[techjunkie]

I'm on FiOS in Long Island, NY. I have a Roamio, a mini and two Premiers in my home. The Premiers travel to college with my daughters, so I no longer rent Mcard cable-cards for them from Verizon. The Roamio which has an Mcard continues to receive all channels (as does the mini, which slaves one of the Roamio's tuners).

The Premiers, on returning home this May, repeated guided setup for FiOS NY (to revert back to our channel lineup from whatever they use in college), and all but the most premium channels were received properly. That is, until very recently. As of now, all channels, even the major network and local channels, present "not authorized".

If I perform a channel scan, channels that appear to be clear QAM can be found, and tuned, but there is no guide data associated with them. Ex. CBS-HD can be found on channel number "72-137" or something to that effect (I don't recall the exact number.)

If I repeat guided setup for cable only, specify my zip code, and specify that I will not be using a cable card, FiOS isn't even one of the available options. Specifying that I'll install an MCard later does list FiOS as an available provider (two variants, actually), but after the entire guided setup is repeated, the channels are still gone.

Moving the coaxial cable from the Cable input to the Antenna input and repeating guided setup for antenna-only finds no channels, neither does a subsequent channel scan when configured this way.

Questions...

1) Does anyone know exactly what changed on Verizon's end?
2) Is there anything I can do to restore the (non-premium) channels without renting an Mcard? (They return to college in a few weeks)
3) Is there any way to run guided setup for generic clear QAM over the cable input so I'll at least have guide data and proper labels for those funky channel numbers? (Some sort of unknown or generic clear QAM cable provider option, for some other zip code, maybe?)

Thanks!

 

[dianebrat]

For Fios you can run an unauthorized M-Card and you will get everything but the protected Fox and premium channels with channel mapping.
Obviously you are in a gray area as far as the legality of the ebay bought CableCARDS.

 

[techjunkie]

Would any m-card do even if it’s locked to another provider or would it have to be an m-card that’s unlocked or locked to FiOS?

I’m assuming there’s no need to pair it to the TiVo for this purpose, because there would be no way to do that. Right?


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[JoeKustra]

I would connection the coax to a TV and see what it finds with a channel scan. But clear QAM with sub-channels means no guide.

 

[dianebrat]

Would any m-card do even if it's locked to another provider or would it have to be an m-card that's unlocked or locked to FiOS?
I'm assuming there's no need to pair it to the TiVo for this purpose, because there would be no way to do that. Right?

Correct, you can't have a non-provider supplied CableCARD paired, however 90% of Verizon FiOS channels are not protected and the channel mapping is all the card provides, they're not "locked" it just needs to be the same brand as the FiOS system uses. Had you said Frontier FiOS this wouldn't work since they require a paired card for almost every channel last time I saw it discussed.

YMMV as to how you get the card and if you're ok with the possibility the previous owner took it from their system without paying for it.

 

[techjunkie]

I would connection the coax to a TV and see what it finds with a channel scan. But clear QAM with sub-channels means no guide.

TV finds the same as TiVo, only QAM with sub channels. Presently I've added all the discovered subchannels that included a channel name. No guide data, but at least they can channel surf

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[JoeKustra]

No guide data, but at least they can channel surf

Manual recordings can be done also.