what heck! frontier communications?

Don't give up on TiVo! It's the cable provider who's at fault here. They're accustomed to dealing with people who use their outrageously priced cable boxes and DVRs. When somebody mentions TiVo or cable cards they are taken out of their knowledge zone and respond by insisting that you need to buy more of their stuff, needed or not.

Before making decisions on picking up additional channels packages or increasing internet speed, you need to research the cable company's published (typically available online) documentation for their channel offerings and rate plans. Being armed with accurate information will help ensure you get what you want with nothing that you don't need.

 

This would be letting the bad guy win, then getting in bed with him.

What does this have to do with your tivo? This is about your provider putting in artificial roadblocks to your wishes. I'd suggest making a complaint to the FCC.

 

I agree this is on the cable company, but what she was telling you might well be correct. It wouldn't be unheard of for a cable company to upgrade the CA for it's premium services and this could well require a cablecard swap, especially if you have had your card for a while.

 

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Unfortunately I think we are going to be seeing a lot more of this, not less.

 

Nah. The cable card he has is fine. It works with his six tuner pro. There are no new M cable cards.

 

One member has posted about new software. I don't have it.

New cable card firmware Comcast Motorola

 

I think that's highly unlikely. Most front-line CSRs don't even know what a CableCARD even is, let alone highly technical details about CableCARDs like that. And any upgrades should be able to be handled with a firmware upgrade to the same CableCARD without an actual swap of the physical cards.

 

It's not my area of expertise but I'll give you one counterexample. For complicated historical reasons the Houston market was divided between SA and Motorola CA systems. When Comcast took over from Time Warner, they consolidated down to just one system (can't remember which). The change was phased in, but at some point some customer had to swap CableCARDS.

 

Yes, that's true. The brand of the card must match the headend equipment. But that example is the only possible reason I can think of that would require a physical card swap (other than an actual malfunctioning card). Everything else should just be firmware.

 

Houston's all Cisco (SA) as far as I know, and has been for at least several years. If you plug in a card with outdated firmware it updates immediately.

 

The ComCast takeover was in 2006 I think. I’ve been a Tivo user for awhile!

 

Frontier is an incredibly incompetent company. I'm sure that's not the craziest and most illogical thing that they've come up with. Here, their database and website are totally broken, so it's virtually impossible to figure out what service they offer where. It's sad when a company can make you miss the deathstar.

 

Late to the game, but the Frontier Direct Forum has resolved several cable card issues for me when talking to the regular CSR's was a total waste. They are slow but will respond, Frontier Direct forum | DSLReports, ISP Information