CC Issue: Help and Advice Please

[ldudek]

I've had my S3 for about a year now. A few weeks back I noticed that on the System Information screen that one card showed inactive. I checked it out and it was, I did a reboot and everything was fine.

I have looked at it from time to time to make sure there were no additional problems. Last night was a big recording night and I wanted to make sure that everything would be recorded. System Information reported both cards active.

This morning I put on my local HD news and saw a grey screen. I ran around the channels a bit and saw that I could only get analog and one digital channel. Then I figured out that the digital channel I was getting was on a different cable card. Once I switched to that card all digital channels were fine. My System Information Screen reported both cards active.

I should also mention that the problem card was not only not receiving encrypted digital but non-encrypted digital as well.

I just got upgraded to 9.1 two days ago.

A reboot restored everything.

Should I call TiVo and report a problem or should I just hope it goes away. Last night I missed Grey's Anatomy and Big Shots because of this and neither of those are available on Amazon Unbox. I'm having a problem with my DVD burner so the only way I can recover the shows is to watch them on my computer.

Your help and advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[jrm01]

Have you checked the cablecard diagnostic screens? Most likely one of the cards is NOT SUBSCRIBED and will require an authorization hit from cable company. When you are trying to determine if you are getting the proper channels you should use the Test Channels screens for each cablecard.

[ldudek]

Have you checked the cablecard diagnostic screens? Most likely one of the cards is NOT SUBSCRIBED and will require an authorization hit from cable company. When you are trying to determine if you are getting the proper channels you should use the Test Channels screens for each cablecard.


Thanks for your suggestion. I have checked the diagnostic screen and both cards are showing authorized. I will have to look at that again if (probably when) the problem reoccurs.

However as I said earlier a simple reboot seems to fix it albeit only temporarily. Any other suggestions.

[ldudek]

I suppose cable card issues are something people don't want to talk about or perhaps I should have posted in the cable card thread (duh!). :)

Anyway if anyone cares, it turns out that trusty cable company had serial #'s backwards on card 1 and 2. I spoke with a TiVo rep and they were somewhat helpful, though not fully informed. Between that and talking to a knowledgeable person at my cable company we got it fixed.

These cable cards are touchy. If you don't get it exactly right it can screw things up. Remember I had these cards for 1 year like this before it started screwing up about 2 months ago.

[jrm01]

Glad that you got it solved. It is very possible that your cable company was not pairing the cards to the host. Even though they record the serial number, some do not actually do the pairing. It is then possible that two months ago (or whenever) they changed their system to do the pairing.

It is strange thugh that a re-boot would temporarily cure the problem, however, these cable cards are strange animals.