Started up with spectrum and my reactivated tivo bolt today. Tuning adapter has one solid light. Tried to pair the one card they gave me, one menu says "CP Auth Received" while another days x-x-not ent--- but CCI are 0x00. Any thoughts? Oh and the Tivo seems to have trouble connecting to the TiVo service. It has a last successful time but the current load is taking forever, including past the next scheduled attempt to connect, is this common with recently reactivated Bolts?. I activated it not more than 12 hours ago. Although its downloaded a guide, all channels say "not authorized".
Exactly why do cable cards not pair the first time around?
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I think it is 99% error on the person at the cable company not entering the correct information.
The other 1% being bad hardware (both TiVO and CableCard)
The other 1% being bad hardware (both TiVO and CableCard)
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15,686 Posts
Yep, the issue is almost never the CableCARD and almost always the rep not properly setting them up and provisioning them.
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55,903 Posts
Every time I've had an issue the tech has showed up, called into to his special tech hotline via his walkie/talkie cell phone, they send some signal locally and it starts working.
I've also had a phone tech fix one once and she said something about them being in the wrong order on the system and that CableCARDs have to be at the bottom. I don’t know exact what that means, since I've never seen their system. But whatever she did worked. It's weird when you actually get a phone support person that actually understands how the system works and doesn’t just jump to " sorry, we'll have to send out a technician".
I've also had a phone tech fix one once and she said something about them being in the wrong order on the system and that CableCARDs have to be at the bottom. I don’t know exact what that means, since I've never seen their system. But whatever she did worked. It's weird when you actually get a phone support person that actually understands how the system works and doesn’t just jump to " sorry, we'll have to send out a technician".
The Host ID alone is usually not enough information to properly pair a cable card. https://support.tivo.com/articles/Knowledge/CableCARD-Installation The walkie talkie thing or cell phone thing is when the "tech" has lucked upon one of the few folks who actually knows how to get cable cards paired and is smart enough to keep their number handy. This is all accomplished at the head end...if the tech doesn't happen to know someone to contact there...they are completely useless as far as cable cards are concerned.
One reason folks like Tivos is that they are generally much less expensive over time then renting cable company boxes with better features. This can mean pretty big bucks, I save approx. $53 a month vs renting the cable companies stuff....so, there is very little benefit to supporting a device which causes them to loose significant income...hence they provide little effort and often tell lies when asked about cable cards.
Many folks have to resort to filing an FCC complaint to get their issues to the higher ups at cable companies who also know how to find the few competent employees to do the job but many folks are reluctant to file the complaint and seem happy waiting for weeks and weeks.
Submit a request - FCC Complaints
I've had good luck with Spectrum over the last couple of years. Last three times I called I simply said I needed a cable card paired to the first human I talked to. They immediately knew what I was talking about and transferred me. And, the cable card folks quickly went through the process without a hitch.
2 months ago i got my first card, that really was bad/super old and I called them about 3 times and it took 1 to 3 transfers to get to the right group each time. But the working card they had just pulled out of set top box instead of using one that was already set up for a 1 way device and basically the following happened:
I was watching when this happened and the dataid that was in the system was wrong, the tech gave the current dataid, then the dataid changed right there on the screen, then the tech gave that dataid and it was paired 15 seconds later. I believe noone on their end either sent a new init signal once it was changed from a STB to a tivo or it hadn't been unprovisioned from the old STB yet or both.
The very first time I called though after getting the bad card, I'm fairly confident that guy knew what he was doing but when the card won't provide the info for the host id/data id screen there isn't a lot anyone can do.
UCLA,
Hey I remember you. You helped me quite a bit a few years ago when I first got TiVo. I just got back with Spectrum because they sent me a deal I couldn't turn down. The surprise was they don't do home installations anymore unless you pay $50 for a truck roll. So I hooked it up myself, called in the card and all the lady took was the Host ID. It wouldn't pair so she said we'll have to send a tech out.
Tech comes out 2 days later. Says he's inexperienced with cable cards. He calls his boss who calls someone else with a little experience. In the meantime he has the head end send an activation signal, and voila it got paired just like that.
Had a similar experience to you Michael_P. Comcast (Xfinity) tech shows up with 2 cable cards in his hand and announces he's never done this before. Contacted Comcast support and described the situation, tried both cards, contacted Tivo via conference who kept having him go through Guided Setup all to no avail. We finally had to ask him to leave after 9:00 P.M. so we could have our dinner. Second tech shows up next day with the same result. At this point there are problems with the phone bundle so that took priority and that's another long story. At any rate, just before my 30 day or money back trial was due to end I decided to try to pair a card myself using the Xfinity on line option. I got 3 more cards from Comcast but none of them worked. They were obviously cards that were returned to Comcast for whatever reason. I cancelled my order in order to get my refund under the trial period. Currently using Tivo Bolt and Roku only for stream. We have very spotty antenna reception so I can't record anything. Thinking of using Roku to access the Xfinity stream and ditching Tivo. Sorry for the long rant.
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When I first got my Tivo the tech had a hard time getting them paired. They found out the reason was the cable cards had been sitting in the techs truck and getting bounced around causing them to go bad. Since then Comcast seems to be taking better care of the cards. When I got my Bolt I put the cards from my TivoHD into the Bolt and did the pairing myself using their over the phone set up. Everything worked out great.
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15,686 Posts
I would doubt that, there are no moving or exposed parts, unless you see physical damage on the cards there's almost no chance they are physically bad, unless over the years the tech has collected the 1 or 2 bad ones he's seen out of 100+ and never turned them in.
They don't work for the same reasons the others don't, improper provisioning on the head end by the call/tech rep.
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16,716 Posts
they are on the "conditional access screen" near the bottom.
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i'm not removing my card to find out, but, no, only the values should change, not the existence of the fields themselves.
at this point, it would be better for you to start from the beginning, instead of troubleshooting this randomly, and it should be done with a comcast installation tech.
at this point, it would be better for you to start from the beginning, instead of troubleshooting this randomly, and it should be done with a comcast installation tech.
- what model tivo?
- when/where was the tivo purchased?
- what date was your first installation scheduled?
- where did you obtain the moto m-card that's currently in the tivo?
- what does tivo cablecard support say?
- post pics of the conditional access, cablecard status, network setup, and cablecard pairing screens
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