Optimum Cable Card Issues With Tivos

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Yeah i wish i could get FIOS its good stuff unfortunately i cant get it they wont finish my area time to move

 

I've moved THREE TIMES and I still can't get out of the CVMZ.

 

It looks like I'm stuck in the same situation as everyone else. But heres more. I recently had a cablevision issue and they actually came and fixed it a week ago. But when the guy came he told me that Cablevision will not be supporting Tivos at all. And that by the end of November 2020 I will lose all of my channels. There is no work around. They told me this a month ago and I emailed Tivo and they actually told me that this was not true. I was relieved because i had just upgraded my Tivos and purchased 2 Tvo Bolt +. I just spent $600 on my upgrade. But now that this new worker told me, I have been trying to contact Tivo support and they will not reply. I have been a life long customer, and they will not respond. Do I have 2 very expensive paper weights sitting around? What are all of you doing? I want to keep Tivo because I like the features. Does Optimum offer anything comprable?

 

Checked here and didn't see any chatter about Optimum TiVo support going away. You might want to post your question there.

 

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I've learned from my own experience and this very thread that the Optimum techs don't know what they're talking about.

 

I'm in Westchester County, NY and in the last couple of weeks I went through hell with Optimum but I did succeed in getting a new cable card and having it paired. Not one of the 10 different Optimum employees I spoke with during this process told me that they wouldn't support cable cards or Tivo. In fact, getting a new cable card from the retail store was simple: just show up with it and wait while she checked out the new one. Getting it paired (or binded) was the hard part.

I posted this saga on a different thread. I'll repost it here in case it helps anyone going thru something similar. I know what's like when you are trying to solve this problem -- any hint can help make a difference in success v. failure

My comments were posted originally in this thread
Optimum states they no longer support Tivo

 

I was having the same v58 error messages with both my Tivo's. I called Optimum multiple times and had multiple visits from techs that had no idea what they were doing. Here is my story...
On one of my calls I found a rep that knew about cable cards and he rebound them, it didn't help. So he said I needed a visit to the house. Three techs came to the house, the first 2 checked the line from the pole to the house and said my signal is fine & it was somewhere down the line so they would escalate my issue to the line division. I complained multiple times to the board of public utilities and finally had an Altice rep call me, he sent a specialty tech out. When this guy came he went right to the Tivo and found that my signal was so bad he couldn't even run a test, he went to the line coming in and found it was disintegrating. I been in this house for 20 years and the line has never been replaced so its older than their online service. He replaced the line and the rebound the cards and that was the end of the v58 errors and that increased my internet speed as well, BUT it also changed my stations. A few months back Optimum changed their TV package names and content which in turn discontinued the SD Channels (this has been discussed in other parts of this thread), they also WILL NOT support all the stations you are paying for in your package. I have the Select package and I am missing over 50 stations, some of them are HD channels. I was told by the Altice rep that this is their policy now, my response to him was "So since I'm a Cable Card user and not a renter of your equipment you are sticking up my ass, your sticking it up all Cable Card users Ass" his response was a (A little laugh) then said "I wouldn't put it in those words but basically your not getting the full channel package if your a cable card user". So which brings me to the next step, which is a fight over my service which is on going. I have not payed my bill in full for 2 months now and will not till I get a credit or a reduced rate.

 

Sorry this is long I'll try to keep it in bullet format:

1. My TiVo Bolt would lose a few channels every 6 weeks or so. I'd call Optimum and they'd shoot a signal to the card and fix the problem.
2. Last time this happened I called and the tech fixed the issue and told me that they saw an error on the card and I should really take it to my local cable store and get a new card. He said to do it sooner than later because the card would eventually fail.
3. Took it to the LCP store on 1/8/21 - got there at 8am (when they open) and had to wait over an hour to get in. Was given a card. Drove home and tried to get the card bound. Was eventually told the card was defective. So at noon I drove back to the store, waited in line another hour and drove home with a card. It was 8:30pm by the time we gave up trying to bind the card. At that point I was on the phone w/ both TiVo support and Optimum. I spent 12 hours. 2 hours of driving, 2 hours waiting in line and 8 hours on the phone. By the end of the day I'd called Optimum 15 times! Their automated system would make you go through 10 minutes of useless troubleshooting that had nothing to do with why I was calling and when I did get someone from India or Egypt they would literally hang up on me after about an hour of them reading from a script. (I was later told by a Optimum tech guy that had to come to the house that they do that because they have a quota) So the 15 calls i made they either told me I needed to wait 15 minutes for the card to bind and they would call me back (they never did) or they just hung up on me.

Optimum ended up calling me on Saturday morning, someone from their Long Island City HQ, asking if the problem was resolved. We spent 10 minutes trying to bind the card and they said they would work on it on their end.


Went back to the cable store the following Monday and begged them for TWO cards so I wouldn't have to come back in case the card was also broken. Again didn't work, again wasted a full day - 9 phone calls that day...also more hangups. At this point, i begrudgingly agreed to have a tech visit.

Tech came, spent 5 hours in my house and went through another 4 cards he had on him. Still couldn't bind the cards....had a level 2 tech on the call. At this point they all agreed it was my TiVo box. I called TiVo tech support to try and get them on my side. Reading these community board I knew it had to do with their frequency compression and something on their engineering side.

TiVo was useless!!!! They told me I most likely did need a new TiVo and since my Bolt was out of warranty I would have to buy a new TiVo AND since they weren't running any promos I'd have to pay for my lifetime service again since they wouldn't transfer my existing one to the new box.

This was nine days ago. I've since switched to Fios. They came, installed a new OTN ran a line to the wall where the TiVo and TV are. Pulled out a brand new card and bound it in 5 minutes!!

If you have Altice Optimum I recommend you switch to Verizon Fios. Optimum rates a negative one in customer service. The cable cards they have are all refurbished and no newer than 2012. They dont support tuning adaptors anymore so if/when that breaks you are told to find one on Ebay. Whatever changes they made to their systems they no longer are capable of binding cards (assuming the cards even work).

Side note: when i called to cancel my Cable subscription (I'd been using cable TV since my parents got cable in 1979!) they offered me two months free cable and one of their boxes for a year - rent free. No thank you!

 

Yeah once we get our Covid vaccines we will likely switch back to FiOS. We have had a lot of disappearing/reappearing channels. Mostly on one of the 3 boxes. Wasted countless hours talking to their "support". Recently had channels moved to SDV and have been told they don't have any more TA. A few reps say maybe the store might. Others say no stores have it too bad. Got free Showtime and Starz for a few months since all but one of the Starz/Encore channels isn't available (supposedly anyway) to us with out the TA.

They are horrible the last year or so with cable cards. In the past once you got the card paired it just seemed to work (at least for me). But now its a crap shoot. What channels will disappear for a few days? Which ones will go away forever. What story will tech support give you?

 

If you read previous posts in this thread, I pretty much had the same experience and problem with the Tivo Bolt. Tried for days to get multiple cablecards to bind and it never worked. Until I tried binding the CCs in my other Tivos (Roamio and S3) and they all worked nearly instantly. So yeah, it's not the cablecards! I even sent the Bolt to Weaknees for $60 to get checked out, but they can't test the Cablecard module and sent it back saying the tuner works just fine. Duh, I knew that already! I told them up-front the exact problem (no CC binding) but they took my money even though they knew they couldn't test it properly. I found that to be pretty shady business.

I don't have the choice to move to FIOS here, Cablevision has a monopoly. So I ended up buying a used Roamio Plus to replace the Bolt, which still sits here useless. I might try to sell it since the antenna tuners work and it still has Lifetime service.

 

I got an email from Optimum yesterday, explaining that my NDS card needs to be replaced with a “PowerKey” model, which they’ll ship to me. I also got a phone number (different than the regular customer service #) to call for setup. Anyone else get this? I’m not looking forward to binding this new card. Maybe an attempt to force us out of cable cards?

 

I received an email from Optimum stating NDS CableCards are out of business. I have Cisco CableCards being mailed to me

 

Same email received by me. Strap in kids!!

 

Hopefully installs easy

 

Wish they'd send me a tuning adapter at the same time... been hunting for them for months and even after an FCC complaint, still can't get one.

 

I'd be surprised if this goes down easy. The Optimum notice says the NDS cards won't work as of April 1st. Can anyone envision this scenario:

Optimum Rep says "I acknowledge that you are trying to bind our Cisco/PowerKey cable card to your third party device, but I am unable to do this, and federally mandated support for cable cards is no more. It must be an issue with your TiVo. I suggest contacting TiVo for support or going to an Optimum store to acquire cable box(es)."

 

Hopefully easier than that. They are being somewhat proactive. Usually however it takes a visit with a tech to get it binded

 

Not in my experience. All the techs I've encountered just get an email sent to the inside people who need to do the binding. Many posts here relate how it takes multiple phone calls to customer service to get the right person on the line who know how to bind the cards.

 

Where I am it’s always taken a tech at the house who communicates with whoever he calls to get it straightened out

 

I've had Cisco cable cards for many years; I told my horror story of re-binding a Tivo Bolt after the hard disk was replaced. One of the phone reps told me to replace the cable card and when I went to the store, they gave me a card of the same model.

It took me many phone calls but I concluded that you just need to be persistent and find a rep who is willing to dig out the script and knows how to follow it. If I have to do it again, I will try to escalate to a supervisor ASAP (and if that doesn't work, I'll switch to FIOS). Maybe I'm overly optimistic but the fact that they were pro-active in replacing the NDIS cards means somewhere in the dark bowels of Altice, someone realizes they should support cable cards. I take every opportunity I can to complain that lack of cable card support will be a dealbreaker for me with Altice.