Comcast Goat Rodeo

[rickeame]

Good Lord.

This morning, after spending HOURS on the phone with comcast during the week, a tech arrived to try to get my Tivo Series 3 back to the land of the living (long story). We tried M-Cards and they didn't work. So he went to his truck to get S-Cards and we began the process.

He calls in and reports the host and data ID's. Pause. "That host id is in use by another Tivo in the area." "Huh?"

I don't even know how that is possible, personally. I thought the host was tied to the machine, not the card, but apparently not.

So we tried the second S-card. It's dead.

So, now I'm dead while he is off driving around trying to find more cards. Seriously, he only had 2 with him.

There goes my day, just trying to get the frackin' tivo up and running.

What is with that Host ID thing?

[wmcbrine]

Great title.

M-cards should work, albeit in single-stream mode.

[bmgoodman]

He calls in and reports the host and data ID's. Pause. "That host id is in use by another Tivo in the area." "Huh?"

I don't even know how that is possible, personally. I thought the host was tied to the machine, not the card, but apparently not.



I had the same thing happen this weekend. Note that there appear to be two host IDs on a Series 3, one of Slot 1 and another for Slot 2. I found this out when I tried to swap CCs between the two slots and they told me the host ID was in use already. Fortunately, I was able to determine that *I* was using it! I then asked the cable rep on the phone with me to remove both CCs and then add them back one at a time.

The story gets a bit long, but one thing that may be important is that the second CC freaked out and claimed to be in the "wrong state". Tivo kept popping me back to a screen telling me there was a problem with the second card. Finally, with both cards installed and the Tivo continuing to warn me about the second CC, I pulled its power for 5 minutes. When I rebooted, both CCs FINALLY went to "CP Authorized" and I could tune all the channels I'm paying for.