For Central Kentucky, that would be areas covered by the Harrodsburg headend such as Mercer County, Anderson County, etc. There are multiple counties covered by that particular headend. There may be others also, but our particular system is the headend coming from Harrodsburg.
The equipment involved is CableCARDs and Spectrum receivers specifically the ones which contain CableCARDs embedded inside of them such as the Arris Motorola DCX3200-M and similar models. Not every Spectrum receiver has an embedded CableCARD. Older ones do, but newer ones do not. The replaced receivers will be the newer type which have no CableCARD device inside of them.
We just had our two receivers replaced in February 2022 when our Motorola DCH3200 boxes (big square gray boxes) were replaced with the current DCX3200-M boxes. We started getting letters around November 2021, just like the ones coming with the CableCARD issue, about it. I ignored every letter and email I got because, just like these, they were all very vague with no specifics, and I didn’t really feel like wanting to deal with it if I didn’t have to, but in February, 2 receivers unexpectedly showed up at our door from UPS. I didn’t ask for them nor did I call or respond to anything that would have prompted any kind of replacement order. Instead of calling, I went in person down to our local office, and I asked them what was going on. The person told me they started sending letters and emails a few months prior that I would need to get our two boxes replaced because those old DCH3200 boxes would no longer be compatible with their system and upgrades coming and would stop working. There was way more of those receiver units out there in customer hands than CableCARDs. The person also mentioned for me to be looking out for something coming around spring/summer that would specifically involve our CableCARD/Tuning Adapter combo.
On this CableCARD issue, I mentioned to my technician friend that I just had our two DCH3200 receivers replaced in February, and he advised me that some customers received units like the DCX3200-M which still used a CableCARD already embedded inside the actual unit. That means those will now have to replaced with the newer units which no longer have this along with our CableCARD/Tuning Adapter combo, and those boxes were actually Spectrum units where there are still far more of those than there are CableCARDs installed at customer premises. He said they were first getting all of the really old receiver units, of which there were several types out there, replaced before they moved on to CableCARDs and Tuning Adapters, but now that they are going ahead with CableCARDs, those customers which received replacement units like the DCX3200-M are going to have to replace them yet again.
I can’t imagine Spectrum going to this much trouble, even going so far as do to free professional installations on these, to replace their own units like that especially when there is no difference in price on the customer’s monthly bill and with having to pay a technician to do it when that technician could have possibly been doing a new customer install instead. I can see it with CableCARDs specifically, but not with their own receiver units since they gain absolutely nothing monetarily out of it along with having to pay a technician if the customer wants the free professional installation instead of self-installing it themselves. So to that, I would say if they are going to go to that much trouble for no monetary gain plus actually eating costs, I’d be watching out because so far, this whole CableCARD thing has textbook followed every other scenario which has come up in the past where it looked like it was just a bunch of hype for them to try to make some extra money but then actually came to pass.
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