Tivo-vival: Lessons From Tech Support

This is discouraging. Time Warner NYC just forced the Navigator OS into my HD DVR, and if you think I have a lot to say about closed captioning, it's *nothing* compared to the list of horrors brought on by this ineptly designed software. I was considered TiVo as an alternative, but you're scaring me. Anybody got the phone number for RCN?

Wow. I've never worked that hard for anything, let alone getting something I paid for to work. No Tivo for me.

@jondelfin

I think your being facetious, but on the off chance that you are not, no cable is better than RCN cable. Think of the time you will have to spend just staring at the screen as your internet slows to a crawl, the time you will spend waiting to get a customer service person on the line for your inevitable cable and internet failures. Now think of all the time you will have to read or utilize your Netflix account, if you have no cable...

I love TV, but it ain't worth it if its being provided by RCN.

If you watch a lot of TV (if you happen to be a TV critic or something) and the more convenient interface of the TiVo (over the generic cableco DVR) saves 5 minutes a day of frustration, and you watch TV 260 days of the year (5 days/wk for 52 weeks), that's 1300 minutes-- or 21 hours and 40 minutes of time that TiVo saves. If a couple of those hours are spent on tech support re-authorizing CableCards, you're still ahead.

Of course, if your TiVo fails every 8 months, and it takes more than a day to get a replacement, then you may be falling behind.

But if the cost of having the more convenient interface of the TiVo is the frustration of a more difficult installation fiasco, you might come out ahead in the tradeoff. (And we're not accounting for the additional upfront cost of the TiVo.)

If you're moving CableCARDs from one unit to another, you do generally have to have the cable company re-authorize them for the new unit, but you're exactly right - they don't need to be there in person. In fact, if a tech does come out, they have to call in to the main office to get the authorization signal sent through.

CableCARD TiVos are generally pretty rock-solid, but in the early days, when the first units were coming out, we did end up swapping a bunch. We learned that the lingo for re-authorizing CableCARDs in these units is to ask for a "cold hit" to your card. That seems to be understood by many cable techs.

Anyway, we have some (pretty dated) info about CableCARDs and cable companies here:

http://www.weaknees.com/cablecard.php

Michael

I had a similar horror story with Comcast trying to hookup Cable CARDs with my TiVo HD, and agree with James: don't let the cable company schedule a home visit, as the tech will probably be an outsourced 3rd party tech who has never done anything with CARDs, and will just have to call the home office to get everything done. Let the TiVo folks walk you and your cable company through it.

And for the record, my family has had 3 TiVos and none has died (knock on wood) - the first still works from 2001, but lacks the networking and HD features I need.

I could wax on forever about my love for Tivo. Whatever it takes to get it working right, it's worth it!

Let me first state that I am a big fan of my Tivo. HUGE fan, actually. Time Warner, on the other hand, may very well be the antichrist. I have a hundred stories to prove my contention but I won't bore you with all of them. Only the most recent.

My current Tivo is a Tivo HD with two S-type CableCards. Last week the Tivo began to randomly restart -- usually a sign of of a flaky hard drive. I'm in the IT biz and one thing that teaches you is that hard drives fail. After the several power up "kickstart" procedures didn't fix the problem, I downloaded Instacake from the folks at DVRUpgrade and built a new drive. A 640GB drive was under fifty bucks at Frys (a fact that continues to amaze me, having once paid $5000 for a 5MB hard drive.)

So far so good. Tivo boots up. I walk through Guided Setup and everything is swell. Except the CableCards have lost their minds. I can only get over-the-air channels. And South Park. So, no big deal. Call Time Warner and get them to re-authenticate the CableCards.

Call 1: Support person insists I must have a cable box. Describes it to me. "Probably silver and says Motorola on it". No. Seriously. Don't have one of those. TivoHD with two CableCards. Please try to find someone who know what I'm talking about. They can't and decide they have to schedule an on-site visit for three days hence so the tech can find my cable box. Elapsed time 48 minutes.

Call 2: A half hour after the twilight zone experience of Call 1, I call back. Hey, I'd seen the currently playing episode of South Park so I had some time. This tech has heard of CableCards. Puts me on hold to find out what to do about them. The hold music is designed to sell Haloperidol. Returns to tell me he's sending authorization signals to my CableCards. Not a twitch on my end. Still relegated to watching Cartman. Guy notes that I have a tech scheduled in a couple of days. Is there anything else he can do to help me? I politely decline to tell him. Elapsed time: 55 minutes.

Call 3: After much research on the world wide interwebs, I decide to 1) power down the Tivo 2) remove the CableCards 3) power up the Tivo 4) run guided setup as if I have a cable box 5) power down the Tivo 6) instert the CableCards 7) power up the Tivo run guided setup for CableCards 9) Call Time Warner to activate cards. This person has so thick a hispanic accent that it is nearly impossible to communicate. I live in LA. I speak a little Spanish. I'm convinced I've reached a call center in Bogata. After much begging I am transferred to a rep that I can talk to. He talks to a supervisor. They send authorization signals to my CableCards. Claims supervisor tell him this is a Tivo problem since the Tivo only supports uniderectional communication to the CableCards. I remain relegated to South Park. I miss Chef. Tech will be onsite in another day. Elapsed time: 67 minutes

Call 4: The tech arrives. Tests signal strength and does much typing on his hardened Toshiba laptop. Removes one of the CableCards while the Tivo is running causing the TV to go berserk and no longer see the Tivo HDMI output. I power down the Tivo, replace the removed CableCard and power it back up. The TV is happy again. Tech enjoys continually entering and exiting the Test Channels screen to see the Error 141-4 error. Seriously, he does this no less that fifty times. Watching him I wonder if it's a felony to kill a cable guy with an axe. Calls his support desk and amid much laughing, engages Tivo Support in a conference call. Decides it's a "real shame" he doesn't have spare CableCards with him. Since it's Saturday, their warehouse is closed and they evidently couldn't get it together to get their truck stocked in the three days the call had been scheduled. Gives me the Tivo case number his support person had set up. Reschedules an onsite call for Monday. If I never see another episode of South Park again it will be too soon. Elapsed time 147 minutes.

I decide to call Tivo myself. I find their CableCard hotline number and give them my case number. Chat with a very helpful fellow named Jason. He tells me "The data mapping no-doubt needs to be reset. They need to send an 'INT' initialization signal to both cards at least 60 seconds before trying to re-authorize them." Really? "Yup, that should do it." OK, cool.

Call 5: Talk to a Time Warner fellow named Gus. I tell him "Please try to find out how to send an INT signal to both of my CableCards." After some delay he think he knows how. Does it. Both cards go from "State: CA disabled" to "State: unknown". I figure this is a very good sign. Gus begins a t-minus-sixty countdown like we're at Cape Canaveral. I have to assume Gus doesn't lead a very exciting life. At sixty seconds he decides to count ten more seconds "just to be safe". At T-plus-ten-and-counting Gus sends authorization signals to both cards. And, as magic, I am able to watch Mythbusters and Monk again! Elapsed time: 23 minutes

The punch line (which, had I been nice, I would have put at the top of my long story) "If your CableCard isn't working, have your cable company reset the card with an INT signal."

It is also worth noting that this process would have been painless if Time Warner had had any idea what they were doing. These are THEIR CableCards, after all. I see some comments above from people who are considering their cable company's DVRs instead of Tivo. Don't do it. Through this entire ordeal, it was only the Tivo help desk who had any understanding of how CableCards work. Had I been smart instead of pretty I would have called them first.

[...] live-primetime-TV viewing is going to be limited for the next week or so, and for once, it's not my Tivo's fault. I'm having some house work done which has put my primary TV in storage for a while. So I'll be [...]