I bought my Tivo HD on Thursday at Best Buy in Everett, WA and called Comcast to schedule a CableCARD installation. My first experience was the sales rep asking me 'What's a cablecard?'... After a brief explanation he replied 'oh, let me forward you to someone that can help you'... I got sent to 4 different people until I ended up with a Tech Rep in Everett who told me all I had to do was go pick them up at the local Cable Store (Redmond, WA). He did offer to schedule a truck roll if I wanted to pay for an installation, which I politely declined.
Walked into the cable store the next morning, asked for two cablecards (didn't say what they were for), crossed my fingers and asked for an M-card, was told they don't have them yet. She hands me two Motorola cablecards, I'm on my way within 5 mins.
I get home, pop the first one in slot 1, call comcast, the gal knew what a cablecard was, kept apologising because she doesn't get these calls often, and got card 1 working after about 10 mins. (she kept puting in the UA # instead of the host # or something, when she realized this it went right through)
Card 2, upon inserting, kept generating error 161-1. She tried hitting it, nothing. She said it's probably a faulty card, so i went to go switch it out.
Back to the cable store, comcast rep asked me if my other card was red too, I confirmed, she gave me a replacement red Morotola and said if this one doesn't work, bring them both back in and swap them out for the blue labeled ones. She said those ones were newer. (At this point I'm thinking 'why didn't she give me blue ones in the beginning if that's the case? Grrr...)
Get back home, call in, pop in card 2, another call to Comcast, Error 161-4 pops up, she said that's because she hit it and the channels should come up. 2-3 mins later, it's working too.
All in all, relatively painless. As far as I know, I'm not even paying per month on either card, guess I'll find out on my next month's bill. (The gal at the cable store didn't ask me what they were for etc just gave them to me, checked them out on my Comcast account)
So not everyone is having chronic problems with cablecards. I'd imagine that the easiest solution for any cable company is to allow people to just pick them up and install them on their own. If I wasn't able to go swap out my one bad card and had to wait for a second truck roll, I probably would be pissed. This sounds to me like some of the cable companies are making it as hard to get a TiVo HD running as possible so you keep their DVR and because they're still pi$$ed that they are being forced to carry cablecards.