Northland Cable says no CableCARDs, what do I do?

You may want to try digital OTA reception in the are you are moving to - you may be pleasantly surprised at what you can tune over the air... I'm 60 miles SE of broadcast towers and picking up all the HD locals with a cheap indoor amplified UHF antenna in the garage pointing in the right direction. It's worth spending $20-30 on an antenna to try it out if you haven't already.

 

And if the OTA option doesn't work, there's always QAM for the broadcast stations (and quite possibly more digital stuff) if they do have HD - and if they don't, I'd bet good money their analog service may not be pretty to watch but will preserve most of the functionality of your S3, and is a good option even if you're able to get OTA HD.

 

Keep in mind that while most large cable companies provide local broadcast channels in HD via in-the-clear QAM, the requirement to do so does not take effect until February 2009, so Northland may not.

 

QAM is the method that most cable systems use to carry TV channels through their cables. 8SVB is the "Over the Air" equivalent. Both of them allow for encoding (also encrypting) multiple program streams onto one channel. That is why they use the channel numbering system of xx.yy, where the x is the old standard channels we are used to, and the y is the subchannel. If you know the QAM assignment of a program source you can "dial in" its channel and subchannel assignment and view that channel on any TV equipped with a QAM/8SVB (ATSC) tuner or TiVo S3/HD, and view it assuming it is not encrypted. Cable systems take this one step further however, and assign a virtual channel number to each QAM program source and they use that channel number in their program guide data, and in their cableboxes. They do NOT publish the QAM assignments, they publish the virtual channel numbers. TiVo on its own, at the moment, has no way of equating QAM and virtual channel numbers, so it can not use the guide data to tune in and record the shows you desire. The CableCard facilitiates the translation between QAM and virtual channel numbers from information passed on from the cablesystem and creates that link that allows TiVo to record your shows based on the published guide data. The CableCard also facilitates the all important decrypting of the encrypted channels, also based on information passed on from the cablesystem's headend.

So without cablecards, TiVo is, at this point, effectively useless, with regards to digital channels from your cablesystem. Search other posts about "manual channel mapping."

 

Updating this thread with new information: I just moved to the Clemson area and Northland Cable does support Cable Cards for Tivo (M-Cards).

With that said, my installer spent almost 3 hours yesterday and was not successful at getting the card to activate/pair. They have to order a new card.

Mike

 

If they would just learn to always bring a spare card, they wouldn't waste so much time.