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Spectrum and cable card

61K views 387 replies 73 participants last post by  michaelj3 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have a Bolt on cable card using Spectrum (Charter) as my provider. In inquiring about possibly changing packages, I was told that the current plans do not allow for cable card and that it is possible that Spectrum may obsolete cable card in the future. It sounded like more a matter of when than if. Or am I misunderstanding this? I love my Tivo and have had a Series 2 and HD prior to my Bolt. I hate the thought of losing it. I've resisted the lower prices and better offerings from Hawaiian Telcom because I wouldn't be able to use my Tivo.
 
#262 ·
Well, everyone has been looking for confirmation that CableCARDs are going away, and here it is. This just came a few minutes ago in today’s mail.

Notice that this letter has an actual call to action date that none of the previous letters or emails have had.

I have whited out the name and address, in the picture, for obvious reasons.

Although this letter comes from marketing, it now has an action date, in the actual body of the letter itself, other than just a date, in the fine print, for taking advantage of getting the receiver or Apple TV.

Looks like they stopped being vague about this issue, and now they are more firmly nailing it down.

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#264 · (Edited)
That just means it won’t be earlier than January 20, 2023, but now they are actually coming out and saying that CableCARDs will cease to function and by when at the soonest.

They have to say “on or after” in their letters because it may not be on that exact date to allow customers to have their provisions in place. It is a 40 day notice which 45 days would be on January 25, 2023 and 60 days would be February 4, 2023 so it makes sense that they might build in an additional padding to take it up to 45 or 60 days total to allow for last minute tech appointments and self-installs.

The last letter, before today, I got about something said that “on or after” November 1, 2022, changes would be made to make all remaining SD channels come in HD and that there would be additional channels added in HD only.

This did not happen exactly “on” November 1, but it did happen a few days “after”. Now, all of the remaining SD channels are in HD on Spectrum’s end as confirmed by the resolution detected by TiVo on the incoming signal on each of the ones that were previously SD, and we’ve gotten 6 new channels, so far, in which they are no longer putting any SD counterparts on the lower side.

Every call to action letter I have received from them on anything they have done have always used that “on or after” verbiage so I anticipate they probably won’t make the change exactly on January 20 but more likely a few days after to maybe up to the first part of February 2023.
 
#270 ·
I'm in the St Louis area; I got an email this morning saying that I need to get a high split converter by January 16.

If you wish to continue using your CableCARD(s), you will need a High Split Converter device beginning on January 16, 2023. Without this additional equipment, the TV services you receive through your CableCARD enabled devices will no longer be accessible.
 
#271 ·
I'm also in the St Louis area, so thank you for that head's up. Interesting that they're offering the High Split converter device to allow CableCARDs to keep working. I guess they figured out to do it after all.

I hadn't seen any of the emails or postal mailings in close to a month about this whole situation, so they must have been working on this process to keep CableCARDs during radio silence.

TV service is all I have with them now, having moved Internet and phone service to other providers in prep for kicking them completely to the curb. Guess maybe I don't have to now.
 
#275 ·
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This was in an email sent to a family member who's also in the St Louis charter area, from this morning. I don't have one sent to me yet. I went to the Spectrum.com/HSC website, logged in with my Spectrum account information and ordered 5 High Split Converters to my address, just to be safe. If for some reason, I'm in the can't use them camp, then I'll return the package when it shows up.
 
#280 ·
View attachment 77882

This was in an email sent to a family member who's also in the St Louis charter area, from this morning. I don't have one sent to me yet. I went to the Spectrum.com/HSC website, logged in with my Spectrum account information and ordered 5 High Split Converters to my address, just to be safe. If for some reason, I'm in the can't use them camp, then I'll return the package when it shows up.
Did you order those 5 High Split Converters based on CableCARDs/Tuning Adapters only or do some of those also include Spectrum receivers, like the DCX3200, which has an embedded CableCARD in it?
 
#277 ·
It's saying on or after because chances are, they are upgrading, but the changes may or may not affect you. Nothing big is happening in January. They may move channels around and do other things, but chances are the changes will happen. Whether they affect you depends on what channels you watch. If the channel you watch is one they're going to move in late January, you will lose service. If it isn't, you probably won't notice.

All they're saying is that they're going to make changes to the network, and none of them will be done with consideration for existing CableCARD users. So maybe end of January they will do something and if you don't notice, hey, it still works. But maybe then they do something Feb 1 and you lose half your favourite TV shows.

That's why it's "on or after" - the changes they need to make may not affect you depending on your viewing habits.

It could also be they're not sure what option you'll take - are you going to cancel? Take then up on an AppleTV? They could very well run out of an option (e.g., if everyone takes the AppleTV, given it's the holiday season) and thus have people who cannot transition because their desired option isn't available. After all, if they assumed 10,000 people would want the AppleTV, but then 30,000 people did, then they can't very well transition people away if they're not able to get everyone their desired option by the deadline.
 
#278 ·
… then they can't very well transition people away if they're not able to get everyone their desired option by the deadline.
hahaha sure they could.

You think they’d delay a revenue generating feature rollout because they couldn’t deliver a special offer in time? Never.

They’d just give the customer the other option, or them the customer leave.
 
#292 ·
Thanks for posting all of that info up! I never got an email about my tuning adapters shutting down. I do know they are doing these conversions hub by hub.

This earlier this week both of my tuning adapters stopped working. My cable is still working, but I can't tune any of the SDV channels, but otherwise it's good. I'm hoping I'll get these HSC convertors will ship soon.
 
#298 ·
Let’s hope the HSC experience will be better than the TA one. I used a TWC/Spectrum TA (1520 model) for 11 years (2009 - 2019) and they never got it right. For the first few years it would lose authorization every month, which required a phone call to get fixed. After that if would simply quit functioning every few weeks, requiring a power-cycle to fix, and usually restarting the TiVo also. Many people on this forum had to power-cycle much more often and even set up lamp timers to do it every day.
 
#302 · (Edited)
Lexington, KY, here. I requested two HSCs on Dec 22 and went two weeks with no response. I called the 2598 number today and was told they had received my request but that HSCs are not yet available "in my area". I was told to expect an update within two weeks.

Our TiVos lost cable access on Dec 16 after a few dozen of those vague warning letters with no specific dates (at least on the ones we got). The tech who came to our house told me that high-split had been implemented here with no warning to them. He was unaware of the HSC possibility and had been telling other unhappy TiVo users that he couldn't help them.

P.S. I just noticed how old my signature is. We currently have one Roamio and one Bolt. The latter is a cable/OTA model and is currently recording from an antenna since cable is unusable.
 
#312 ·
I'm in St. Louis and have a question. Before I just had split the cable and had one leg going to tuning adapter and the other going to Tivo. In the instructions for the high split tuning adapter they have the cable going through the tuning adapter to Tivo. Does it need to be done this way or can I just have a separate signal going to the tuning adapter?

Thanks!
 
#319 ·
In the instructions for the high split tuning adapter they have the cable going through the tuning adapter to Tivo. Does it need to be done this way or can I just have a separate signal going to the tuning adapter?
Until someone does a proper tear down of the HSC(0)(1) one cannot be sure, but if I was designing the device I would have included a high-split HPF into the device to avoid the quite possible impacts to your TiVo (or other UDCP/OCUR tuner) from very common residential wiring topologies (even more so if the customer has chosen to use wally world "gold" splitters), of which none of the impacts may be seen until Charter actually enables the higher speed tiers with high-split enabled (at this point, Charter is mostly just doing the prep work that will allow them to move forward to the next steps at some future point).

Unless you strongly object to minimizing future failure modes (and will remember the recommendations and change appropriately if things go sideways at some future time), I would place the device inline as stated.


(0) And/or does a full spectrum analysis of the RF stream and decode of the signals sent, and that come out of the HSC (which may require your analyzer to be certified by CableLABs to obtain the required certs (which basically means very expensive commercial tools)).

(1) That may also require SMT rework tools to implement ICE tools and/or SPI/JTAG access to see what is actually being done (again, these tend to be very expensive commercial tools).
 
#328 ·
Same here. It was noted in the previous month's bill as follows, as I look it over:
Effective with your next statement, the following pricing will change:
• Broadcast TV Surcharge will increase by $1.20/mo.
• Spectrum TV Select will increase by $5/mo.
• Each CableCARD will increase to $6/mo
.
 
#329 ·
In fact, going back to my bill from a year ago, my current bill is now $60 less only with cable TV from when I had cable TV, 400MBps Internet service and phone service with Spectrum. Internet service and phone service were dropped back in June when the ending of cable card support scenario started. There's a 12-month discount on there back a few months ago when they screwed up some items, now with this $3/CC increase (x5) and these other changes, it's basically nullified that discount.

One more coffin nail in trying to be a Tivo user with Spectrum.
 
#332 ·
Still haven't received my HSC ever after ordering and calling in a few times. Still missing SDV channels as well.

I also just noticed the website doesn't have the sign up form anymore, just says to call an 800 number.

 
#334 · (Edited)
I also just noticed the website doesn't have the sign up form anymore, just says to call an 800 number.
There are (according to someone claiming to be a Charter employee) 4 markets have started the process for high split and for which a HSC will (at some point) be needed this year. Those markets are (some parts of) Rochester Minnesota, Reno Nevada, Lexington Kentucky, and St. Louis Missouri (some have started, but some will not start until later this year, and some will not be completed until sometime in 2024). Furthermore, the claim is that if you are not part of those 4 markets, one should not expect upgrades to start until next year at the earliest (although some prep work may happen in various other places), but they will also be using a different deployment technology starting in 2024 for the upgrades.

If you are not part of one of those 4 markets, an HSC is mostly just another door stop. I would expect Charter to be allocating their HSCs to only those in one of those markets.
 
#339 · (Edited)
It is almost certainly just a matter of time as to where and when the HSC will be required for customers with CableCARDs across their markets (and where linear QAM is supported, which is most, but not all, today). However, much to the disappointment of many, there is no way to know, because Charter does not share their schedules, whether that might be soon or somewhat further away for any particular location. To add to the disappointment, Charter may do some prep work that will require customers to move to the HSC long before the market is deployed for actual high-split operations (so the pain, and no (immediate) gain).
 
#341 ·
So, from what you are saying, it sounds like when I get my HSC here shortly, if we are not fully converted yet, that it appears to be okay to go ahead and change from the tuning adapter to the HSC and it should still go ahead and work?

If so, then in your case, did you return your tuning adapter or did you keep it?
 
#346 ·
Dropped off two CableCards, TAs and HSCs for the two Edge units I took out of service and replaced with Mini LUX units. Handed off to a UPS Store location rather than a Spectrum store, as the last time I did that, the Spectrum store screwed it up beyond belief. That's a post unto itself for another time.

Received the email this morning that the change was happening on or after 03/23/23, so tried to swap out one TA for a HSC tonight. Had called Spectrum after I received the email to make sure I could do the swap and verify that this is the time when the high-split is active and the TAs still work. However, it didn't work, after I followed the sequence for the one I did for a relative last month, which was swap out the HSC for the TA, let it boot up and get synced to Spectrum, then reboot the TiVo.

Called Spectrum support and they said they had to make a "coding change" on their end to fix the issue, which eventually did resolve the issue with the one HSC in place. I asked for clarification and they said that it was something where the equipment was added to my account though not set up correctly when shipped out on my order. Supposedly will fix the problem for the other two HSC swaps I had, though I won't know if that's the case until the next couple of days when I get the other two swapped out. I'll give it a week to make sure it's all working and then drop off the TAs with the UPS Store to turn it back in to Spectrum.
 
#347 ·
I received my HSC today (13Feb) but have not installed it. I waiting to lose my reception. I live in NW Nevada where Spectrum has a local monopoly on cable. What is odd is that I received a letter in early Jan confirming my "recent order". This was for an order I did NOT make. There is no specific detail of what the order was but on the summary of charges there was no cable card listed. I wonder if because I did not take them up on their offer for a recorder that the just removed the cable card from my billing and after the change over it will disappear.

After noodling around this site I found info on HSC (Spectrum never mentioned it) and ordered one. All the prior letters I received indicated early Jan as the change over date. Since then I have received my bill and my cable card charge (previously $2.50) is not on the bill but my Tivo continues to work. The TA is flashing yellow. So now I'm waiting for the changeover with an account that does not indicate a cable card and am expecting the worst.
 
#348 · (Edited)
For those of you who have gotten your HSC and CableCARD to work, do you have a Motorola or a Cisco card?

The person I talked to this morning seems to think it is an issue of receiving the authorization/entitlement. We unpaired and repaired the CableCARD with HostID, S/N, and DataID all being correct, and it still gives a V58 message. Full signal and everything else is perfect but the TiVo/CableCARD still seems act like it doesn’t have permission to view any channels. Not even the local channels, and that is with also trying hooking the cable line directly to the TiVo, but local channels and non-SDV channels still give V58. The person I talked to seems to think that maybe it could be that the CableCARD needs to be replaced and/or that it might be a Motorola CableCARD issue since a Cisco card doesn’t require a DataID and a few of the other variables on the account like a Motorola card does.

A technician is still coming out Thursday, and it was suggested that, if he can’t get things working, to maybe try a Cisco CableCARD instead of the current Motorola card that worked up to the conversion.

As far as we can tell, there isn’t anything that should be preventing the authorizations/entitlements from working, and the HSC is showing communicating at the proper frequencies.

I did get an automated call this morning that said there was some kind of outage that may have prompted a technician to be scheduled and that the problem was fixed, but whatever that was seemed to have no effect so it is evidently still something specific to the unit here.

At this point, it is quite an elusive mystery.
 
#349 ·
I am in the St Louis area. I am still using the tuning adapter and just this week received another email and letter from Spectrum. (It has been months since I received one of these.) I cannot find on the website where I can order the new converter that others have received, and this letter doesn't mention anything either. Do I need to just call the number?

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#351 ·
Assuming this was in response to my post, this link just takes you to the spectrum website where you log into your account. I even did searches for HSC and high speed converter and nothing comes up. I have gone through all the options of adding equipment, and it just isn't there (that I can see).
 
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