I, for one, look forward to Monday evening's "Cincinnati's Time-Warner Cable Says Screw You To Its Customers, Part Deux!"
Actually, good luck!!
Actually, good luck!!
A Promise to Tivo & Time Warner Cable
Dear Tivo & Time Warner Cable,
In the past, whenever I have had problems with either of you, I have been quite vocal in my disappointment. (Exhibit 1)
However (and somewhat unfairly) like many people, when things are going well I remain relatively silent.
Therefore, I am making the following promise. If things go well on Monday with my install, I will NOT remain silent. I will relay my positive experience to as many people as possible. I will make sure to proivide as many details as possible so others can benefit from my experience.
Since I have been tough on you in the past, I am eager to sing your respective praises come Monday. I am ready to hold up my end if you hold up yours. Deal?
I think others should also make this promise. We need to see both the good and the bad!
In the past, whenever I have had problems with either of you, I have been quite vocal in my disappointment. (Exhibit 1)
However (and somewhat unfairly) like many people, when things are going well I remain relatively silent.
Therefore, I am making the following promise. If things go well on Monday with my install, I will NOT remain silent. I will relay my positive experience to as many people as possible. I will make sure to proivide as many details as possible so others can benefit from my experience.
Since I have been tough on you in the past, I am eager to sing your respective praises come Monday. I am ready to hold up my end if you hold up yours. Deal?
I think others should also make this promise. We need to see both the good and the bad!
1 - 20 of 41 Posts
While i like and appreciate what your are saying and trying to do...
Invariable, you will always see more complaints about a company or product than compliments. The complainers make so much noise that the complimenters get tired and disappear.
How many people start webites praising a company? Is there a www.comcastisawesome.com or a www.comcastsucks.com? Many companies will register various www.insertcompanynameor productSUCKS.com, .net etc. to keep unhappy customers from bashing them.
That said, a wise consumer realizes that no company or product is perfect. Learn to accept this a move to another provider when and if hey can offer the products/services at the price you want.
This is what bugs me about all the complainers about the S3 and Tivo HD. They have a right to their opinions. IIf they are so unhappy and within the 30 days, return it and find a comparable replacement.
Invariable, you will always see more complaints about a company or product than compliments. The complainers make so much noise that the complimenters get tired and disappear.
How many people start webites praising a company? Is there a www.comcastisawesome.com or a www.comcastsucks.com? Many companies will register various www.insertcompanynameor productSUCKS.com, .net etc. to keep unhappy customers from bashing them.
That said, a wise consumer realizes that no company or product is perfect. Learn to accept this a move to another provider when and if hey can offer the products/services at the price you want.
This is what bugs me about all the complainers about the S3 and Tivo HD. They have a right to their opinions. IIf they are so unhappy and within the 30 days, return it and find a comparable replacement.
You make some good points. That's human nature I guess.cowboys2002 said:This is what bug me about all the complainers about the S3 and Tivo HD. They have a right to their opinions. IIf they are so unhappy and within the 30 days, return it and find a comparable replacement.
However, we need the complainers! Maybe not whiners. But we do need people to report problems they are experiencing. I do not know all of the specifics, but I am sure there are MANY cases where Tivo has acted upon information from this very board. I am certain the Tivo Community has sped up many a resolution!
Dolf,
I live in Cincy (Anderson) and have an appt with TW cincy for a multistream cable card installed in the TivoHD tomorrow (saturday). I'll post my experience after the appointment. My expectations are relatively low since it took 2 trips and 4 cablecards (total of 6 hours) to get two working cablecards in the S3 that I have.
Thinh
I live in Cincy (Anderson) and have an appt with TW cincy for a multistream cable card installed in the TivoHD tomorrow (saturday). I'll post my experience after the appointment. My expectations are relatively low since it took 2 trips and 4 cablecards (total of 6 hours) to get two working cablecards in the S3 that I have.
Thinh
True, we need valid complaints.
But all the Tivo has let me down, why didn't they tell me a new model was coming out posts about the HD Tivo's (S3 and Tivo HD) are getting a bit old. So are the I hate DTv becuase they haven't unlocked the USB ports,etc. posts.
I have had many good years with my 3 DTV Series2 Units. In the process of upgrading the final unit.
I plan on having at least 1 HDTV this fall. When this happens, I will probable re-assess whether or not to go with Comcast in my area.
I am considering the triple play for $99, but I am cautious to trust Comcast with phone, HSI and TV. I'm pretty happy with DTV, (despite all the service losses in the past year since moving to Texas from CA). That is not DTV's fault.
I realize the mods are busy, but these boards are getting so unorganized. Especially when the newbies post the same rant in multiple threads and nobody reports it to a mod.
But all the Tivo has let me down, why didn't they tell me a new model was coming out posts about the HD Tivo's (S3 and Tivo HD) are getting a bit old. So are the I hate DTv becuase they haven't unlocked the USB ports,etc. posts.
I have had many good years with my 3 DTV Series2 Units. In the process of upgrading the final unit.
I plan on having at least 1 HDTV this fall. When this happens, I will probable re-assess whether or not to go with Comcast in my area.
I am considering the triple play for $99, but I am cautious to trust Comcast with phone, HSI and TV. I'm pretty happy with DTV, (despite all the service losses in the past year since moving to Texas from CA). That is not DTV's fault.
I realize the mods are busy, but these boards are getting so unorganized. Especially when the newbies post the same rant in multiple threads and nobody reports it to a mod.
Thinh,thinny said:Dolf,
I live in Cincy (Anderson) and have an appt with TW cincy for a multistream cable card installed in the TivoHD tomorrow (saturday). I'll post my experience after the appointment. My expectations are relatively low since it took 2 trips and 4 cablecards (total of 6 hours) to get two working cablecards in the S3 that I have.
Thinh
Thanks for the info! I am very curious to see how it goes. I am not sure if it applies to M-Cards but I know there appear to be problems with SA CableCards. I told the CS rep that I wanted the *Motorola* M-Card if possible. (TW Cincy's site shows both an SA and a Motorola M-Card.)
My question is do we let the cable guy leave without all of the channels showing up??? It seems like there are many people who get "the rest of the channels will show up later" routine only to have the channels NOT show up later.
I eagerly await to hear about your experience. If it goes well, get the name of the installer and I'll try to request him!
Good luck!
So far my initial set up has gone well.
This is the "pre set up" routine. Not the CableCard install...
The Tivo set up was easy (as usual). I re-scanned to grab some local HD channels and they look great. Tivo's default picture setting was 480. I changed it to 1080i fixed. I guess I will experiment with this. My TV is a 1080p Sony 60A2020.
More later...
This is the "pre set up" routine. Not the CableCard install...
The Tivo set up was easy (as usual). I re-scanned to grab some local HD channels and they look great. Tivo's default picture setting was 480. I changed it to 1080i fixed. I guess I will experiment with this. My TV is a 1080p Sony 60A2020.
More later...
Hey there, for some reason, i can't post my experience since I don't have 5 posts yet. I need to pad my count with 2 more posts.
Well, it was a mixed bag today.
The Tech did arrive within the time slot, he was extremely nice and eager to learn about cablecards. He had two singlestream cards instead of my requested M-card. The cards were SA and not motorola's. I showed him the TW cincinnati website stating that M-cards are available and he tried calling the warehouse to see if they had any. The guy there told him that M-cards were not available and that motorola cards are only used in the TW areas that were previously adelphia.
So, we do to put the SA cablecard into slot one and I get the dreaded "firmware update" message. I had this message with the S3 cablecard install, it never finished the upgrade, so I expected the same. After 15 minutes, we pulled out the first cablecard and put in the second card -- same updating firmware message. At this point, I told the Tech that this might take an hour or more and to make matters worse, it may not ever resolve anything. This is were I was impressed with this tech, he said that he would drive back to the warehouse and pick up extra cablecards while this one was trying to update.
He leaves and comes back in 40 minutes with 3 more cablecards. Before leaving the warehouse, he actually was proactive (and very clever) by testing them in a TV with cablecard slot to make sure that they had the latest firmware and can get to the host id screen. I was quite impressed with this. The firmware update does not complete after 1 hour and 20 minutes. So we take out that card and put in one of the new batch. I get to the host id screen in less than 2 minutes. He then emails dispatch with the card's serial number (a bunch of letters), the card ID # and the host ID #. They send a hit in about 15 minutes and card one is working -- getting espnHD and other encrypted channels.
Next, we put in a card in slot 2 and get to the host ID screen. It does pretty well but for some reason, this card does not receive EMM hits so the POWERKEY does not read "Ready". The Tech tries to call dispatch several time for more hits but it does not work. 4 hours had passed by this point so we decided to wrap up.
Net, I did not get an m-card, but got two single cards - one of which gets all my channels and the other gets everychannel but encrypted ones. I did get a very good tech (Dwane C. ) who was proactively trying to help.
The bad is that the TivoHD is having the same problems that many others have posted with SA cards. I am getting the pixelation (this is very similar to the rainfade pixelations when i had directv). Since I have a S3 tivo, I guess I maybe extra sensitive to this problem. It is really annoying. At this point, I am leaning towards returning the Tivo HD within my 30 day period and waiting on a good price on Tivo s3 (under $450) or wait until Tivo gets these bugs worked out.
Hope this provides some helpful info to others. Thanks for reading.
The Tech did arrive within the time slot, he was extremely nice and eager to learn about cablecards. He had two singlestream cards instead of my requested M-card. The cards were SA and not motorola's. I showed him the TW cincinnati website stating that M-cards are available and he tried calling the warehouse to see if they had any. The guy there told him that M-cards were not available and that motorola cards are only used in the TW areas that were previously adelphia.
So, we do to put the SA cablecard into slot one and I get the dreaded "firmware update" message. I had this message with the S3 cablecard install, it never finished the upgrade, so I expected the same. After 15 minutes, we pulled out the first cablecard and put in the second card -- same updating firmware message. At this point, I told the Tech that this might take an hour or more and to make matters worse, it may not ever resolve anything. This is were I was impressed with this tech, he said that he would drive back to the warehouse and pick up extra cablecards while this one was trying to update.
He leaves and comes back in 40 minutes with 3 more cablecards. Before leaving the warehouse, he actually was proactive (and very clever) by testing them in a TV with cablecard slot to make sure that they had the latest firmware and can get to the host id screen. I was quite impressed with this. The firmware update does not complete after 1 hour and 20 minutes. So we take out that card and put in one of the new batch. I get to the host id screen in less than 2 minutes. He then emails dispatch with the card's serial number (a bunch of letters), the card ID # and the host ID #. They send a hit in about 15 minutes and card one is working -- getting espnHD and other encrypted channels.
Next, we put in a card in slot 2 and get to the host ID screen. It does pretty well but for some reason, this card does not receive EMM hits so the POWERKEY does not read "Ready". The Tech tries to call dispatch several time for more hits but it does not work. 4 hours had passed by this point so we decided to wrap up.
Net, I did not get an m-card, but got two single cards - one of which gets all my channels and the other gets everychannel but encrypted ones. I did get a very good tech (Dwane C. ) who was proactively trying to help.
The bad is that the TivoHD is having the same problems that many others have posted with SA cards. I am getting the pixelation (this is very similar to the rainfade pixelations when i had directv). Since I have a S3 tivo, I guess I maybe extra sensitive to this problem. It is really annoying. At this point, I am leaning towards returning the Tivo HD within my 30 day period and waiting on a good price on Tivo s3 (under $450) or wait until Tivo gets these bugs worked out.
Hope this provides some helpful info to others. Thanks for reading.
Thanks Thinny for all of the details. Sorry things didn't go well...
All I can say is, "George is getting angry!" It's looking like minckster might get his wish!
Since TW Cincy has *TWO* separate pages on their web site touting M-Cards you would think they might have one in stock. I am going to be supremely pissed if I miss an entire day of work without getting things working properly.
All I can say is, "George is getting angry!" It's looking like minckster might get his wish!
Since TW Cincy has *TWO* separate pages on their web site touting M-Cards you would think they might have one in stock. I am going to be supremely pissed if I miss an entire day of work without getting things working properly.
TWC missed 2 appointment windows on Friday and Saturday, so after an extended complaining session on the phone yesterday, they sent a tech out today.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the one home when he arrived. My wife said he was confused why this was going in the TiVo box instead of the TV. I didn't get to see if it was an SA or MOT card, so I can't even confirm if it was the proper M-Card or not.
Now, I've been staring at the "Updating Firmware" screen for the past 50 minutes and the guy left just saying we needed to phone the device address and CardID to cust. service. (Which I could have done by just pulling the old card out of the SA box and calling in).
Anyway, has anyone let the firmware update run to completion? Is the "up to an hour" a reality or am I dealing w/ a crap card. We let the guy go (about 10 min's in to the firmware screen), which was probably a HUGE mistake.
Ugh!!! I've spent more time on the phone with TWC in the 5 days I've had their service than in 5+ years with D*.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the one home when he arrived. My wife said he was confused why this was going in the TiVo box instead of the TV. I didn't get to see if it was an SA or MOT card, so I can't even confirm if it was the proper M-Card or not.
Now, I've been staring at the "Updating Firmware" screen for the past 50 minutes and the guy left just saying we needed to phone the device address and CardID to cust. service. (Which I could have done by just pulling the old card out of the SA box and calling in).
Anyway, has anyone let the firmware update run to completion? Is the "up to an hour" a reality or am I dealing w/ a crap card. We let the guy go (about 10 min's in to the firmware screen), which was probably a HUGE mistake.
Ugh!!! I've spent more time on the phone with TWC in the 5 days I've had their service than in 5+ years with D*.
Nevermind... they put in an s-card... after an hour it popped up on the screen as an s-card. Nice. I popped it out, it is a blue SA card. Hilarious. I popped it back in and it registered green as an s-card before now going back to a firmware update.
This cracks me up. D* can do this with a smartcard like it is nothing and these cableco's can't figure this out. Think of all the bandwidth they have to that card, and the card clearly has computing capacity in it. This should take 5 seconds, not an hour. I've essentially dedicated an entire weekend to getting this going, and TWC can't do it.
Does anyone know what level of gov't sets cable franchise rights? This is worth complaining about more broadly.
This cracks me up. D* can do this with a smartcard like it is nothing and these cableco's can't figure this out. Think of all the bandwidth they have to that card, and the card clearly has computing capacity in it. This should take 5 seconds, not an hour. I've essentially dedicated an entire weekend to getting this going, and TWC can't do it.
Does anyone know what level of gov't sets cable franchise rights? This is worth complaining about more broadly.
Joe, it all boils down to Cable Cos having *no incentive* to make CableCards work properly. They *want* you to use their boxes not Tivo's.
Let the frustration continue... Despite every indication that the M-Cards are available, the top tech guy I've been able to get in touch with confirmed that they only put s-cards in TiVo's and is now sending the guy back with a 2nd s-card. Arrrggghh!!! They claim the m-cards in the 8300 boxes are physically tied to the box. This, of course, violates the FCC mandate, but I wasn't going to take that up w/ the poor tech guy.
I've blown the entire weekend. My wife & kids are ready to kill me.
Also, the one s-card I have has now done three one-hour long cycles of firmware updates. I'm confident it is a lemon. Fun fun...
I've blown the entire weekend. My wife & kids are ready to kill me.
Also, the one s-card I have has now done three one-hour long cycles of firmware updates. I'm confident it is a lemon. Fun fun...
I fully understand that... however the FCC has mandated that they CAN'T force that. They have to be open to UDCP devices. They can't legally lock you out. That's why I'm planning on just getting the damn thing working (so I can actually enjoy it) and then spending a good deal of time writing the local level of government that handles franchise rights and the FCC (cc'ing TWC) to express the frustration. I also need to look in to if the EFF works these issues.
I had a similar experience with TWC in Raleigh-Durham, NC...the installation supervisor called me the night before my "M-Card" install...to tell me that they have no M-Cards for installation, even though they are in both the SA8300HDC and SA4250HDC (which is a single tuner STB that I currently have). He also told me that the M-Cards are only for the boxes TWC supplies.JoeSchueller said:Let the frustration continue... Despite every indication that the M-Cards are available, the top tech guy I've been able to get in touch with confirmed that they only put s-cards in TiVo's and is now sending the guy back with a 2nd s-card. Arrrggghh!!! They claim the m-cards in the 8300 boxes are physically tied to the box. This, of course, violates the FCC mandate, but I wasn't going to take that up w/ the poor tech guy.
I've blown the entire weekend. My wife & kids are ready to kill me.
Also, the one s-card I have has now done three one-hour long cycles of firmware updates. I'm confident it is a lemon. Fun fun...
My work order was written as an M-Card install by my request to the cust. service agent I spoke with. I called Tech Support twice (once before and once after scheduling the install) to confirm that TWC Raleigh-Durham has M-Cards - and was told both times that "my supervisor says that we now have them".
The entire experience with CCs is so obviously designed to frustrate customers and make it not worth the effort to use anything that TWC doesn't supply. The two installed CCs work poorly at best - but it is unclear if this is TiVo's software or TWCs issues...but I don't think I'll ever find out.
The whole reason they have cards in the STB's you have was because the FCC mandated it as an attempt to level the playing field for 3rd party STB's. The vision here is that you should have been able to self-install right out of the m-card STB. However, it is clear that TWC has no interest in following the spirit of the FCC mandate. I plan on documenting my whole experience and publicizing the hell out of it. I know only a fraction of a percent of people are even remotely interested, but maybe it will make me feel slightly better.
"However, it is clear that TWC has no interest in following the spirit of the FCC mandate." - AGREEDJoeSchueller said:The whole reason they have cards in the STB's you have was because the FCC mandated it as an attempt to level the playing field for 3rd party STB's. The vision here is that you should have been able to self-install right out of the m-card STB. However, it is clear that TWC has no interest in following the spirit of the FCC mandate. I plan on documenting my whole experience and publicizing the hell out of it. I know only a fraction of a percent of people are even remotely interested, but maybe it will make me feel slightly better.
It is interesting/funny that the M-Card is installed in the STB with a screwed-on cover that has Tamper-Proof tape over it...
While there may be legitimate reasons for that, it also tells you they don't want you to have access to that card as a flexible device to be used with other equipment you may have.
1 - 20 of 41 Posts
- This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
TiVo Community Forum
A forum community dedicated to TiVo digital video recorder owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about programming, streaming, content, schedules, home theaters, displays, models, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!
Full Forum Listing
Top Contributors this Month
View All
Steveknj
359 Replies
cheesesteak
337 Replies
Rob Helmerichs
322 Replies
Recommended Communities
