[IsItLive]

Hi, I posted this in the Time Warner cable card thread, but wanted to get it on the main page as it's a timely issue and that thread is 62 pages long.

I'm looking for some info about New York TWC cable card firmware upgrades.

My series3 was working great until about 2 weeks ago, when the tuner associated with CableCard1 would not get the scrambled channels. No problem with the networks, but something like Comedy Central or Nickelodeon would give me still screen of what was on that channel then go to an all gray screen.

No problem, I figured, I'll just have them install a new cable card in slot 1. Cable guys show up, put a new card in slot 1, call in the switch to dispatch or whatever, and we sit there waiting for the firmware upgrade to complete. Waited an hour, nothing changed. Tried changing to another card. Waited another 45 minutes, no change. Reset tivo box, wait for firmware upgrade, no change. Pull card 2, insert card 1 by itself, wait for firmware upgrade, no change.

Basically we sat around all day but never got the card to work. Eventually we pulled the card (1) and the box is running on the remaining working card. He left me the card that's currently paired with slot 1. I tried it again today, firmware failed to upgrade.

Cable guy called a guy he knew in tech support. That guy told him they haven't had a successful series3 firmware upgrade in 2 days.

Has anyone in the Southern Manhattan Time Warner tried to install a new cable card recently? I've started to think it might be my box, but that's a huge hassle to exchange.

Any help, thanks in advance.

 

[hangtime79]

I literally had Cablecards put in on Saturday. Technician put the cards in and started the firmware upgrade cycle. After about 3 hours, I scheduled an appointment for Tuesday to find why the upgrade of the firmware had not completed. Upgrade was still going until Tuesday morning when I woke up and found it had finished so from Saturday 3:30 PM to Tuesday 7:00 AM. BTW, once the firmware completed it deauthorized the cards so they had re-pair them once again.

 

[IsItLive]

Thanks for the reply. I tried it again on Monday night and it didn't finish by the morning so I popped it out. I wonder if they fixed the problem sometime on Tuesday early morning or if it really took that long to do the whole upgrade? I have one functioning cable card and getting the firmware upgrade disables both cable cards until it completes, so I'm loathe to be without any TV for 4 days. I will try it again overnight tonight.

I realize also that once the firmware upgrade does complete, I'm going to need to have TWC hit the cards.

Again, thanks for the info.

 

[IsItLive]

They appear to have fixed whatever problem they had with the firmware upgrade. I put the card in again tonight and it finished in about 15 minutes or so, maybe less. Now I just to get the cable company to hit the cards. Easier said than done at this hour.

Happy TiVoing everyone.

 

[randymac88]

Have a new TiVo HD, and the tech is here now installing Cablecards. Nothing but failure all around...firmware just will not upgrade, for all cards. Been 2.5 hours now, and we're rescheduling appointments so that he can bring "newer" cards. Not overly optimistic. We're just hung up on "Upgrading the CableCARD..." (within the guided setup), and we can't move anywhere. Sigh.

 

[hangtime79]

Have a new TiVo HD, and the tech is here now installing Cablecards. Nothing but failure all around...firmware just will not upgrade, for all cards. Been 2.5 hours now, and we're rescheduling appointments so that he can bring "newer" cards. Not overly optimistic. We're just hung up on "Upgrading the CableCARD..." (within the guided setup), and we can't move anywhere. Sigh.

The problem is the TimeWarner techs need to be rolling out with the cards already going through the upgrade cycle (actually plugging the cards into a box and letting them upgrade prior to truck roll). Since nearly all these cards are new they have never been exposed and therefore never upgraded so your starting from scratch. Again, this is a head-end issue and not Tivo's fault. Unfortunately the TW's cards seems to be VERY slow on the upgrades. Again, it may take a day or two (apparently the equipment sucks), but it should get there.

 

[randymac88]

The problem is the TimeWarner techs need to be rolling out with the cards already going through the upgrade cycle (actually plugging the cards into a box and letting them upgrade prior to truck roll). Since nearly all these cards are new they have never been exposed and therefore never upgraded so your starting from scratch. Again, this is a head-end issue and not Tivo's fault. Unfortunately the TW's cards seems to be VERY slow on the upgrades. Again, it may take a day or two (apparently the equipment sucks), but it should get there.

And so I'm supposed to allow the Tech to sleep on my couch while CableCARD 1 loads its firmware? He wouldn't leave me without taking the cards with him, so if this is a seriously long process, I could be in trouble. Not to mention, he couldn't get a HostID to call into the mothership until after the firmware was updated, so I don't know how they'd allow him to leave the cards with me?

I don't doubt that the problem is with TWC, it's just frustrating that they seem so inept. The tech guy was clueless. He admitted, this was his second cablecard install. And he said his first didn't work. Great.

 

[frostrambler]

Same thing happened to me yesterday with Cablevision in Brooklyn. The cards would upgrade, then every hour restart, I have another truck roll from 8am to 11am today with new cards.

Other cablevision techs were getting the same issues yesterday, and almost all cards failed firmware upgrades.

 

[parkds]

After 3 days I am still working with TWC to get 4 CableCARDs working. Until today I have been stuck with only cards from before 6/11/06. Now I have cards from 3/16/07. I has been stuck on the firmware upgrade for over two hours already.
My old Series 3 tells me that the CableCARD is not available in the CableCARD menu, while if you press Live TV there is a banner that says firmware upgrade in progress.
My new TivoHD is telling me that the cards are updating on the CableCARD screen and allows me access to the diagnostic info.
TWC keeps saying there is no way that a firmware upgrade could take so long and that it must be a TiVo issue and Tivo keeps saying it is a TWC issue.
This is a frustrating experience to be sure. Has anyone in Manhattan got a Series 3 working with TWC in the past few days?

 

[randymac88]

TWC keeps saying there is no way that a firmware upgrade could take so long and that it must be a TiVo issue and Tivo keeps saying it is a TWC issue.
This is a frustrating experience to be sure. Has anyone in Manhattan got a Series 3 working with TWC in the past few days?

I'm with you man. Mass chaos and really not a lot of hope from this guy (I'm in the east village). Tech was out on Tuesday, failed, and now is coming out again next saturday. I have no idea whether it will work or not, but at least we know that there's more than one of us that is having this problem.

 

[parkds]

My random guess is that they are having some sort of "firmware upgrade" issue in Manhattan. I was able to convince the Foreman to take 4 new cards (from March '07) down to IT on 20 something street and make them hot. They are going to load every bit of firmware updates onto the cards themselves and then lock the cards onto my account. Then he will come back tomorrow morning and see if these hot, fully updated cards will work.
We will see.

 

[randymac88]

My random guess is that they are having some sort of "firmware upgrade" issue in Manhattan. I was able to convince the Foreman to take 4 new cards (from March '07) down to IT on 20 something street and make them hot. They are going to load every bit of firmware updates onto the cards themselves and then lock the cards onto my account. Then he will come back tomorrow morning and see if these hot, fully updated cards will work.
We will see.

Let me know how it goes!

 

[parkds]

Three techs (actually a foreman and two IT guys) came to my place today to work on the CableCARD issue. Preloading all of the firmware seems to have worked. We were able to get Host IDs and then hit the cards.
One of the guys though just had done an install on a TiVo HD for someone reporting on the device for CNBC and they were not able to get the CableCARD in slot 2 to work for him, even if they swapped it with the card in slot 1 (which was working). No matter what slot 2 would not work. I am having the same issue here and they did try flipping cards. This is definitely an issue with CableCARD slot 2 of the TiVo HD, not of the CableCARD itself. The image does not seem to be de-scrambling correctly 90% of the time.

 

[randymac88]

Any luck with the new software TiVo sent out? My appt. is saturday, but I'm actually close to returning the unit and waiting on the sidelines for these issues to get worked out. Are you happy with the TiVo? I really want this to work, but I'm too much of a TV junkie to go without a functional set for too long.

 

[George Cifranci]

Here in Columbus Ohio (Time Warner Mid-Ohio) I am in contact with a technical guy at the local TW (who actually has a Tivo Series 3 there). Today I got a message that my Cable Card 1 was updating firmware. The problem is that Time Warner (at least not Mid-Ohio) hasn't upgrade CableCard firmware in 2 years. They don't do it over the network. The tech guy told me there is a bug in the firmware of the CableCards I have (Scientific Atlanta) that sometimes get fooled into going into the upgrade firmware state. So that means they have to send someone out to replace it.

He also told me they have the new M-Card's in stock. The TivoHD can take those (one card and you get both tuners instead of having to use 2 of the older Cable Cards). I have a Tivo Series 3 and according to Tivo's FAQ the S3 can't use those cards in multi-stream mode but they can in single stream mode (which requires 2 cards).

http://customersupport.tivo.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=bb83ae57-ea46-4162-ab65-4bfde6a851e4

I wonder if it would be a good idea to have them replace both my single stream cards with 2 M-Cards since the M-Cards have newer firmware and hopefully don't have that "firmware upgrade" bug?