Cable card suddenly gives me HD only--no SD tuning

[mstenzel]

I've had no tuning problems with my multi-stream cable card since I had it installed in my TiVo HD over 18 months ago. Recently, my SD channels all dropped off -- black screen showing "Channel not available".

When I change TV inputs direct coax, bypassing the TiVo, the TV's tuner picks up all channels (SD and HD), so the problem's gotta be the card, right? When I tune to an unavailable SD channel and then go to Messages & Settings|Account & System Information|DVR Diagnostics, the readout for that tuner's "Current Tuning Status" is "Not Tuned: Wrong Card State"

Earlier in the week, the head end office rebooted my card remotely and everything was good for 4 days. SD channels dropped again, they tried the remote restart again, this time with no luck. Next step for me: service call. :down:

Unfortunately, my smallish cable company (championbroadband.com) isn't too savvy with card knowledge, so any service call is going to consist of a tech phoning the head end person and reading all the cable card info/diagnostics. I told the local office that I could read the diagnostics as well as the tech, but they won't go for that as the head end gal doesn't talk to customers. It's a bummer since, from my poking around TiVo's cable card menus, there's no actionable options for a tech to do on a visit anyway. I'm guessing I'll be out the $45 service call after they insist it's the TiVo's fault.

Any suggestions out there? Thanks in advance.

[CrispyCritter]

It doesn't have to be the card; depending on what your company is doing it could be their back-end. If they are transiting to Digital Simulcast, as many companies have done over the past few years, then they will be sending out both a digital and an analog version of your SD channels for a while. If they are sending bad data for the digital versions, then the TiVo may be seeing it, may think it has to use the digital version (the cablecard will tell it to), and then not being able to get the actual channels because of the errors.

The cable companies generally only test for errors using their own equipment - if it works with their stuff it's good. Many of the situations like this only end up being solved when TiVo and the cable company are talking directly to each other, so I would call up TiVo about this in the near future - perhaps after the service call (it could also just be your cable card going bad, though I doubt it.)