Replacement Units and Cable Cards

[paul01463]

My series three TiVo is acting strangely and dropping the DHCP session once in a while. I'm contemplating replacing the unit and I'm curious as to whether or not the cable cards can simply be moved from the old unit to the replacement unit, or is the process more complicated?

[maharg18]

It depends on if the cards where "paired" to the Tivo when they were activated. If they aren't paired, then they will move no problem. The worst that can happen is if you move them, and they don't work, you'll have to get the cable co to enter in the new pairing info and re-init them.

[jfh3]

Look at your CableCARD conditional access screen - if your Host Validation field shows "Unknown", then you should be able to safely move the cards to another host. If it shows "Valid", you can move them, but you will have to get the cable company to validate them again, which they should be able to do over the phone.

(Note, my cards are Motorola cards, the fields may be named differently on SA cards)