Conditional Access Screen: HELP!

[jwthorn]

I have had the series 3 now since October of last year. I am with Comcast near Denver, CO. Most of the time, I have experienced trouble free viewing/recording. About every two weeks or so, I do lose the ability to view some or all channels. I have tried various fixes to include rebooting, rerunning guided setup, etc and eventually I am able to receive all channels. After doing this for the last few months though, I finally decided to call comcast and they sent out a tech. Unfortunately, the tech had never had an S3 install before so needless to say he was not helpful. I did however give him as much information as I could about what the cablecard screens should say (based on the many posts in this forum). It seems my problems stem from improper cablecard pairing/setup/headend issues. For instance, I have never had the Host Validation: say "Enabled" (It always says Unknown 00). Also, I routinely seem to get the 0x03 flag which seems to coincide with my channel losses and the Copy Protection Key says Disabled Anyway, I say this because the tech said he would bring this information back to the office/headend and see what they could find out. Well, my channels happened to go out again tonight and now I am getting messages on the Conditional Access screen that I have never heard or seen. Here are the messages I am getting now on the Auth: and CA Enable:

Cablecard 1

Auth: CAN_BUY_WITH_TAPING
CA Enable: Not Possible

Cablecard 2

Auth: INSUFFICIENT_CREDIT
CA Enable: Need Purchase Dialog

Anyone have any thoughts as to what this means? And what avenues I need to approach to get this fixed? The tech said they would call back when he found some information or they would bring new cards out? I still think its the headend but I can't seem to convince anyone of it.

[Roderigo]

Originally Posted by jwthorn

Cablecard 1

Auth: CAN_BUY_WITH_TAPING
CA Enable: Not Possible

Cablecard 2

Auth: INSUFFICIENT_CREDIT
CA Enable: Need Purchase Dialog

Never seen this one... Sounds like the tuners are tuned to a PPV channel (both are talking about some sort of purchase).

[CrispyCritter]

Originally Posted by jwthorn

Cablecard 1

Auth: CAN_BUY_WITH_TAPING
CA Enable: Not Possible

Cablecard 2

Auth: INSUFFICIENT_CREDIT
CA Enable: Need Purchase Dialog

Anyone have any thoughts as to what this means? And what avenues I need to approach to get this fixed? The tech said they would call back when he found some information or they would bring new cards out? I still think its the headend but I can't seem to convince anyone of it.

If you're getting these messages when tuned to one of your regular channels, then it is certainly at the headend or before. As Roderigo said, these are PPV messages (consistent with your CCI of 0x03) that should never appear on a standard channel.

Could it be that they re-initialize their system every two weeks, and you lose the channels until everything gets done several hours later?

In any case, what I would do would be to insist on talking to somebody who knows enough about their cablecard setup to explain these status messages to you. That's non-threatening enough so I think they'll try. Hopefully from there you can get some action on their part. (Note there's no way for the TiVo to set those authorizations; it has to come from their headend.)