[Player01]

I know that. He told me I can't get the stream box because I have a cablecard on my account. I don't believe him.

It's usually best not to believe most of what the reps tell you.

 

[cwoody222]

I know that. He told me I can't get the stream box because I have a cablecard on my account. I don't believe him.

Seems possible and maybe even plausible to me.

Their billing systems may not support a customer having both QAM and IPTV products.

I have a Fios cablecard and am not permitted to watch via the Fios AppleTV app; when I login it tells me I don’t have an eligible tv package. But my tv package is available to both QAM and IPTV.

(I also have no Fios DVR or DVR package which may also be the reason since the AppleTV app allows access to recordings)

But I can receive my live tv channels just fine on the Fios iOS and iPad apps (which also allow recording viewings). Oddly, I cannot view local channels on the iOS apps, but I can receive all others.

Point being, lots of odd things may be true.

 

[Brighton Line]

I was a Optimum subscriber for over 30 years. When Verizon was finally available in my apartment building less than I year ago I switched.
Optimum had no offer to give me. They had yet to roll out their Fiber offers and actually told me to call back in 2 weeks and they would have an offer to keep me.

I left walked around the corner to the Optimum store to return my modem that I paid the Wiz $99 for (Ok it was upgraded since then) with my two cable cards. The staff there had no clue what to do with the cable cards. They didn't even want to accept them even though they billed me for them every month.

A manager finally took them and then it was back and forth on me demanding in writing that I returned them. They complained that they couldn't give me a receipt like they did for the modem because nothing happens when they scan the barcode in the return equipment screen. I got a handwritten receipt and glad nothing came of it.

Onto Verizon and every cable card the install tried wouldn't work. He even said I didn't need a box I agreed. Since the promotion was watch for a month unlimted channels they would then suggest the channels to pay for, I ignored knowing that wouldn't work without a box. Took over 7 hours to get two Tivo's up and running with multiple trips to the depot.

Month up and huge issue getting the Cable program I wanted, they even insisted on sending me a box, which got plugged in once for it to register and sits unplugged in a cabinet.

So happy for the next two years with Verizon and cablecards the "locked in" price. Maybe in two years I will finally get rid of my lifetime TiVo Roamio Pro's when Verizon prices go up and I switch again.

 

[Neil Weinstock]

I just signed up for FIOS. They absolutely would not give me a cable card. Said it was for grandfathered existing users only, not new customers. Bummer. I suppose I'll try one more time but I don't like my chances.

 

[LionelHutz590]

I'm assuming that if I were to purchase a non Powerkey card (like a Motorola) somewhere, that Optimum would not allow it to connect to their system?

 

[cwoody222]

I'm assuming that if I were to purchase a non Powerkey card (like a Motorola) somewhere, that Optimum would not allow it to connect to their system?

No, no provider under any circumstances will activate a card that you obtain from somewhere other than them.

 

[Tony_T]

Contact Us

TiVo DVRs, remotes, upgrades, parts, and repairs for all TiVo, DIRECTV, Bolt, Roamio, Premiere and other DVR models.

www.weaknees.com

WEAKNEES TIVO RECYCLING/REPURCHASE PROGRAM​

1. From time to time, we are looking for specific TiVo models for parts or for resale. We also regularly, responsibly recycle excess parts. If you have a TiVo and would like to know if we are interested in acquiring it, please fill out the form below and we will respond by email. If we are interested, we will provide a price (which may be in the form of cash/PayPal and/or store credit) and we will typically also pay the shipping cost. We will not use your personal information for anything other than this transaction, unless you elect to have your name added to our email list. In other words, we respect your privacy!
   Not quite ready to part with your TiVo? We have a TiVo repair center. Please see our repair page.

 

[Player01]

I just signed up for FIOS. They absolutely would not give me a cable card. Said it was for grandfathered existing users only, not new customers. Bummer. I suppose I'll try one more time but I don't like my chances.

Any update on this? I've heard conflicting reports on this and I'm wondering how it turned out for you.

 

[SprintDrive]

There are many militant cable company employees who despise customers who want to use Tivo and they will lie to you and try to discourage use of a Tivo.

With Xfinity, the installer refused to use my coax wiring and would only run one coax cable to the room where the Tivo was installed. When the installer left I went under the house to reconnect the wiring to my splitter and noticed that the installer had cut one of my coax cables to prevent it.

When I switched to Verizon, the installer showed up, he told me forgot the cable card but he had an old one in his van from a few years ago, so I told him you know perfectly well that the card has been deactivated will not workand he laughed. He still went through the motions of trying to pair it and I told him you know it's not going to work and he was just playing games. Then he realized I was only getting the TV service without broadband and told me that Tivo would not work without broadband internet. I told him I was using the mobile data from a cellphone plan for my internet, and he told me that the Tivo would uses the data when viewing from a mini and it would use up all of my data. I told him he was wrong and he just laughed at me. He was furious that he had to instalI a router to provide guide data to the one free cable box. I had to wait until the following Monday for that jackass to bring a cable card and install it. But I called and complained to customer service and they gave me free DVR service on their cable box.

With Xfinity, they don't provide all the cable channels that come with your package to a Tivo so I switched to Verizon. At least Verizon provides all of the channels in the package to the Tivo and the picture quality is much better than Xfinity.

The Cable Companies don't want you as a customer if you use Tivo and will treat you like garbage.

 

[KevTech]

With Xfinity, they don't provide all the cable channels that come with your package to a Tivo so I switched to Verizon

All the channels of your package were there but some are IP and Tivo can only do QAM.

 

[dougdingle]

There are many militant cable company employees who despise customers who want to use Tivo and they will lie to you and try to discourage use of a Tivo.

The Cable Companies don't want you as a customer if you use Tivo and will treat you like garbage.

How is this a surprise to anyone who has been following the TiVo saga for a few decades?

TiVo and cable cards were shoved down the throats of the cable industry by the FCC in 2005 when 'utter lack of competition in the marketplace' was an issue with cable, and TiVo had lobbying muscle.

Cablecos had to stop billing that $200/yr to customers with TiVos for their trashy cable box and remote, wiping out $12 million or so in annual revenue (based on 60K TiVos in the system), AND they had to buy and supply cable cards (initially free or $1/mo) AND then later Tuning Adapters to people 90% of whom would have rented the cable box and remote if TiVos didn't exist. AND they had to set up a separate division of Level 2 techs to deal with cable card and TA issues (have to say, every single one of those I've had to deal with at Spectrum were VERY good at their jobs).

The FCC mandate was a blight on their bottom line, they made that clear to every employee, and they mostly hated it, hated the service call issues, hated that many if not most TiVo owners were just as inept technically as the rest of their users but used up far more resources as a result - they couldn't just come in and replace the cable box/remote, actually had to find and fix problems.

Once the lobbyists for cablecos convinced the FCC that streaming provided all the competition the public needed to offset cable's monopoly, and the FCC removed the provision that cablecos had to supply cards and service to competing devices like TiVo in December of 2015, the handwriting was on the wall.

The only surprise to me was that nine years later, many TiVo owners still have working cable cards when the cablecos could have legally ended supporting them at the end of 2015.

 

[sfsapp]

But, we're screwed.

 

[dougdingle]

But, we're screwed.

Oh yeah. TiVo is close to coughing up blood. And I say this as someone who started using the device with a single tuner Series 1 and currently has a six tuner lifetime Roamio Pro with a 4TB drive and four miniLuxes.

I give cable cards maybe another year. Less if one of the bigger providers ends support with 30 days (or less) notice. From what I read here on the forums, lots of regional cablecos have sent out "we're stopping cable card support" letters which can be considered as having given notice and so can abruptly stop talking to them at any time.

 

[JCMAN]

The only surprise to me was that nine years later, many TiVo owners still have working cable cards when the cablecos could have legally ended supporting them at the end of 2015.

The CableCARD mandate wasn't ended until September of 2020. "Separable access" became that there was at least one option to watch cable TV that wasn't a cable company provided/rented STB, CableCARD specifically no longer had to be the mandatory conditional access... For Optimum, they chose to make this the Apple TV.

Even then, most cable operators didn't have incentive to nuke CableCARD because they still had CableCARD STBs rented in the field, or they were using the same conditional access solution for their rented STBs, so they had no incentive to just cut off CableCARD users.

Optimum's incentive came when they decided to retire all of the old Scientific Atlanta boxes to migrate to a more efficient codec than MPEG-2 (the best the SA boxes could support; the Samsung boxes support MPEG-4 and H.264). At that point, the only need to maintain all of the PowerKEY conditional access equipment was for the tiny fraction of CableCARD users. They looked at it, looked at that Vantiva (bought SA/Cisco cable ops out) would be charging them for a fix, and decided it was easier to tell the CableCARD users they had to move than pay Vantiva to consult on a fix, test it, and then maintain conditional access equipment for PowerKEY that no other equipment left in the field used.

CableCos that still use PowerKEY conditional access for cable boxes have a big incentive to implement Vantiva's fix to keep that equipment running. Also, cablecos using Motorola cablecards and Motorola's conditional access still have incentive to let things ride out since there's no November 2024 date rollover issue - again, so long as CableCARDs are not the only thing that they're running the Digicipher conditional access equipment for...

 

[JCMAN]

Oh yeah. TiVo is close to coughing up blood. And I say this as someone who started using the device with a single tuner Series 1 and currently has a six tuner lifetime Roamio Pro with a 4TB drive and four miniLuxes.

I give cable cards maybe another year. Less if one of the bigger providers ends support with 30 days (or less) notice. From what I read here on the forums, lots of regional cablecos have sent out "we're stopping cable card support" letters which can be considered as having given notice and so can abruptly stop talking to them at any time.

I wouldn't recommend anybody purchase new Tivo hardware at this time, but "one year" as a blanket statement is something I do not see happening. Spectrum has mailed people with CableCARDs saying that they will replace PowerKEY cablecards with new cablecards if the household does not take action to migrate to something else. Getting a high split converter in areas that have it is a challenge, but something that if escalated, Spectrum will do (in areas that do high split where the HSC is essentially a different type of tuning adapter). Reportedly, Spectrum has also stopped any sort of retentions promotional discounting for CableCARD users.

Meanwhile at a similar time, Comcast said no new CableCARDs for new or existing customers. Existing ones work, but you're not adding or replacing any. From another thread here, people are saying that Comcast is sending notices that people with single stream PMK600 SA/Cisco Powerkey cableCards aren't getting a fix and aren't getting new cablecards, but

CableCARDs and tuning adapters are finicky, but CableTV is already a dying breed, and I suspect that long time CableCARD users are fairly stable in their setup and less likely to negotiate promotional pricing (and less likely to cord cut if refused like Spectrum is allegedly doing now). That's a good reason to not give out new CableCARDs if not legally required (and it isn't since Q3 2020), but there's not a good reason to phase out existing CableCARDs without an extraneous factor (like the CableCARDs being the only thing requiring conditional access and not having a ton of other CableCARDs to give out on a different conditional access already in place).

But driving back to my earlier point - whether or not a cable operator drops Tivo/CableCARD support is really down to other factors, mainly around the conditional access or some other incompatible network change (high split on Spectrum [again, they seem to be giving out the HS converter boxes if escalated], going IPTV only, etc.)... and dropping QAM entirely in favor of IPTV would mean also trashing a lot of working cable boxes in the field.

 

[sfsapp]

Oh yeah. TiVo is close to coughing up blood. And I say this as someone who started using the device with a single tuner Series 1 and currently has a six tuner lifetime Roamio Pro with a 4TB drive and four miniLuxes.

I give cable cards maybe another year. Less if one of the bigger providers ends support with 30 days (or less) notice. From what I read here on the forums, lots of regional cablecos have sent out "we're stopping cable card support" letters which can be considered as having given notice and so can abruptly stop talking to them at any time.

I have Optimum and have not received a formal notification.

 

[Tony_T]

I have Optimum and have not received a formal notification.

Almost missed mine, looked like junk mail.

 

[dougdingle]

There are several posts from people claiming that changing something in their package, even if not involving channels (like removing phone service), caused their cards to be invalidated, and most of them (not all) could not get the cableco to put them back in service.

I've had cable cards since back in the S3 days, and switched to a multi card when they became available. I haven't heard from Spectrum about the card at all. I will say that all your reasoning may just go out the window if they decide they've had enough of dealing with CC and TA issues next week and just kill the concept with 30 days notice.

They've already done their best to screw up their regular tuning adapter routing table updates - they used to reboot the thing after an update, now they don't. Half your channels disappear until you power cycle it, and it's 50-50 whether it reconnects home again on the first or second reboot.

I will say that I would prefer to cut the cord on my schedule, not theirs. I will never, under any circumstances, get one of their crap boxes. I have no off-air here so I'll just go with YouTubeTV and get AT&T fiber for Internet. I'm paying Spectrum close to $300/month with their nickle and dime constant increases, and that is quickly growing old.

 

[ADG]

My related thread: https://www.tivocommunity.com/threa.../threads/cablevision-cancels-cable-cards.594766/?post_id=12899621#post-12899621

Short version: Optimum is ending support for ALL cable cards. They only offered me streaming boxes (installer said they will be doing away with all other cable boxes & dvr boxes in the near future). They upped my internet speed from 300 mps to 500 mps, provided 4 streaming boxes, switched me to fiber, and saved me approximately $100/month.

I already have Roku boxes on each tv, so I didn't need streaming boxes, but okay. Here are my primary complaints / disappointments (though not unexpected):

• REALLY miss the ability to pause / ff / rew live tv.
• The program guide is a typical translucent grid guide and appears over the majority of the screen. I loved the tivo live guide, but knew that was unique to tivo.
• No search function to find to find out when shows will be airing or to set up future recordings.
• In order to ff / rew a recording, you have to bring up and use an "action bar" at the bottom of the screen - remote buttons do not perform these actions.
• You can't pair more than one remote to each box. I've purchased additional new OEM remotes from a 3rd party (about $8 each) and they work for the basic functions (channel change, guide), but will not pair to the streaming box or tv and Google Assistant isn't active. Learning remote don't help because the original is RF.
• Off shore support. It has always been the worst in the business.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to set the "favorites view" in the program guide as the default. I have to select it every day (simple enough to do), though the setting does seem to hold until the tv/streaming is turned of and on again.

OTOH, I've heard complaints the picture isn't as good as tivo. It's fine, I don't notice any difference. Also, the Google Assistant works very well.

It is what it is. Wish it were otherwise - really miss my tivos (had 4 in use + 2 minis).

 

[CurtJester]

TiVo is close to coughing up blood.

Retail TiVo, that is. Retail hasn't been the lifeblood for the company for a while.