Houston Texas Comcast Cable Card Experience

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I'll check it out tonight. Since I installed my antenna a couple weeks ago, I've been recording the OTA shows on 2-1, 11-1 & 13-1. And they are *perfect*! Absolutely glorious HD. But I'll record a few shows manually on 312/313 just to see how it does. Good question.

I just got home late last night, and haven't even looked at the S3 to see if everything went ok during my absence. With the new fall season, I have about 4-6 shows recording each night!

Wow, I hadn't seen that announcement yet (where did you see it?). That is great news: (1) A couple of those I have *really* been wanting, NGHD especially, and (2) Comcast appears to continue to add HD thru regular means and not SDV.

At least they are following their price increase with more HD. I can handle that trade-off!. I'm an HD addict.

 

http://www.tvpredictions.com/comcasthouston092307.htm

Sorry! Should have added a link to the source.

 

Well here we go...

My wife picked up 2 s-cards from the Retail center on 290. Went home. Called the 8080 number, talked to a tech who obviously knew nothing about Tivo S3s. She tried to talk my wife into re-wiring stuff.

Thankfully she stopped -- I had her call again and ask that they simply activate the new cards. They took the numbers down.

Then today, nothing's changed. I don't get any Digital or Subscription channels with the cards in the Tivo. Wife called them, they said, "oh we have a note saying the activation failed for some reason"... why? It doesn't say.

They want us to come get 2 more new cards.

This is NOT the time of year to mess with a Man and his TiVo. Thankfully the S2 is dutifully pulling its weight as a backup.

I'm starting to get mad, but I'm trying to keep calm.

 

FYI, 303 TBS HD is live now. No guide data yet but you can view the channel live.

Edit: It's a little pixellated but I'm sure they're just testing right now.
Edit: NFL HD on 300 is in the channel list but shows black screen. It may be a part of a package I don't receive.

 

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I got my 9.1 update on my S3 this morning. Swapped out the 2 ex-TWC S-cards for 2 M-cards about 3 weeks ago. Not sure this will hold over the long term, but.... all the pixellation on Comcast 312 and 313 seems to be gone.

It's all a mystery to me, but I'm glad the channels are at last watchable. I'll report if the situation changes.

 

We're still striking out. We've swapped our cards (s-cards) which worked until a week ago today -- 2 times already. So far.. no go.

The techs on the cablecard setup line are not doing much good this time. So far we had the one suggesting my wife rewire the Tivo, and today another asking that we make sure the Tivo is compatable with this equipment.

(Mind you they've given us 3 sets of S-cards ... the same we've been running for a year)

I'm about ready to come unglued and start escallating this. Do we just NEED the M-Cards now (which they've not had yet at the retail center we've visited)?!?

What's the story.. they do a VOD upgrade in my neighborhood and now I don't get the Digital Music, Anything from around 200+ (except the basic HD channels).

Do I now have an overpriced doorstop? Ebay's looking like a pretty promising option.

 

Priced out U-Verse today.. since nothing is improving on the Comcast front. They don't admit to changing anything in my neighborhood nor do they claim that any other Series 3 in Houston is having issues.

I'm still getting pairing screens everywhere since they can't seem to activate any cable cards to my S3.

I'll start my eBay auction next week.

 

Looking at the card how can you determine if it is M or an S card.

 

My comcast issue cleared up. They did a VOD upgrade on 9/26 in Copperfield and hosed my setup totally. It took almost 3 weeks of nightly calls and just as quickly as the problem showed up, it vanished.

So beware of the Comcast truck in your neck of the woods claiming to be adding great new services.

 

the Moto cards say M-Card right on em. And their serial numbers start with M.

 

9.1 appeared to fix my 312/313 problem too. I haven't switched any cable cards lately, or done anything else. In fact, I put an external antenna in so I could enjoy (?) the new fall season. Only in playing around did I notice that 312/313 now worked. Also 290/291 (HDNets) were a problem for me; they also have cleared up.

Either 9.1 did something about this, or it's amazingly coincidental timing. Since TiVo doesn't release any info as to what any particular release does, we have no way of knowing.

Like you, I'm mystified but happy

 

I was having sporadic issue with 312/313 too, like you it seems to have been corrected. I haven't had issues since.

 

Ditto. My pixelization on 312/313 essentially disappeared upon the upgrade to 9.1 Whatever they did, it fixed the problem.

 

And yet not a peep out of TiVo that 9.x had anything in it related to pixellation problems.

I'd be tooting my horn about my bug fixes if I was them. I realize not everybody had every problem solved, but there do seem to be enough of us seeing results that TiVo should mention (brag about) it.

 

Howdy:

Is anyone else having to reboot their Tivo HD every month? I have a family member that seems to lose every channel under 100 about once every 30 days (give or take a few days). All the digital and HD channels work fine. It's getting to be quite annoying. I went through 6 cable cards (both M and S variety) before I finally found a pair of S-cards they seem to work reliably for them (I'm the techie in the family).

 

Coincidental gets my vote. I do have a way of knowing.

I don't have an S3 or HD, but I do have a cable card in my TV and have suffered with the 312-313 problem. But it seems to have been fixed for me as well. Not by TiVo but by Comcast. As confirmation, I no longer see the extreme signal strength fluctuations on that frequency. All the subchannels on that frequency are now solid.

 

My latest Comcast Houston experience . . .

Bought another S3 last week. Went down and picked up two cablecards from the midtown SC. One was a M-card, the other a std card. They are still using Moto cards.

S3 arrived, opened it & installed a WK 500GB drive, before I even turned it on. Fired it up, went thru setup. Plugged in the cc, called the special cc #, got an idiot. She was so clueless, I couldn't stand talking to her (and she's a "special" cc tech?). Made an excuse, hung up, called back. Got a different person, went thru the cc setup (reading # after # after #...), then she said allow up to 24 hours, you're done!

Less than 24 hours later, everything works. Got all my channels--HD, pay, HBO, yada yada. Both cards work. No pixellation. Doesn't seem to make any diff that one card is an M card.

Unplugged the SA8300HD from the bedroom TV, hooked up the S3, and my wife is a happy camper. Already moving (MRV) some shows she likes from my S3 to hers.

When it works, it really works well

 

I'm located near Shepherd and Memorial and I was experiencing the problems with NBC (312) and others too. The problem inexplicably cleared itself up a couple of weeks ago. Good to see that I wasn't an isolated incident.

 

Probably the patch, the timing is about the same.

 

I am going through the same thing right now. The tech told me to wait 24 hours for activation to work and if it didn't I would have to get a new CC. Do you know how long it really took? It just sounds like a way of pushing you off for another couple of days so they do not have to deal with you.