Comcast Houston + Series3 = Works no more

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I hope this isn't the toll of doom posting, but this is where I am now.

1. on Wednesday 9/26, Comcast did some "Video on Demand" upgrades in my neighborhood (Copperfield)
2. Prior to that point, I had a working configuration on my Series3 for a year - no issues, no ifs ands or buts
3. After that point, I lost access to a wide range of channels. Pretty much any channel from 72 and up wasn't tuning in
4. I removed the cards from the tivo and rebooted, after putting them back in, I hadn't gained any channels, but I was then seeing the "pairing screen" when accessing those channels.
5. I called their support line for cable cards. They tried to "reauthorize" my cards -- no luck. Support said "swap em out". We did.
6. Set 2 they couldn't seem to activate properly. We then got no channels above 20 -- they said "swap em out". We did
7. Set 3 they can't activate one of the two cards. The other card will "activate", but still won't operate "normally" .. meaning I don't get the unencrypted digial channels. The unencrypted HD channels come in, the channels under 20 are fine -- the rest no luck. They said.. go to another retail front.. get different cards.

The techs don't seem to know ANYTHING about the possibility of this being a rollout of Switched Digital Video. Even the good techs don't seem familiar with the terminology. (not the level one monkies, the CableCard techs).

I'm still running tivo software 8.3 and my other SD cable box and internet work fine.

Does anyone have any ideas how to stop this madness?

 

That's *somewhat* ecouraging, but .. the part that bothers me is that I can't get the things working that the techs felt *should* be working even prior to the "activation" going through.

I think there's probably a larger issue going on here and they don't have any idea how to fix it. I'm really wondering if there are any other Copperfield (290 NW) Series3 Comcast folks seeing anything like this.

By now, someone else would have probably noticed something. I'm going to take your advice and run out to another front and get 6 cards (or as many as they'll give me).

Jeff

 

I took lethcoeb's advice and picked up 4 new cards from the Comcast location on 249. Up to this point I'd only tried S-Cards, so I got all 4 new M-Cards.

I got home... called up the CableCard activation line. Got lucky. I got picked up by the tech who does weekend activations. He took the pairing info and decided to access the activation server immediately and manually try to push this through. When he questioned me on why I picked up 4 M-Cards for one device -- I said, since I'd been having so much luck I decided to increase my odds.

He attempted to activate the first M-Card (with it and it alone in the tivo)... he said that activation failed. Then proceeded to try the remaining 3 cards (without putting them in the Tivo, just in the activation server). All 4 failed ultimately. We put in one of my remaining S-Cards. It activated, but I'm still not getting the bulk of the digital channels.

Bot cards display the same ranges

001 - 098 are OK
100 - 292 are missing
294 - 324 are OK
327 - end are missing

Even the music channels are not coming through.

He said he'd have to escallate this to the next level up, and took my contact number for a call back. This is somewhat encouraging on one hand, and discouraging on the other.

Something is seriously amiss in my neighborhood or maybe even just at my house. The signal strength seems fine, I never see anything under 90. My internet is fine, my SD cable box is fine.. (no pixelation or dropouts).

Hopefully this gets better soon.

 

I made another call last night to see if my status had been updated since Saturday.

Nuthin.

 

I took another pass at the cable card support tonight. Another fruitless exercise. They said they're still "looking into it". It's starting to seem like there is really nothing wrong with their setup and something IS just magically wrong with either the TiVo S3 or my conneciton/setup.

I just can't stand the idea that this works flawlessly for a year then one day.. Bang.. nothing works.

I'm currently trying just ONE M-card to see if that will fly when they "authorize" it tomorrow. The tech tonight corrected me twice when I said, "activate" them = she said, they're all Pre-activated.

I keep trying to be nice, but I'm now 3 weeks+ without my subscribed channels. It's just not kewl. They've gone over and over my settings. *sigh*

 

They fixed my issue last night @ 10:30. I finally got my call back on Saturday when the same tech who worked my issue last weekend picked up the case. He (his name was "eh-bear"-- Hebert?) said they knew there was *some* issue, and they were still working on resolving it.

Yesterday, things lit up at almost 10:30 on the button. We called one of the other M-cards so I now have 2 working slots.

I'll call in tomorrow to get my credit for the last 3+ weeks. The VOD upgrade did it, they now know it -- and finally called me today to say it's all better.

*sigh*

 

I agree.. I had problems with both Single and Multi-stream cards after the VOD upgrade issue. NONE of them would talk back to the head-end.

They all failed authorization.

The most obvious sign was they never would get the Music channels (777+), and the techs were baffled by that.