Charter Cable and Roamio Compatibility

That review is just plain wrong. All cable systems in the U.S. (Charter included) are required by the FCC to provide the multi-stream CableCards and Tuning Adapters that all 3 TiVo Roamio DVRs use. And all 3 use the exact same CableCard and Tuning Adapter. Even most of the older TiVo models use the same Cablecards as the Roamios do.

Now occasionally some cable companies will try to drag their feet in getting you the CableCard or will just plain lie to you about not being able to get you one, but firing off a formal complaint to the FCC pretty quickly makes them remember that by law they are required to give you one if you ask for it.

Here is Charter's own website that talks about CableCards:

http://www.myaccount.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=15

 

Doesn't Charter require a tuning adapter?

 

I have a Roamio and a mini on Charter Cable, they have worked just fine for the last 8 months.

My Charter uses a multi tuner card, and a tunning adapter.

 

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Is Charter legally allowed to charge customers for both a tuning adapter and an M-Card? I thought the FCC regulations say something about making M-Cards available to customers of retail boxes for a nominal charge (without requiring additional equipment?)

 

I am not aware of any area where Charter is charging for the tuning adapter. If they are, then it is probably a mistake.

 

I can confirm, in my area, central MA, that Charter does indeed work with TiVo.

It can be a hassle to setup. You will need a cable card and SDV tuning adapter. Just got my Roamio Friday to replace my six year old S3. Swapping the cable card did not work. A tech had to be called in, who then called a third level support person. Apparently the device wasn't matched up correctly to the cable card. Once the "head end" did his job, all the channels I pay for came in. Kind of a hassle and tech's don't like TiVo calls, because there really isn't much they can do. It always seems to be a configuration/account issue at the office.

In any case, I'm working 100%. Cannot say enough good things about my Roamio. I've been a TiVo user since 2002. Will never go back to a standard SA box. Ever.

 

Charter in the metro Atlanta area has worked fine with Tivo pretty much since Tivo had cable card slots. First all Charter had was single-stream cards, but then transitioned to multi-stream.

I currently have 7 cards running in 6 Tivo's (one older S3 which never handled multi-stream cards) with TAs on each Tivo. The only issues I've ever had were invariably head-end provisioning issues which sometimes took multiple calls to resolve. Basically you play Charter CSR Roulette until you get somebody that knows what they're doing.

 

In the DFW area, we are a bit lucky since we don't need a tuning adapter. We have 4 tivos with 4 cards and everything works perfectly including the Roamios.

 

I just experienced this one finding out about not needing a tuning adapter in DFW. The Charter guy is here now doing my install to switch from FiOS. Going to be $40 a month cheaper locked in for 3 years, more HD than Vz has in their line-up and a speed bump from 50 to 60 megs down on the Internet side.

Here's the messed up part. He's finishing the cabling and says "I saw on the work order that it said you needed a CableCard. I hope that isn't the case, because I don't have any on my truck." Seriously?? Guy said he saw it on the work order!! Anyway, said he'll try and get one from someone close or have someone bring one out tomorrow. I said make sure they have the tuning adapters as well and he told me he hasn't seen those in use in DFW for a very long time. They aren't needed anymore. That actually makes me feel even better about switching from Verizon, as tuning adapter issues I've read about on here had me worried. I hated the idea of one more potential spot for trouble.

 

In the cable installers defense I only asked for one CableCard and I misunderstood him. He did have the one on my order, just not a second one for my other TiVo, but that's my bad because I didn't ask for the second when I set up the initial install. I was told I can just grab one from my local Charter office around the corner tomorrow.

Install went smooth. The Cisco CableCard immediately started a firmware upgrade when he popped it into the TiVo. Once done and him getting them to hit the card again, because my premiums weren't showing up it seemed all was perfect. But, before he left I tried to make sure I could record 6 at once off the Roamio Plus, but alas for some reason only 5 tuners would record. Well, rebooted the box and then all 6 worked. Maybe it needed a reboot after that Cisco CableCard firmware update.

One thing for those switching from FiOS with Triple Play having voice that I didn't think about or know. The Verizon ONT outside the house hooks up to the inside wiring so all phone jacks can be used as normal. Well the Charter voice service comes off of a phone jack on the modem and the only place where my modem could be located was nowhere near a phone jack. Thankfully I have a multiple cordless handset system with a cordless headset as well for work, so it didn't matter where I placed the base phone.

Oh and last thing. I am getting 64 megs down out of the promised 60 on the Internet side and Charter has way more HD channels than Verizon. All of the Encore channels are HD, History 2, BBC World News, and a bunch of others that Verizon only has in SD.

 

I use a 6-tuner Roamio in St. Louis with Charter.

You need a multi-stream cable card and a tuning adaptor from them.

The cable card is $2 a month. The tuning adaptor is free.

 

I picked up a cable card and tuning adapter at the local charter office this week. First cable card wasn't recognized by TiVo so I went back and got another one (both seemed liked they were previously used and had manufacture dates of 2010). The second card was recognized and I was prompted by the TiVo to call charter to activate the card. The automated activation process didn't seem to work and the green light on the tuning adapter was flashing intermittently. I got a live tech person from charter on the phone and they were able to activate the card and remotely troubleshoot an issue they detected with the tuning adapter. After 10 minutes, I had a solid green light on the adapter and all 6 tuners were working properly. Very happy that it didn't require a home visit from a technician. When I set up my series 3 TiVo a few years ago, they dispatched 5 technicians over the course of 3 days to troubleshoot the cable card issues.

 

I have a Roamio Pro with Charter Cisco CC and TA. It mostly works but it took close to three months to get Charter to upgrade the TA to the proper code. I still have an issue where if an SDV timeout has occurred on a channel and a recording is scheduled on that channel it may or may not resync the channel. If it does not I miss the recording. I see many folks here say that Charter CC and TA's are working well. Are any of those Cisco's or are they Mot's?

 

Cisco. I've had very few problems in the last year, especially the last two or three months since they updated the TA to version STA1.0.0_1520_LR_F.2001.

With STA1.0.0_1520_LR_F.1601 I had to reboot the TA about once a month. I haven't needed to since I got the upgrade. It also used to sometimes not get reauthorized (no EMMs) requiring me to request a hit (or two or three) but I haven't seen that happen lately.

My PK800 Cablecard was problematic at first (I had to drop down to 4 tuners for the first few months I had my Roamio) but they pushed out an update that fixed that a long time ago. (I know that at least as of six months ago they still had not pushed that update to the PK803 cards. I don't know the current status of that; hopefully it's been resolved by now.)


One thing I do every few days is to put all my tuners on non-SDV channels. The only time I ever see a problem with the TA these days is if a tuner is left on a SDV channel and it times out, then when the TiVo goes to record that channel it sometimes (but luckily not often) won't retune it. This happens perhaps once every 3-4 months for me, but I think it might happen more often if I didn't go through my regular "put all tuners on channels 2-13" routine.