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Official Time Warner Cable Thread

2M views 6K replies 1K participants last post by  dougdingle 
#1 ·
Please keep all posts related to Time Warner Cable and their cablecard service in this topic. Please post all stories (good or bad) and pricing examples and locations for others to view.

This is not "official" by any means but I like the idea of the other topic like this for Charter or Cablevision (can't remember which one right now).
 
#5,077 ·
That's a new one! I would have thought it impossible. It must have been just loosely sitting in the receptacle, right?
Not that hard. I've done it myself when trying to hook something up by touch. The USB cable is the same width as an RJ-45. It wiggles a bit vertically, but is snug horizontally. Then it takes a WTF moment before you figure it out, give yourself a head slap and move on. ;)
 
#5,078 ·
Update: I called TWC last night and they sent a "hit" to the CableCard and it started getting some channels. It does not get the premium channels like HBO or the SDV channels (even though I have a Tuning Adapter) but it now gets the rest which is progress. They are going to roll a truck on Monday to see what's up with the rest.
 
#5,079 ·
Update: I called TWC last night and they sent a "hit" to the CableCard and it started getting some channels. It does not get the premium channels like HBO or the SDV channels (even though I have a Tuning Adapter) but it now gets the rest which is progress. They are going to roll a truck on Monday to see what's up with the rest.
check & make sure that your tuning adapter is being seen by the TIVo. Doesnt get any HBOs at all?
 
#5,080 ·
You are my absolute hero. I can't tell you what I've gone through with that stupid adapter, had it replaced twice. Had a technician at my home for hours troubleshooting. I just assumed it was plugged into the right places. Ready for this ... I have TiVo Premier, with 1 USB for my wireless adapter and one USB for my cool querty remote (that I love), and the adapter USB was plugged into the ETHERNET HOLE. IDIOTS!!

Needless to say, there are only 2 usb ports in the unit so I have to give one of them up for this adapter, at least until I can get myself a USB splitter. Gotta have my cool qwerty remote!

FYI, once I fixed the connections I got all those channels. It's taken MONTHS to get to this point so you are my official TiVo hero! Thank you :D:D

Now who can help me with a GSOD infinite loop on my beloved series 2 ??? :( ... I know I know, the drive is DOA. Trying to save it anyway. UGH.
Glad I could help. :D
 
#5,083 ·
I hope you take the time to call up Time Warner and tell them that they were absolutely 100% wrong with everything they told you about CableCARDs and SDV and explain to them what a USB plug looks like so they can tell their installers.

Mistakes like that are just unacceptable. You should be asking for a refund for missed channels also since you gave them ample opportunity to fix the problem and they never could.
As a matter of fact, I've been calling monthly and complaining and getting credits. I think the most credit I got 2 months ago was $120. Recently I got them to give me a free HD box with monthly DVR (service also free) to backup my tivo's missing channels (that are no longer missing, shhh!), the installation of said box for free as well, $5 credit per month for a year on my bill, AND free Showtime for a year. I by far am no push over and insist on getting my money's worth and don't stop until I do! ;)

Thanks to all of you who helped out though. Couldn't have done it without you!
 
#5,084 ·
No HBOs, no Showtimes, no Cinemaxes, etc.

The TiVo does see the Tuning Adapter but when I try to tune an SDV channel it says there is no signal on Cable.

The Tuning Adapter is a Cisco box so I will be trying out your steps about the Powerkey information.
I had to go through 3 tuning adapters. And on the 3rd the technician didn't connect it properly as you'll see if you read a few posts back. I had to redo the whole thing. Try recycling all the connections and end with a TiVo restart. If that doesn't work I suggest getting the tuning adapter replaced as there seems to be many faulty ones. Good Luck!!
 
#5,085 ·
As far as your missing premium channels, your problem might be similar to the one I had.

When TW in the Albany, NY area starting setting up digital channels for their customers, they created separate accounts for the digital portion and needed to add the premium channels to the digital accounts.

Then they needed to add the premium channels to each cable card used by the digital account.

It took over a month before I received all my premium channels after the cable cards were installed in my S3.

Then when they started to use SDV they appeared have to add all the premium channels again to each tuning adapter. At least it took awhile again before I received all my premium channels again.

Another thing I found was that each time I had a power outage, I had to restore power to the TA first and then to the S3 to receive the SDV channels. This happened even though both the TA and the S3 were plugged into powered sockets on the same UPS.
 
#5,086 ·
Hi everyone,

I recently moved to El Paso, TX and hired TWC. I have a TiVo Premiere box that I was using with Comcast service before without a problem, and now I am about to loose it. Initially, two technicians from TWC came in to set up my TA and MCard. They were at my house for about 5 hours calling TWC in Houston back and forth because, of course, they had no training on how to set it up. They switched the TA box twice and they left after all those hours without my TA working properly (but, at least I was getting most of the channels).

Now I moved to a new house and I am not getting mostly any channels! I have called TWC several times but they really don't know what to do. Today, I removed the MCard and rebooted the TA, and while the green light was still blinking, I realized I could see all the channels I was missing. But as soon as the green light in the TA stopped blinking and was permanently on, all those channels were gone again! Now I am going through all the rebooting and setting up process, but I am at my wits end having already dealt with this for 3 months. Any ideas?

Should I be using the MCard and the TA box both or just one of them? I really don't know what to do anymore. I have a TiVo Series 2 box in the guest bedroom with an analog tv and it works fine and receives all the analog channels that I can't see on my Premiere box, but I really would like to be able to use my Premiere box to it's full extent! Any suggestions are welcome.
 
#5,087 ·
Update: I ordered 2 more TAs a couple of wks. ago and nothing has come. I went to the ordering site again and got the same message you did.
Thanks, that's comforting in some way. I have not received anything from the request I finally managed to put in, either.

Now I'm confused. The 2 original TAs seem to be working OK and it appears I haven't lost any channels on the other 2 S3s w/o TAs.???
No lost channels here either. It seems to me that either they delayed the rollout, or once again sent the notice to every single SoCal customer when only a subset of offices is impacted. Wish I could figure out which.
 
#5,088 ·
Hi everyone,

I recently moved to El Paso, TX and hired TWC. I have a TiVo Premiere box that I was using with Comcast service before without a problem, and now I am about to loose it. Initially, two technicians from TWC came in to set up my TA and MCard. They were at my house for about 5 hours calling TWC in Houston back and forth because, of course, they had no training on how to set it up. They switched the TA box twice and they left after all those hours without my TA working properly (but, at least I was getting most of the channels).

Now I moved to a new house and I am not getting mostly any channels! I have called TWC several times but they really don't know what to do. Today, I removed the MCard and rebooted the TA, and while the green light was still blinking, I realized I could see all the channels I was missing. But as soon as the green light in the TA stopped blinking and was permanently on, all those channels were gone again! Now I am going through all the rebooting and setting up process, but I am at my wits end having already dealt with this for 3 months. Any ideas?

Should I be using the MCard and the TA box both or just one of them? I really don't know what to do anymore. I have a TiVo Series 2 box in the guest bedroom with an analog tv and it works fine and receives all the analog channels that I can't see on my Premiere box, but I really would like to be able to use my Premiere box to it's full extent! Any suggestions are welcome.
I live in the Rio Grande Valley, and I had a terrible time trying to get the TA to work with my Tivo. I went through 3 TAs and 5 techs, and not one of them had even heard of a Tuning Adapter.

Finally, I got in touch with a guy that knows TA's and Tivo's. Apparently, this guy has clout in S. Texas. Actually, it was someone from El Paso that put me in touch with him.

Call this guy, tell him your in El Paso, and hopefully he gets things going for you.

Henry Kohl
Tech Ops Supervisor
956-535-0734

Henry sent out a guy that actually knew what he was doing, and the guy spent about an hour on the phone with the tech guys. He had to guide them through the process because they were clueless.

Once they got it working (about 9 months ago) it's been smooth sailing.

Good luck.
 
#5,090 ·
TWC Western New York with HD TiVo, 2 "S" CableCards and a tuning adapter.
I also pay for HBO and Road Runner, monthly bill is about $130.

Yesterday I tried to add the Movie Pass tier (Encore, IFC and a couple of others) to my account, supposedly the cost was an additional $4.95 per month. With the cablecards I assumed this process wouldn't go smoothly and of course it hasn't. After several emails, calls, and support escalations I got a call back that stated the following (paraphrased as the customer service rep did a pretty lousy job of communicating in coherent English):

My monthly bill would actually increase by $20, not $4.95, because my account was originally set up incorrectly. Because I have CableCards I should NOT have been eligible for the "digital cable bundle" and would be forced to pay for everything a la carte... the HD tier, the Digital cable tier, etc, would all need to be paid for individually. If they add the Movie Pass tier they would be forced to change my account to this a la carte billing. If I don't add the Movie Pass they can leave it as is although there's no guarantee they wouldn't force me to a la carte pricing at any time.

Does this sound legit? Sounds like complete nonsense to me. Overall I've been relatively satisfied with TW but this is really ridiculous considering how much I'm already paying per month.
 
#5,093 ·
A friend contacted me last for help with his CableCARD / TiVo HD / SDV Adapter setup. He's nearby but not on the exact same system I'm on here.

His problem is that sometimes some channels won't come in. It's not always the same channels and it's not all the time. Different channels just come and go. He gets a "Searching for channel on Cable In" message.

Last night he was missing dozens of channels. Some of them have come in recently, though. He had a tech out for 3.5 hours Wednesday trying to figure it out and of course never did, and left.

After a while of dialog with him I discovered that for the past 3 years with his unit he only had ONE S-Card installed! Wednesday they did give him an M-Card. That certainly could have been a major issue in the past!

(and I can't believe TW ever did that in the first place!)

He's rebooted everything a million times and he did re-run Guided Setup after installing the M-Card. I verified with him last night that he could record 2 things at the same time so TiVo IS recognizing and using both tuners now.

He's not sure if the channels that don't work are SDV or not. Some he had problems with last night most certainly are but others perhaps not. His adapter light is solid green.

Although he's convinced problems got worse when SDV was rolled out, I'm thinking it's a CableCARD / account settings problem instead. I mean, he used his TiVo for almost 3 years with only one tuner so what does he know?! :)

Any ideas? I can walk him thru some of the diag screens to look for hints.
 
#5,094 ·
I lean more toward a signal strength issue. The Premiere seems to be less tolerant of low signal levels and will show no signal when other boxes are macroblocking.

Have a tech come out and insist on a signal strength check. If low, insist on an amplifier. Also try to minimize the number of splitters before the TIVO.
 
#5,095 ·
I lean more toward a signal strength issue. The Premiere seems to be less tolerant of low signal levels and will show no signal when other boxes are macroblocking.

Have a tech come out and insist on a signal strength check. If low, insist on an amplifier. Also try to minimize the number of splitters before the TIVO.
Before that, look at Signal Strength, SNR and RS Errors in DVR Diagnostics. Strength should be above 80 on all channels for reliable reception and SNR should be around 33 or higher. Both RS Error counts should be zero or at least less than 1000 and not increasing rapidly. Of course you can only do this when the channel is tuned. This advice applies to the HD specifically but I think it is the same for the Premiere.

If these numbers are healthy you don't have a signal problem.
 
#5,096 ·
Before that, look at Signal Strength, SNR and RS Errors in DVR Diagnostics. Strength should be above 80 on all channels for reliable reception and SNR should be around 33 or higher. Both RS Error counts should be zero or at least less than 1000 and not increasing rapidly. Of course you can only do this when the channel is tuned. This advice applies to the HD specifically but I think it is the same for the Premiere.

If these numbers are healthy you don't have a signal problem.
Premiere is going to show a much lower signal level than HD or S3... The scale calibration is 'different'. SNR and RS counts will tell the tale.
 
#5,098 ·
I'm on TW in Southern California, Eagle Rock to be specific.

After filling out the web form, a couple of Motorola units arrived a month later with no email or notice.

Hooked them up, one had a dead power supply which I replaced from my shop, steady flashing yellow light on both.

Checked firmware version, it was 1.27. I had read here (or somewhere?) that 1.35 was required to have them work.

Called TW. They tried hitting them a couple of times, no joy, the CSR kept saying I had to reboot the TiVo. I said that was like computer tech support insisting I reinstall Windows, and I wouldn't reboot the TiVo until I had a solid yellow light.

Finally, he said they would roll a truck. Despite my asking the tech have two TA's with him, he shows up with one, says the guy at the factory would not give him two. Also admits he knows NOTHING about TA's, they're not due for training until the following week although TW's been shipping them for a month in this area. So I ask him if he's interested, and when he says yes, take about 10 minutes and school him. He pays attention, makes some notes, gets the concept.

We hook up the one he's brought with him, it's at firmware 1.35, he calls in, they hit it from Mom, and the TiVo spontaneously reboots. While it's rebooting, the yellow light turns solid. When it's done rebooting, it's all working. He's remarkably impressed that I knew which firmware version was required, knew where to look on the diagnostics screen, and that the damn thing actually works now.

He calls back in and insists another tech be sent to his next call because he's not done, drives all the way back to the factory to get me another TA. Shows up about 45 minutes later, we install the second one, it's also at 1.35, he calls in, they hit it, it begins working immediately. The second S3 did not reboot.

No problems so far, it's been about a week.
 
#5,099 ·
Some time ago I have a problem with channels coming and going in southwest ohio. It turned out to be signal interference issue. From a TV station in Lousiville KY!!
Because digital is so good at error correcting the signal is very low.
TWC tech replaced cheap cables and put in high quality signal splitters to keep the wiring from picking up the interferring signal. Problem solved. and tech said the RF cable that comes with the tuning adapters is junk.
 
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