are expensive, though--$600.

[Animgif]

OK - I give up - what city do you live in?? CB
New York City

[Ian]

I had Time Warner come to my apartment today to check the signal - they said it was a bit weak in the higher frequency, but still within range...

...and that the frequent dropouts may be caused by the fact that the installer didn't run the cables tightly/correctly from the wall to the TiVo. In fact, he ADDED a splice. So, today's guy recut the cable, removed the extra splice, put in better connecting barrels, and we'll see...

...also, there was a 15 year old splice junction halfway up my wall - he replaced that one too, we'll see if it helps!

I'll report back in a few days.

-Ian

[BruceShultes]

I had Time Warner come to my apartment today to check the signal - they said it was a bit weak in the higher frequency, but still within range...

...and that the frequent dropouts may be caused by the fact that the installer didn't run the cables tightly/correctly from the wall to the TiVo. In fact, he ADDED a splice. So, a new cut in the cable, better connections, and a much shorter run, and we'll see...

...also, there was a 15 year old splice junction halfway up my wall - he replaced that one too, we'll see if it helps!

I'll report back in a few days.

-Ian
You may need a cable signal amplifier. Your cable company should be able to provide one, but I found one at Radio Shack for less than $10.

[cambist]

Time Warner Austin turned off the QAM unencrypted version of Fox HD (1501) for me again. It's been off for two weeks again. Service guy came out and he asked for someone at the office to plug into a TV with an internal tuner and they came back in 30 minutes or so to say they found the problem and were working on fixing it. I think the local station wasn't broadcasting the QAM version or something along those lines. TW didn't think it was on their end.

I am extremely surprised I'm the only one using QAM channels in all of Austin. With all the internal tuners on HDTVs, computer capture cards, and Tivos I'm the only one to complain for a two week outage?! That's just weird!

I'm getting cable cards so I can at least have the same problems everyone else does and hopefully simplify life a bit. Plus I can get that first tier of HD again. I am missing HD ESPN and TNT a lot during basketball season. Now I'll just have the SDV problems and Cablecard installation problems. I asked the guy to bring several cards just in case. :p

[cmccarter]

Got my S3 activated today. The guy who came out said he didn't even know what a cable card was till they handed them to him to bring to the install. After calling his dispatch (he was a contractor) the girl on the other end sounded as baffled as he did as to how to proceed, I finally walked them both thru the setup and got both cards online in an hour or so, I can't believe the "techs" they are using are so ill informed.

I had asked that he bring a couple of extra cards in case the originals had problems, which he left with me in case I needed them.

kinda scary huh?

[gbtx]

Quick summary:
:( 5 hours of my time. Three days. Two truck rolls. Three calls to Time Warner.
:) Worth the pain - HD is sweet.

More detail:
1. Subcontractor came with two cable cards. He'd never done a Tivo before, but his supervisor had and he talked him through it.

2. When installing the cards, we had to wait through almost two hours of "firmware upgrade" (1 hour per card)

3. He phoned in the host ID, but had to leave (9pm) before the last firmware upgrade finished.

4. Next day, got some channels, but missing about 75 I was supposed to get.

5. One hour on phone with tech support - "we'll roll a truck tomorrow to fix this."

6. TW tech installed new home run to Tivo box to strengthen signal (before 88, after 95 measured on Tivo signal strength meter.)

7. After tech left, still 6 HD channels would not show - "Cable card error, call Time Warner to activate service."

8. Called TW. After 30 min of noodling around with the CSR, I found out that the original installer had called in the wrong Host ID numbers for both cards.

9. After correcting the Host ID numbers and rebooting the Tivo...Sweetness.

Of course, I still miss a few of the switched video channels, but I can live without these.

[Ian]

You may need a cable signal amplifier. Your cable company should be able to provide one, but I found one at Radio Shack for less than $10.

The other night, I bought a RadioShack In Line Signal Amplifier - about $45, actually, it's powered.

However, I'm a bit afraid to hook it up, actually - don't want to zap anything. Anyone else have this thing? It's model number 15/1170.

TWC was out this morning, respliced and shortened my cable. The guy said that the signal was generally good, a bit weak at the higher frequencies but within limits... however, I'm still getting dropouts. Discovery HD this afternoon, recorded a progam on Bali - 3 dropouts in 4 minutes!!!

AUGH.

[gosnelld]

My experience: After running my new Tivo3 for 60 days without cablecards to make sure it ran ok, I ordered them from TWC in So. Cal. The cards were recognized but both cards are missing channels 37-80. I noticed this right away but the installers said I needed to do a reboot or guide setup again. I did both and it did not work still. Meanwhile they had left. I called TWC and they did a hit on both of them but it still does not work. They have an installer coming out again and bringing more cablecards.

I also called Tivo support and they told me that cablecard 2 has those channels and it is probably that card giving the problem. I also asked them about a message on the cards under Conditional Access. Auth: MISSING_PROGRAM_REKEY
Tivo support said it should say subscribed.

Has anyone else had this kind of similar experience with missing channels 37-80 and the solution?

[jsshattuck]

TWC in Charlotte, NC. I have a S3 with 2 cablecards that's been working like a charm for months. Now suddenly (2 nights ago) BOTH cablecards can't acquire any channels. "Cold hits" from TWC and reboots have no effect.

Anyone got any ideas?
Welcome to the club. If it is any consolation, TW didn't single out S3 TiVo's for this mistake, they also took down all their HD set top boxes and SA 8300HD DVR's at the same time. I was told that the outage only impacted the southwest area of Charlotte.

Unfortunately, when the problem was resolved, only TiVo's didn't come back up automatically (global refresh). On the 4th day, I got a Customer Support (CS) person who forced a special refresh of CableCard 1 in my TiVo with CableCard 2 removed, but the same was not true for CableCard 2 when reinstalled and refreshed. By the way, CableCard 2 has never worked properly, stopping at channel 281 (see my other posts here)

When the technician came to my house, he had never even heard of a TiVo HD, let alone worked with one. I walked him through all the diagnostic screens, and discovered that the TW database had an incorrect server number for the second card, and once corrected the card came up in less than 15 minutes. At least this one good thing came of their Bo Bo!

Be sure to call CS and ask for a refund. I got 5 days (the time that the HD was out) credit on everything (Cable and Internet), but had to ask for a supervisor.

As a side note, I walked the tech through all the advantages of a TiVo over TW's DVR, and he called back to tell me that he had bought one, <VBG>

[funtoupgrade]

An unhappy TimeWarner Cypress, CA customer here.

Installer for two cable cards just left after spending an hour and a half trying to activate the cards for my new series3. He is the only TimeWarner tech to successfully activate a cable card for the Cypress-LaPalma-CostaMesa area, and had done several TiVos already. It turns out TW here has not been able to do cable card activations since their takeover from Comcast. This left Comcast in charge of the process. Comcast just closed down all the regional offices that do this and have now only one office in the Los Angeles area to do this. When the tech called them nobody in the entire office had any clue how to do an activation. Finally the Comcast folks gave up and told the tech they could not help him. In desperation the tech reached somebody at TW for advice on how to proceed and was told that starting today TW could activate the cable cards. He called the number they gave him and found nobody there had ever done an activation! All they had was some written instructions which turned out to also not work, just like those at the LA office. They fooled around for 20 minutes or so then told the tech they could not help him either. What a joke!!! The tech basically indicated that nobody at TW really cares about problems like this, and suggested I call back next week to see if they have figured out how to activate a cable card.

[BL]

Our TW affiliate recently added Cinemax HD, A&E HD and MTV HD, but I was not getting them on my S3. After two calls with level 3 techs who could not figure out why, they sent someone out to the house who, of course, did not have much experience with cable cards.

After about an hour of going back and forth with the local office he reported that the office had concluded that the new channels must be switched digital (SDV) which cannot be received by cable cards. He did not say it with a lot of conviction, so I am kind of up in the air now. He is supposed to update me in the next few days, so we will see . . .

They are the first HD channels I have run into that on. The only others that TW has used SDV on locally have been the west coast sd mirrors of east coast channels--but only on sd. We get both east and west on all the HD channels (HBO, Showtime).

I hope this is not a trend.

[lcann44]

Our TW affiliate recently added Cinemax HD, A&E HD and MTV HD, but I was not getting them on my S3. After two calls with level 3 techs who could not figure out why, they sent someone out to the house who, of course, did not have much experience with cable cards.

After about an hour of going back and forth with the local office he reported that the office had concluded that the new channels must be switched digital (SDV) which cannot be received by cable cards. He did not say it with a lot of conviction, so I am kind of up in the air now. He is supposed to update me in the next few days, so we will see . . .

They are the first HD channels I have run into that on. The only others that TW has used SDV on locally have been the west coast sd mirrors of east coast channels--but only on sd. We get both east and west on all the HD channels (HBO, Showtime).

I hope this is not a trend.


When TW added MoJo I couldn't get it in my area on my S3. I could get it just fine on my STB on the small TV upstairs. I know someone in head end and he sent a hit to my card and bingo, there it was. Apparently when they add some of these stations they "forget" to hit cable card users. YMMV

So my suggestion is to simply call CS and ask them to send a hit simultaneously to both cards just like you were getting these channels for the first time. If that doesn't work then you will need to have somebody contact someone in head end.

[abredt]

CableCard 2 has died. In CableCard menu where it should show Host ID, I get a message:

"There was a technical problem during the authorization of this device, Please contact retailer."

CableCard 1 works fine. Yesterday both cards worked fine.

Is this a Time Warner or TiVo problem?

Help !! CB

[cab2]

Bah!!!! I hate SV channels.

I just added the esata external drive because I heard cinemax was going to run all the Star Wars movies in HD. Got the drive hooked up (very slick) and then called TW to add cinemax. The new channel shows up on my hd box in the bedroom, but not the big TV in the living room with the S3.

After a few go rounds with the TW folks, and being bumped up a service level or 2, guess what? Cinemax appears to be the only HD pay channel that is switched video. Just my luck! Ok, well then we cancel that add to my account. Grrrr.

Oh well, cinemax and HBO are related aren't they? Maybe hbo will do the same thing at some point.

Still like the idea of the external drive though. Going away on vacation soon and now I should not miss any of my shows while gone.

[BL]

I will follow the suggestions and check with TW again to make sure it is not SDV.

The tech did make one odd comment, that he heard that a cable card set had received MTV HD for one day even though it was SDV, and then did not receive it after that. Of course the obvious explanation is that it was set up as standard video initially and then switched to SDV after that. The comment did get me thinking about exactly why cablecards can't get SDV. I know the cards lack the necessary two way communication capacity, but how difficult would that be to implement, really? There must be some back and forth already, or they would not be able to get any information back at TW on the card. I am sure there are a million reasons I am wrong, but . . .

[natepence]

I'm here in Santa Monica and I've about had it with Time Warner and their techs' knowledge of Cablecards.
The first tech, almost a month ago, wound up leaving without everything working. He said it took a while for all the channel lineups to download into the Cablecard. It never worked and I never got anything that was encrypted. I was even getting the lineup from the West LA head end - not Santa Monica like I had been with my Moxi only a couple monutes before I hooked up the S3.
The second didn't know much more about Cablecards and had only brought two of them. Neither worked and I was back to square one.
Next I called and asked for Sergio and several Cablecards to come out, and wound up with Willie, another kid who didn't know what he was doing and only had 3 Cablecards. I got fed up and made him call his supervisor, who said he would be there in an hour with more Cablecards to resolve the problem. He didn't show.
What do I have to do to get someone to come hook this up right?

[carolinaherps]

I'm having the same problem. The latest TW tech that I had out swore that the cable card went in my TV, not in the Tivo box. I had to convince him that's where they really go. They didn't work anyhow. I've been without Tivo for almost a month now. The TW techs won't even call back now. About ready to switch to Dish Network and sell the S3 on eBay.

[sdurgin]

CableCard 2 has died. In CableCard menu where it should show Host ID, I get a message:

"There was a technical problem during the authorization of this device, Please contact retailer."

CableCard 1 works fine. Yesterday both cards worked fine.

Is this a Time Warner or TiVo problem?

Help !! CB

Time Warner of course. Just as I was reading your message, watching 60 Minutes time shifted, up popped a message re:authorizing cable card and contacing TW, I hit clear to dump the message and all seems to be ok. I think TW is sending hits out.

My issue is not getting program info for 404 (NBC HD)

Call Tivo though so they can walk through diagnostics with you.

[alyssa]

I've just spent the past week dealing with cable card issues. Apparently tw switched the head end from New York State to Portland ME last Monday. This required a firmware update & a re initialization of the cards.
Thankfully the techs came with cable cards, unlike the last 4 times when they didn't arrive with cards. They finally got the CC's working but i still can not get a few channels.
I know this doesn't help you all on the left coast but I feel your pain.

[abredt]

Time Warner of course. Just as I was reading your message, watching 60 Minutes time shifted, up popped a message re:authorizing cable card and contacing TW, I hit clear to dump the message and all seems to be ok. I think TW is sending hits out.

My issue is not getting program info for 404 (NBC HD)

Call Tivo though so they can walk through diagnostics with you.

Hi Steve - both cable cards are now working. I wonder what the problem was???

I too get no program info for 404

Next time instead of posting, I should email you first. :)

CB

[sdurgin]

Hi Steve - both cable cards are now working. I wonder what the problem was???

I too get no program info for 404

Next time instead of posting, I should email you first. :)

CB

Called Tivo this am re: 404. I was not the first caller. They have to work it out with TW. Tivo guy in Alabama said probably should be resolved in 2 or 3 days. If not, I'll call back then!

[feeferwilly]

Hi there.

I have TWC with the HD cable box. I am thinking of buying a TIVO S3. Is there a way to use the cablebox with the TIVO S3, instead of the cablecards? I like the ON DEMAND features with the cable box.

Thanks,
Steve

[Arcady]

No. The S3 IS the cable box.

[minckster]

Hi there.

I have TWC with the HD cable box. I am thinking of buying a TIVO S3. Is there a way to use the cablebox with the TIVO S3, instead of the cablecards? I like the ON DEMAND features with the cable box.

Thanks,
Steve You can have both cableCARDs and a cable box. Split the cable, one end to the HD cable box and the other to the S3. Having both is also the cheaper solution with TWC-NYC, because their "double-play" discounts apply only to packages with cable boxes. :mad:

[abredt]

You can have both cableCARDs and a cable box. Split the cable, one end to the HD cable box and the other to the S3. Having both is also the cheaper solution with TWC-NYC, because their "double-play" discounts apply only to packages with cable boxes. :mad:

Make sure the cable coming in is split and goes into both. One TW tech came to install the cable cards and wanted to feed from the cable box into the TiVo.

TW techs will often give you a signal booster free. They will also test the incoming line.

CB

[sdurgin]

Called Tivo this am re: 404. I was not the first caller. They have to work it out with TW. Tivo guy in Alabama said probably should be resolved in 2 or 3 days. If not, I'll call back then!
TW West Valley Los Angeles missing channel 404 data resolved as of Tuesday evening.

[sdurgin]

Make sure the cable coming in is split and goes into both. One TW tech came to install the cable cards and wanted to feed from the cable box into the TiVo.

TW techs will often give you a signal booster free. They will also test the incoming line.

CB

The 1st thing they SHOULD do before installing cards is test signal strength. The SECOND pair of TW techs to visit me did so, replaced a couple of old corroded splitters outside and installed a line amp inside.

[SonicRanger001]

Make sure the cable coming in is split and goes into both. One TW tech came to install the cable cards and wanted to feed from the cable box into the TiVo.

CB


So if I switch to the S3 after dumping my dish I should get the HD Cable box and then after I get all the "kinks" worked out with that hookup my S3 in-line with the existing HD box and have them come back out and install 2 CC's.

Which also in a way makes sense because then you'd at least have HD tv programming to watch, albeit w/o TiVo while the TWC pukes work out all of my problems with my CC's...

Sounds like a winner to me!!!

[SonicRanger001]

Oh I forgot to ask, does anyone know what TWC's requirements are for existing cable?

I have rewired my house recently and ran all new RG6Quad throughout, I have all these runs terminating into a multi-media panel in the basement. My plan was to run a piece of RG6Quad from my multi-switch in the basement out the side of my house and leave it dangling there. I then plan on cutting the existing line at the street so the guy has to install a brand-new line from the street to the house and tie into my new line. Do you think I'm going to cause problems doing this? I am aware the supposedly the line from the street to the house is the property of the cable/phone/power company BUT I can always just say thats how I found it when I bought the house last year!!!

[Fofer]

TWC (formerly Comcast) in my area has recently added: MTV-HD, ESPN2-HD and Fox Reality, three channels I'm really enjoying!

[carolinaherps]

So if I switch to the S3 after dumping my dish I should get the HD Cable box and then after I get all the "kinks" worked out with that hookup my S3 in-line with the existing HD box and have them come back out and install 2 CC's.

Which also in a way makes sense because then you'd at least have HD tv programming to watch, albeit w/o TiVo while the TWC pukes work out all of my problems with my CC's...

Sounds like a winner to me!!!

I STRONGLY suggest that if you are going to try the S3, you get it and the cable cards working FIRST before dumping your dish.

Take it from someone who's been without their S3 for a month now because TW can't figure out how to activate the cable cards...

[natepence]

I'm here in Santa Monica and I've about had it with Time Warner and their techs' knowledge of Cablecards.
The first tech, almost a month ago, wound up leaving without everything working. He said it took a while for all the channel lineups to download into the Cablecard. It never worked and I never got anything that was encrypted. I was even getting the lineup from the West LA head end - not Santa Monica like I had been with my Moxi only a couple monutes before I hooked up the S3.
The second didn't know much more about Cablecards and had only brought two of them. Neither worked and I was back to square one.
Next I called and asked for Sergio and several Cablecards to come out, and wound up with Willie, another kid who didn't know what he was doing and only had 3 Cablecards. I got fed up and made him call his supervisor, who said he would be there in an hour with more Cablecards to resolve the problem. He didn't show.
What do I have to do to get someone to come hook this up right?


Just wanted to give an update - my 6th tech came out this morning, and didn't really know what he was doing but it seems that the dispatch he called in Van Nuys really did. I'm not sure if it was Michelle, the woman that Sergio calls, but she got everything working in 15 minutes! I will post that number to the dispatch center as soon as I can - he used my home phone to call and I hav the paper on which he wrote the number. Maybe we'll be able to call and speak to techs ourselves and bypass the techs, who usually just read off the data and host numbers, and that's about it.

EDIT:
Here is the number to the Van Nuys dispatch center, who seem to be able to help out way better than the dispatchers the techs normally call: 1-800-455-0073, then select option 2.

[Babasyzygy]

57 pages to read through? Argh. In the mean time...

I have Time Warner in Austin, and a couple of S3 TiVos with CableCARDs.

Mostly they're working fine, except I can't receive A&E HD, and the Pacific premium channels feed. I called Time Warner, and they told me that they don't provide those channels on CableCARDs.

Is this legal? Will it be legal come July 1st? Should I complain to the FCC? I'm already complaining to Time Warner, for all they care.

Thanks...

[Cainebj]

Is anyone else NOT getting A&E in NYC on channel 16?

It's not broadcasting on either of my cable cards and when I check the signal strength it says it's at 100%

[T-Shee]

Is anyone else NOT getting A&E in NYC on channel 16?

It's not broadcasting on either of my cable cards and when I check the signal strength it says it's at 100%


Ditto. Not getting A&E on ch. 16 in NYC via cable cards, but it is working on my old cable box that I still have in the bedroom.

Looks like a channel list error being sent to the Cable Cards. A&E isn't a premium station AFAIK.

[Cainebj]

Thanks T-Shee - I was wondering if it was just me ;)

I don't watch A&E all that often, but I was attempting to record the first season of 24 which they just started re-airing and it wasn't happening. Oh well, guess I go to the DVD.

[bradbarrish]

Here's the story of how things went for me and my brand new S3. As soon as I got the S3, I made a service appointment for the following Saturday morning between 9am and 12pm. The technician arrived at 12pm with no CableCARDs despite the fact that it clearly said the job included CableCARDs. The technician was also installing internet, so while he was finishing that up, he called his supervisor in the field letting him know that the warehouse didn't supply him with the CableCARDs. His supervisor agreed to come out to the house the same day between 1 and 3pm. He showed up with two cards, inserted them into the TiVo, told me it would take some time for them to be registered on the network and left.

The next day I turned the TiVo on and was only receiving local channels. No CNN, no MTV and definitely no HBO, Showtime, etc. I called Time Warner customer service and they clearly didn't understand that I was using TiVo and not my TV for the cards. They also didn't understand why I had two cards. I explained it all to them and they were clueless. They said that both cards were listed on my account, but after trying various signal refreshes, she could not get the cards to work and ended up saying there was a problem with the TiVo. So I got off the phone with TW and called TiVo. TiVo went through the CableCARD screens and figured out that while the cards might be listed on my account, they clearly were not initialized properly and were therefore not paired. The TiVo support guy was very nice, though the entire process with him on the phone took upwards of an hour to get to the point where TiVo was saying that it was TW's fault. TW said it's TiVo's fault and TiVo said it was TW fault. Needless to say, I was frustrated beyond belief. I asked the TiVo guy what questions or information I should ask for from TW, so that I might get someone to help me better. He offered to call TW with me on the phone and help, so we called them up and started again.

The rep at TW was nice, but clearly didn't know anything about CableCARD technology. From her perspective, everything was fine and there was no reason why it wouldn't be working. She put us on hold for a long time, though she did come back every so often to tell us she was still trying to get through to someone that knew a little more about CableCARD. She knew she wasn't going to be able to help. We did have to push a little for her to ask someone else. Finally she had a supervisor come on that knew a little more about CableCARDs. She sent some refresh signals. The TiVo guy said they needed to send a "hard hit" to the cards and she didn't understand that. We went through a bunch of other options, spent a lot of time on hold and finally, almost 4 hours later (!!!!), she set me up with another technician to come out the following Saturday. As you can imagine, I was so beyond frustrated at this point that I wanted to smash the TiVo. So, just to tally up how much of my time it has taken to get to this point:

4 Hours (for technician who showed up without the cards)
3 Hours (for supervisor to come out and install the cards)
4 Hours (on the phone with TW and TiVo customer support)
TOTAL: 11 hours and the CableCARDs still aren't working

The following Saturday, the technician showed up at 9am sharp. He had 1 CableCARD. I shot him a look and he could tell I was immediately pissed. I told him the whole story and he told me to calm down and assured me he wouldn't leave until it was solved. He had more cards in his truck. He went out to his truck and grabbed 5 more cards. So he had a total of 6 cards in my house. I removed the existing cards for my TiVo and placed the first replacement card in the bottom slot. I tested the channels and had the same problem as before. Only local channels would work. Card #2 did the same thing. Card #3 did the same thing. We tried card #4 and it worked fine after taking a few minutes to pair with the network. Great, we have 1 card out of 6 that works. Now, it shoudl be said that switching out cards on the TiVo isn't easy because it asks you to go through the Guided Setup after you switch the cards, which takes a long time. I did that once and then we just figured out it was much easier to test the cards in the TV, since it had a CableCARD slot. We went through the remaining cards and none of them worked. 1 out of 10 cards were defective as far as the technician was concerned. He said he would run back to the warehouse and grab some more cards and would be back in 15 minutes, which he was.

We inserted one of the new ones into the TV and it didn't work. We tried the next, which also didn't work and finally the third, which didn't work. This wasn't making any sense. He tried calling their IS (engineers) department and no one answered. All morning he wasn't able to get anyone on the phone. He knew that he needed to get these guys on the phone in order to figure this out. He finally got someone on and they couldn't do anything for him because the cards weren't listed on my account. So he then had to call customer service and get them added to the account. He called the IS department back on the phone and went through them to see if they could reset the card from there. He listed all the numbers they were asking for over and over, but something wasn't matching up. It was finally determined that a bar code didn't match the number of the actual card so when the card was brought into inventory and scanned, it didn't match what the card actually was. In other words, the bar code didn't match the code that was hard coded into the card. There was no way to correct this. And we couldn't simply swap it out with another card. IS doesn't have the ability to add equipment to an account, so we had to call customer service back, have them remove the old card and put another one in. Once we did that, we called IS back and after reading them all the numbers to activate it, it worked. So out of 10 cards, we had 2 cards that worked. Everyone was pretty excited. The total amount of time spent on this was 4 hours, bringing the grand total to 15 hours to get 2 working CableCARDs in my TiVo, never mind the amount of time it took to run Guided Setup several times (about 30 minutes each time).

You can be sure I will be writing a letter to Time Warner about my experience, which could not have been more frustrating. I work 70+ hours per week and having to deal with this could not have been more unpleasant. Unless you have the time and patience to deal with hurdles like this, I would not recommend getting an S3 in Los Angeles. Maybe other people have had better experiences, but chances are you haven't. It was made very clear that CableCARD technology is so new that there aren't many people that know what to do, which is really unfortunate. It's worth mentioning that the tech that came out the second time was a rock star. He went above and beyond to make sure the job was done right. He took pride in what he was doing and was extremely thorough. his name was Aric and his technician number was 6509. He should be training everyone, even the supervisors.

I know this was long, but if it ends up helping people, then it was worth it. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

[sfhub]

bringing the grand total to 15 hours to get 2 working CableCARDs in my TiVo, never mind the amount of time it took to run Guided Setup several times (about 30 minutes each time).
I'm sorry to hear you had to go through so much trouble to get things working.

It's been a while since I had my 4 CableCARDs installed, but I could have sworn I was able to test the reception of channels using the CableCARD test menus without needing to do the guided setup. The guided setup (as I recall) was only needed for final setup so the S3 could record stuff correctly. Still you would have had multiple visits and countless time on the phone, but possibly it could save some time if you need to do it again.

[abredt]

I know this was long, but if it ends up helping people, then it was worth it. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Welcome to the club. Where in LA are you? I'm in the San Fernando Valley - West Valley - Time Warner. Been there, done that. Then when there is a problem, TiVo and TW each blame the other.

Call TW and ask that they give you a credit for the charge for the install. Just tell them how many hours it took. They did that for me.

CB

[Fofer]

Call TW and ask that they give you a credit for the charge for the install.

Charge for the install? :confused:

I'm in TWC - Los Angeles area (formerly Comcast.) The first tech didn't have cable cards, but the second did. It took about 45 minutes but everything worked fine when he was done. And there was never any charge, for either visit.

After what bradbarrish went through, he should be getting 6 months free service or something!

[sdurgin]

Welcome to the club.


TW is still proving that they have a huge problem with training system wide. I was only able to get satisfaction by getting one tech to put his supervisor on the phone, who was very attentive and good at getting more experienced techs out.

Never let the tech leave before seeing the cards working. There is no huge lag time in seeing hits on the cablecard diagnostic menus. Keep them there until they run out of cards to swap.

[abredt]

Charge for the install? :confused:

I'm in TWC - Los Angeles area (formerly Comcast.) The first tech didn't have cable cards, but the second did. It took about 45 minutes but everything worked fine when he was done. And there was never any charge, for either visit.

After what bradbarrish went through, he should be getting 6 months free service or something!

They charged me $29.95 for the install until I told them my tale of woe - which included the dispatcher telling the first tech, "Tell her that we do not support TiVo and leave her house immediately."

CB

[Babasyzygy]

I had a similar experience with Time Warner in Austin when I got my CARDs installed, about 2 months ago. I think it took 7 cards to get 4 good ones, over two visits - the 2nd tech had done TiVos many times before and mentioned that even this was a much lower failure rate than they used to see. In the process though, he had to prove to his NOC that they were bad, after reviewing a lot of the signal strength and synchronization diagnostics.

To contrast that, when I was back in Florida about 5 months ago (where's Bright House cable) the tech just put 4 CableCARDs in, they fired up right away and were ready to go with no problem.

On the gripping hand, my girlfriend's S3 CableCARD install was two weeks ago (in Florida with Bright House), and the tech had no clue and it took enormous effort to get him to try a third CableCARD when the 2nd was bad. He eventually did, and it worked.

Go figure.

In my view, we need to keep hammering away at Time Warner with whatever bludgeons we can, from our own options with Satellite (hey, if we have to use a box, why not Satellite?) to whatever complaints we can make with the FCC, either now or when the Integration Ban hits on July 1.

[T-Shee]

In my view, we need to keep hammering away at Time Warner with whatever bludgeons we can, from our own options with Satellite (hey, if we have to use a box, why not Satellite?) to whatever complaints we can make with the FCC, either now or when the Integration Ban hits on July 1.

"...when the Integration Ban hits..." the fan.

Unless there is a substantial improvement in their (all cable companies) knowledge and support for Cable Cards, all "new cable box" customers could be wind up in the same leaky boat as S3 folks.

When the vast majoriy of cable subscriber have cable cards in their cable boxes (many years away, if ever) something may improve, but since Cable Cards are still relatively rare and will remain so for a quite a while, I don't see any improvement happening for a few years.

[funtoupgrade]

Time Warner Cypress, CA - here again

Well on the second try TWC got two cable cards working in my series 3 so I am now a happy camper.

[Roderigo]

The TiVo support guy was very nice, though the entire process with him on the phone took upwards of an hour to get to the point where TiVo was saying that it was TW's fault. TW said it's TiVo's fault and TiVo said it was TW fault. Needless to say, I was frustrated beyond belief. I asked the TiVo guy what questions or information I should ask for from TW, so that I might get someone to help me better. He offered to call TW with me on the phone and help, so we called them up and started again.

While I'm sorry it was such an ordeal, nice of tivo to offer to call TW with you. Hopefully that put a little bit of fire in TW to get things right.

And, it sounds like tivo diagnosed it properly, and only TW could fix the problem.

[bradbarrish]

I live in Venice.

Fofer - You can bet that I will somehow get 6 months free, if for nothing else to cover the costs of having one of their crap DVRs for 6 months before I decided to throw down the cash for an S3. I sent the story to The Consumerist. If you don't know about the site, I highly recommend adding it to your daily reading, starting with their post on contacting TWC executive customer support.

[funtoupgrade]

Time Warner Cypress, CA - here again

A few posts ago I reported success in TWC installing two cable cards in my S3 on the second try. It was premature. The cards defaulted to basic channels only after a couple of days. Today the third tech came out and he was totally clueless. Had never troubleshooted cable cards, only installed them. He was here a couple of hours and made lots of phone calls but solved nothing. He left indicating somebody more knowledgeable would call me tomorrow regarding the problem. TWC is a joke, and I am almost ready to dump them and my S3 for satellite.

[BruceShultes]

Time Warner Cypress - here again

A few posts ago I reported success in TWC installing two cable cards in my S3 on the second try. It was premature. The cards defaulted to basic channels only after a couple of days. Today the third tech came out and he was totally clueless. Had never troubleshooted cable cards, only installed them. He was here a couple of hours and made lots of phone calls but solved nothing. He left indicating somebody more knowledgeable would call me tomorrow regarding the problem. TWC is a joke, and I am almost ready to dump them and my S3 for satellite.

I don't know whether my situation is similar to yours. I live in Albany,NY.

About once a month my cards seem to default to basic channels only.

Sometimes I can re-store them just by re-booting the S3. Other times they seem to re-cover by the next day without my doing anything.

[T-Shee]

Is anyone else NOT getting A&E in NYC on channel 16?

It's not broadcasting on either of my cable cards and when I check the signal strength it says it's at 100%
Anyone else not getting A&E (ch.16) TW Manhattan (NYC)?

Reboot is no help. I don't need to resurrect this station immediately, but I am paying for it as part of my cable pkg. (Yeah, I'm avoiding the phone call to TWC about this. I don't need the aggravation.)

[funtoupgrade]

Time Warner Cypress, CA - here again

When I got up this morning I found one cable card working and one card not working, so apparently the tech yesterday did solve something on the phone. I have the fourth tech coming out tomorrow with a new cable card. The guy who was supposed to call today around noon has not called yet and I don't expect him to based on my TWC experiences so far.

[funtoupgrade]

Time Warner Cypress, CA - here again

Two TWC techs showed up today to replace my bad cable card. I was informed that Cypress-LaPalma TWC had no TWC techs of it's own and had all contract techs who have totally screwed up this area's system. TWC pulled all of their techs from the Costa Mesa/Tustin area and moved them here for one month to try and straighten out the mess!
Today was their first day on the job and what a difference. They actually knew what they were doing and fixed things rather quickly. My second cable card was up and running in about an hour after they arrived. TWC here is new in authorizing cable cards which has been done by Comcast in Los Angels until just recently. The problem is there is only one person who has actually done it and yet there are a bunch of trainees who might answer the dispatch phone for authorization. Apparently whoever writes the software for Time Warner is an idiot, because the computer screens on which they enter data seem to have different terms for the four numbers that need to be entered than what is typically displayed on the TV when a cable card is detected.

In any case they got my second cable working and for me that is all that matters at the moment.

[Brad Smith]

Time Warner Cable Nebraska (in Lincoln) has started using SDV with new channels they are adding, unfortunately starting with ESPN2 HD. Buyer beware. It's likely to increase as they are using Lincoln as a test site for a great many things right now.

[jeffinhollywood]

I'm a Time Warner cable customer in hollywood, ca. I'm having problems with Tivo displaying certain channels on a sporadic basis...especially Hi Def channels. It seems like it could be one of the 2 cable cards but hard to pin down. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesnt. If Tivo is recording something on one card I definitely seem to have the problem. A call to Time Warner support, of course, rendered no help. They said I needed to contact my TV manufacturer (right) ...finally got them to make an appt to come back out. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[AgentMunroe]

I'm a Time Warner cable customer in hollywood, ca. I'm having problems with Tivo displaying certain channels on a sporadic basis...especially Hi Def channels. It seems like it could be one of the 2 cable cards but hard to pin down. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesnt. If Tivo is recording something on one card I definitely seem to have the problem. A call to Time Warner support, of course, rendered no help. They said I needed to contact my TV manufacturer (right) ...finally got them to make an appt to come back out. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Before the Time Warner rep shows up, you should run through the Channel Test function on each of your CableCARDs and see if all your channels work across both cards - from what you're describing one of your cards may not be working or authorized properly. Just flip through your HD channels plus any premiums you might have and verify they both work with all the channels you should be getting. If they don't, restart your TiVo and try it again - sometimes the cards will lose authorization. (You may need to wait a few minutes after rebooting for the cards to re-authorize.) If not, you'll have to post the diagnostics screen from the non-functioning card for any more help... it might just be that Time Warner didn't authorize the card properly.

[abredt]

I'm a Time Warner cable customer in hollywood, ca. I'm having problems with Tivo displaying certain channels on a sporadic basis...especially Hi Def channels. It seems like it could be one of the 2 cable cards but hard to pin down. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesnt. If Tivo is recording something on one card I definitely seem to have the problem. A call to Time Warner support, of course, rendered no help. They said I needed to contact my TV manufacturer (right) ...finally got them to make an appt to come back out. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I'm in West Valley of TW and "lost" one of my cable cards. Record a HiDef channel on one tuner, then try to select a different HiDef channel to play. That way you will know that it is one cable card that is not working.

Go into cable card menu where it shows the host ID and see if both cards are authorized.

Mine came back to life a few days later - probably a result of lots of people calling TW.

CB

[LQQK]

Time Warner Cable Nebraska (in Lincoln) has started using SDV with new channels they are adding, unfortunately starting with ESPN2 HD. Buyer beware. It's likely to increase as they are using Lincoln as a test site for a great many things right now.

I live in Lincoln,,,,,I'm embarrassed to have to ask,,,,What is SDV?

LQQK

[jeffinhollywood]

Thanks for the replies. I've isolated the fact that CableCard 1 does not work. When I go in to the settings screen for CC1 vs. CC2, CC1 clearly shows it's not authorized. I called TWC customer service and of course they say that there is nothing they can do remote and have to send a tech out to my place. I was hoping they could try re-authorizing it (similar to whatt the tech did when he came out originally) but the girl I spoke with was completely illiterate to the cable cards and had no clue what I was talking about. So, now I have to wait until Saturday cause I'm not taking off work to sit home for 4 hours. *sigh*

[A J Ricaud]

I live in Lincoln,,,,,I'm embarrassed to have to ask,,,,What is SDV?

LQQK SDV=Switched Digital Video. Tivo S3s are incompatible with this. A cable co. cable box or DVR will be req'd.

[Langree]

I'm switching to TW in Houston so I can get HD. (No LoS for DTV dish), I will be using their HD DVR, which box can I expect to see when they get here Saturday?

[LQQK]

SDV=Switched Digital Video. Tivo S3s are incompatible with this. A cable co. cable box or DVR will be req'd.

Thank-U

LQQK

[Interactive]

I just ordered my S3 for use on TW in the Dallas area. I called today to schedule a visit to install Cable Cards and the guy said that I could pick them up at the local shop. Based on this thread, I'm wondering if I should have just scheduled a visit....

Should I try to do this myself first and give it a whirl or am I destined to fail due to these CC issues?

[abredt]

I just ordered my S3 for use on TW in the Dallas area. I called today to schedule a visit to install Cable Cards and the guy said that I could pick them up at the local shop. Based on this thread, I'm wondering if I should have just scheduled a visit....

Should I try to do this myself first and give it a whirl or am I destined to fail due to these CC issues?

Give it a try. There's a document on TiVo support that tells you what to tell the installer to do. The secret is whether you can get to someone on the phone who can do the authorizing. That varies by area. In my area the tech has to phone the dispatcher. Customer Service Reps can't do it.
CB

[elenaran]

I just ordered my S3 for use on TW in the Dallas area. I called today to schedule a visit to install Cable Cards and the guy said that I could pick them up at the local shop. Based on this thread, I'm wondering if I should have just scheduled a visit....

Should I try to do this myself first and give it a whirl or am I destined to fail due to these CC issues?

Interactive - the person you talked to on the phone does NOT know what he's talking about. I just went through a similar situation in Dallas. The person on the phone swore up and down that I would be able to pick up cards at the office (despite what I had read here), and he even gave me a Job # for them to reference at the office when I got there. But wouldn't you know, when I arrived, the ladies at the office said they never do that and in fact do not even have the cards there at the office. There was much confusion on their part because the phone guy had put a "Do not send truck - give Cards at office" note on my account and they couldn't figure out how to clear it in order to order the truck roll.

Now I've just gotta wait 2 weeks for a tech...

[pmiranda]

I'm switching to TW in Houston so I can get HD. (No LoS for DTV dish), I will be using their HD DVR, which box can I expect to see when they get here Saturday?

Probably a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD, unless they still have some crappy old 8000HD's lying around. Houston is a great place to have an S3, BTW. From what I've heard on the Official TW thread here, they support self-install of Cablecards :-)

[Interactive]

Interactive - the person you talked to on the phone does NOT know what he's talking about. I just went through a similar situation in Dallas. The person on the phone swore up and down that I would be able to pick up cards at the office (despite what I had read here), and he even gave me a Job # for them to reference at the office when I got there. But wouldn't you know, when I arrived, the ladies at the office said they never do that and in fact do not even have the cards there at the office. There was much confusion on their part because the phone guy had put a "Do not send truck - give Cards at office" note on my account and they couldn't figure out how to clear it in order to order the truck roll.

Now I've just gotta wait 2 weeks for a tech...

This is the exact scenario I was concerned about!! I'm going to head down to the Plano shop today and see what happens. I've got to be down there anyway. But I assume I'll wind up scheduling a visit which will now be 2 days later ....

Morons...why can't they just get this right?

[Langree]

Probably a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD, unless they still have some crappy old 8000HD's lying around. Houston is a great place to have an S3, BTW. From what I've heard on the Official TW thread here, they support self-install of Cablecards :-)

An S3 may be in my future, but not til later this year. Comcast is moving in so I may wait to see if their Tivo box comes out.

[berfy]

After reading so many horror stories in here I felt compelled to share my own experience with a Time Warner technician here in Southern California.

Today he arrived, stated immediately that he had just done a Tivo install this morning and felt perfectly comfortable doing another one. He stated also that he had done several since becoming a TW technician 6 months ago and all of them were a complete success.

The people at the TW head end were also perfectly comfortable with sending a hit to my Tivo. The only hiccup I experienced was that the second Cable card didn't want to accept the hit at first but after a few tries it worked perfectly!
After about fifteen minutes we had both cable cards up and running and the picture on all of my HD channels is stupendous!! As far as I can discern, I am getting all of the channels I'm supposed to be getting on BOTH tuners! Discovery HD Theatre is truly a wonder to behold. What an incredibly crisp and clear image!

I am very grateful.

I had steeled myself for abject failure after reading through this entire thread last night and I am just tickled pink that it went so well for me. The additional fact that I paid only $599.00 for my Series 3 with a $200.00 rebate coming to me made it all the more sweet!

A big thank you to the Tivo Gods and I hope that others are equally blessed!!

[AgentMunroe]

Yep - the thing you have to realize is that we're the whiners in this thread. If everything went smoothly, we wouldn't have any reason to post. :-P

My install went relatively smoothly (although I basically had to teach them how to install CableCARDs) - it was getting them to actually come out with a CableCARD that was hell. (There was also the missing premiums on one card, but a phone call with a little advice from this thread sorted that out rather quickly.)

I still do get the occasional odd glitch from time to time - It's not perfect, but it's much, much closer then the TW DVR, which I utterly abhor.

[Langree]

Ok, I've had TWHD for 2 full days now, watched a few movies in HD, it looks and sounds incredible.

The SD picture is much better then I was getting on my DVR40.

The sound is also better, it seems.

But the SA DVR, OMG what a piece of crap.

No Search
No way to trim the guide to only channels I want to see.
No way to sort guide by HD content, or list only my favorites.

I really think that they threw darts at the channel list to place it in the guide.

I was watching a show 20 minutes delayed and when the recording stopped it kicked me to live TV and lost my place in the show. Really, really weak programming.

The "season pass" functionality is marginal at best.

God I hope Comcast strikes a deal with Tivo.

[Langree]

omg, it just did it again while I was watching the Sopranos.. POS

[abredt]

omg, it just did it again while I was watching the Sopranos.. POS

How did the Sopranos end? My screen went black just as Meadow was going to enter the restuarant. They after a couple of minutes there was the credits scrolling.

Was that the way it ended?

[Langree]

Was that the way it ended?

you should spoiler that, there's a thread discussing it in tv talk here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=355102

[snowbunny]

I had a similar experience with Time Warner in Austin when I got my CARDs installed, about 2 months ago. I think it took 7 cards to get 4 good ones, over two visits - the 2nd tech had done TiVos many times before and mentioned that even this was a much lower failure rate than they used to see.


How much is TW charging per month per card? How much did they charge for the install?

I'll be very seriously peeved if I have to take time off work while they fumble around. We can do Road Runner self-install here in Austin, why not Cable Card? :rolleyes:

[AgentMunroe]

I'll be very seriously peeved if I have to take time off work while they fumble around. We can do Road Runner self-install here in Austin, why not Cable Card? :rolleyes:

You might want to call them the day of the appointment to make sure that a) it's still on and b) that they're bringing CableCARDs.

At least here in Rochester, both me and a friend have called Time Warner specifically to order CableCARDs, only to not have any show up on the work order when they showed. (They do always have the SA DVR with them for some reason...)

To top it all off, after that first experience I called them to ask to reschedule, and they gave me a time that they didn't even show for. I called them in a huff and they claimed they had no record of the appointment. This really cheesed me off as I had to take a huge chunk of time off from work during a fairly busy work week.

The third appointment, they did show up, but an hour after the time they gave us (although the guy did call to let us know), and the guys they sent had never touched a TiVo before.

[elenaran]

At least here in Rochester, both me and a friend have called Time Warner specifically to order CableCARDs, only to not have any show up on the work order when they showed. (They do always have the SA DVR with them for some reason...)


Sigh, same thing just happened to me 5 minutes ago...

My 2-week wait for cablecards continues to get longer and longer.

[Animgif]

It seems one of my cable cards has gone bad - or something. It's only getting about 1/10th of the channels. Even a reboot hasn't helped.

[Langree]

Looks like my stay with TW is a week, on the 19th Comcast officially takes over Houston.

[Joey Bagadonuts]

Wow, am I glad I found this forum. Anaheim CA here and a TW customer (4 digital cable boxes on assorted TVs throughout the house). Here's my situation and anyone who has advice to offer, I am all ears (well, actually all eyes). We currently have three S2's all single tuners and we'll be purchasing a 47" Phillips HDTV for the living room and we want to replace that S2 with an S3. Until reading this forum, I had no knowledge of the need for CableCARDS (I have no idea what a CableCARD does). I thought installing an S3 to my cable box would be as simple as when I installed my S2's. Apparently I am sorely mistaken. So, my question is, assuming I have purchased and now possess an activated S3 and a new 47" HDTV, what do I need to tell TW when I call them?
Again, thanks in advance for any advice you care to offer.

Joe

[SugarBowl]

Wow, am I glad I found this forum. Anaheim CA here and a TW customer (4 digital cable boxes on assorted TVs throughout the house). Here's my situation and anyone who has advice to offer, I am all ears (well, actually all eyes). We currently have three S2's all single tuners and we'll be purchasing a 47" Phillips HDTV for the living room and we want to replace that S2 with an S3. Until reading this forum, I had no knowledge of the need for CableCARDS (I have no idea what a CableCARD does). I thought installing an S3 to my cable box would be as simple as when I installed my S2's. Apparently I am sorely mistaken. So, my question is, assuming I have purchased and now possess an activated S3 and a new 47" HDTV, what do I need to tell TW when I call them?
Again, thanks in advance for any advice you care to offer.

Joe

You will not need a cable box at all. The cablecards will make the S3 get all the channels that the cable box can receive (minus PPV)

[mercurial]

You will not need a cable box at all. The cablecards will make the S3 get all the channels that the cable box can receive (minus PPV)

Well, PPV and SDV if it's in use in your area.

[Fofer]

At least for some PPV channels, here on SoCal Time Warner, I'm told you can call in and order. Then set your TiVo for a one-off recording.

So no, it's not orderable from the remote or S3 interface. And it doesn't work for InDemand content (like Howard Stern.) But, apparently (I haven't tested this myself) you can still make an old-fashioned call and order some up.

[Kablemodem]

what do I need to tell TW when I call them?
Again, thanks in advance for any advice you care to offer.

Joe

The cable cards replace the cable box. They are inserted into the S3 and decode encrypted channels as the cable box would. Tell them you need two cable cards, but ask them to make sure the installer brings a few extras in case some are bad.

[abredt]

Wow, am I glad I found this forum. Anaheim CA here and a TW customer (4 digital cable boxes on assorted TVs throughout the house). Here's my situation and anyone who has advice to offer, I am all ears (well, actually all eyes). We currently have three S2's all single tuners and we'll be purchasing a 47" Phillips HDTV for the living room and we want to replace that S2 with an S3. Until reading this forum, I had no knowledge of the need for CableCARDS (I have no idea what a CableCARD does). I thought installing an S3 to my cable box would be as simple as when I installed my S2's. Apparently I am sorely mistaken. So, my question is, assuming I have purchased and now possess an activated S3 and a new 47" HDTV, what do I need to tell TW when I call them?
Again, thanks in advance for any advice you care to offer.

Joe

Go to the TiVo website and find the paper that says "Give this to your cablecard installer." You might be able to do it yourself or not depending on whether your TW Customer Service Rep can initialize the cards.

I'm in San Fernando Valley and I had to have a technician here to call the dispatcher to do it. The CSR can send a hit, but it's not the same as initializing - at least in this area. CB

[Joey Bagadonuts]

Thanks for all the excellent (and prompt) feedback. One question I have is, given all the apparent problems there seems to be with these CableCARDS, can I use a cable box instead of them? Or, does the S3 require the cards? Thanks again.

[jayladdin]

Thanks for all the excellent (and prompt) feedback. One question I have is, given all the apparent problems there seems to be with these CableCARDS, can I use a cable box instead of them? Or, does the S3 require the cards? Thanks again.

Sure you can. You just won't be able to record more than one show at once.

[Interactive]

Interactive - the person you talked to on the phone does NOT know what he's talking about. I just went through a similar situation in Dallas. The person on the phone swore up and down that I would be able to pick up cards at the office (despite what I had read here), and he even gave me a Job # for them to reference at the office when I got there. But wouldn't you know, when I arrived, the ladies at the office said they never do that and in fact do not even have the cards there at the office. There was much confusion on their part because the phone guy had put a "Do not send truck - give Cards at office" note on my account and they couldn't figure out how to clear it in order to order the truck roll.

Now I've just gotta wait 2 weeks for a tech...

For those that aren't satisfied with the experiences of other Tivo-ites who have tried to get cards from TWC at their local store (like my stubborn self), elanaran was completely right. I went to the store to pick up the cards and they claim to not carry them at the store. Fortunately, I was pesimistic about this actually working anyway so I had called in another service visit for the 15th...

We'll see if they get this right when they arive at my house... my expectations are low.

[abredt]

Sure you can. You just won't be able to record more than one show at once.

HUH?? Don't understand that answer. CB