[notabbott]

Okay, still having trouble with my CableCARD, despite a very nice courtesy call from the one person at Comcast who seems to understand this stuff. That's counterbalanced by two much less helpful calls and three different technician no-shows.

CableCARD 2 gets just the bare minimum of channels -- local channels (reg and HD) and local access channels and CSPAN. Nothing else that I'm supposed to get that comes in on card 1 (ESPN, Comedy Central, HBO, Fox Soccer, DirectKick).

The obvious culprit is that "EnabledByCP" comes up as "no," which I take to mean that the card either isn't talking to the Copy Protection server, or that it's not getting the right information. So it's just not descrambling the channels it's supposed to, as I've come to understand.

Sending Initiate signals (big/deep hits) doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a particular command I need to ask for that will change this setting? Or is this a hardware issue and I just need a new card?

I'd love to fix this before my next scheduled technician visit, if it actually happens.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[ajwees41]

Okay, still having trouble with my CableCARD, despite a very nice courtesy call from the one person at Comcast who seems to understand this stuff. That's counterbalanced by two much less helpful calls and three different technician no-shows.

CableCARD 2 gets just the bare minimum of channels -- local channels (reg and HD) and local access channels and CSPAN. Nothing else that I'm supposed to get that comes in on card 1 (ESPN, Comedy Central, HBO, Fox Soccer, DirectKick).

The obvious culprit is that "EnabledByCP" comes up as "no," which I take to mean that the card either isn't talking to the Copy Protection server, or that it's not getting the right information. So it's just not descrambling the channels it's supposed to, as I've come to understand.

Sending Initiate signals (big/deep hits) doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a particular command I need to ask for that will change this setting? Or is this a hardware issue and I just need a new card?

I'd love to fix this before my next scheduled technician visit, if it actually happens.

Thanks,
Chris

See if you can change the cards around maybe the one slot or card is bad?

 

[sfhub]

That means the card isn't enabled at all. It won't decrypt anything. The reason your second tuner can pick up anything at all is probably because it is using the channel guide downloaded from CC#1 and you are seeing channels that aren't encrypted.

I think they probably have the wrong IDs, haven't attached the card to your account, or the card is broken.

The card needs to be enabled by them first. Otherwise they can hit it all day and it won't make a difference.

 

[jfh3]

See if you can change the cards around maybe the one slot or card is bad?

Absolutely DO NOT do this - if card 1 is paired properly, this will break the pairing.

 

[notabbott]

I think they probably have the wrong IDs, haven't attached the card to your account, or the card is broken.

I almost think it has to be broken at this point. The guy who actually called *me* on Friday seemed to know his ****, and when they sent signals, the card responded -- temporarily going offline and coming back. Everything else on the conditional access and diagnostic screens seem to indicate that the card is functioning at least a little bit. I'm just fishing for some sort of magic word that will break through the abject lack of knowledge from every other person I've talked to that will affect just that EnabledByCP setting.

And I wasn't going to try swapping the cards. One interesting idea the otherwise totally unhelpful customer service guy had today was trying the bad card in the TV, since I have a CableCARD slot there. But I'm probably not going to try that either, 'cause it's a pain in the butt and I'd have to hook up a splitter or move the coax from the TiVo to the TV and move it back, which is more work than I want to put into just proving that I only get the same channels on the TV anyway. Although maybe I should see if I can bet them a year's worth of cable bills that it still ain't gonna work...

Thanks for the replies so far.

Later,
COZ