PVR Wire

1. I am glad someone else is experiencing the same crapola service I am - thought I was simply the only unlucky one. I am on my 3rd box in a month - the first 2 they gave me didn't have HDMI or a PVR, but I was told the only way to get a box with HDMI was if I took on the 6216 model w/ the PVR (and pay the extra $9.99 a month). So I did it. I've experienced the same green screens, ff lockups, and non responsive remote issues as mentioned above. I can't tell you how many times I just have to pull the plug - and then all the menu data is gone.

I want to switch to the T3 and TiVo is offering the free lifetime subscription transfer now on all purchases through 1/31, so my question is this. Do I have to now buy 2 cable cards myself to get a TiVo to work with Comcast? Or do they make you rent theirs? Also, with this sort of setup, don't we lose the On Demand Functionality? Is there anyway to step back and use their box w/out the PVR and with a T3? Or is that simply madness??

Posted at 3:02PM on Jan 5th 2007 by Kevin

2. C'mon this is stupid, I’d imagine this is the case almost everywhere where a box needs to be owned or leased from the company, that's how they work. Disgruntled cable user immediately leans into his everything sucks tirade with customer service routine and gets a try another box answer, he's no programmer. How about the user with his mad online researching skillz figured out the tivo cable card deal himself? A new cable box is not cheap...especially if it's one of those "stolen" boxes from another cable company ;) Most cable companies "rent" you cable cards as well and depending on how good your company is as far as being up to date you'll either have to get 2 cards or 1 dual card.

Posted at 4:53PM on Jan 5th 2007 by Secret Squirrel

3. This guy doesn't know much about cable systems as most of the public doesn't. You can't plug in Sci Atl. stuff onto a Motorola plant simply because the hardware that send the signal out is keyed for a type of equipment manufacturer's specific equipment you will offer on your network. Every type of digital equipment you run ont he network needs to be supported from the source of the signal they send out. That's sort of the skinny in as simple terms as possible.

Posted at 8:24PM on Jan 5th 2007 by Charter

4. Kevin,

Tivo and Comcast have a partnership and will be delivering the Tivo software to our current Motorola DVR's within the next 1-3 months. This partnership started 1 year ago and they were hoping to have them out by the end of 2006, but they're behind a bit. So, if you don't mind being patient, one day soon we'll be able to call up comcast and ask them to install the Tivo OS onto our current boxes. I'm sure we'll have to pay more for it, but atleast we'll have Tivo and I'm sure it'll work 1000x better than the current software they're using.

Or, if you shop around you can find S3 Tivo's for $650 or even less. I saw them on Dell.com once in the $550 range...I probably should have bought it.

Oh, and I have a cablecard from Comcast and they are not charging me a rental fee...I don't think they can legally. A 2nd one might cost a fee though.

Posted at 8:51PM on Jan 5th 2007 by Brian

5. Comcast's official policy is that they only charge $1.50 for the 2nd cablecard. There is no $5 HDTV "converter" fee, no $15.00 digital package requirement, no $6.95 digital converter charge and no .35 cent remote fee.

If you don't have TiVo and run the cablecard through your TV, then they can charge $5.00 for guide data, but can't require the digital access or the HDTV charge. The S3 may have been expensive, but I've knocked $25 a month off of my cable bill with it.

I've found that the difference between "digital cable" and expanded cable comes down to the History channel, the Woman's network and a bunch of other channels that I have no interesting in seeing. Comcast also has a requires "digital cable" if you want ESPN and TNT in HDTV (which also costs an additional $5)

Between the $800 S3, the $300 lifetime transfer and the $600 Weaknees upgrade, it will take me 6 years before the S3 ends up being less expensive then Comcast, but considering that the lifetime subscriptions will only get more scarce, I'm sure that there will be at least some resell value for a 100 hour HDTV / 1,000 hour SD lifetime TiVo box.

Posted at 11:05PM on Jan 5th 2007 by Davis Freeberg

6. @Brian

No offense Brian, but I’ve been hearing that “line” for over a year now, I didn’t believe them then, and certainly DON’T believing them NOW. I think it MORE then obvious that Comcast could care less about customer satisfaction, any more than they are interested in giving money to the poor. Cable boxes have ALWAYS been horrible, but they were the only game in town for more then 25 years – why should they change now?

Losing money (IPTV, Fios, etc), or a government order will be the ONLY way to make them change tactics. So, Basically, it’s up to us to change the situation – not them. (The second that TIVO can work out some sort of IPTV plan or Fios comes to San Francisco, I’ll screw-over Comcast faster than Enron + 30 year pensions plans.)

Posted at 3:38AM on Jan 6th 2007 by I, Robot

7. @Brian

No offense Brian, but I’ve been hearing that “line” for over a year now, I didn’t believe them then, and certainly DON’T believing them NOW. I think it MORE then obvious that Comcast could care less about customer satisfaction, any more than they are interested in giving money to the poor. Cable boxes have ALWAYS been horrible, but they were the only game in town for more then 25 years – why should they change now?

Losing money (IPTV, Fios, etc), or a government order will be the ONLY way to make them change tactics. So, Basically, it’s up to us to change the situation – not them. (The second that TIVO can work out some sort of IPTV plan or Fios comes to San Francisco, I’ll screw-over Comcast faster than Enron + 30 year pensions plans.)

Posted at 3:38AM on Jan 6th 2007 by I, Robot

8. The tech guy “Jeff” is a f*cking moron. He could offered NO other solutions than standard Comcast line of bull-crap. He has a customer with a situation of 4 different Motorola Boxes with Green Screen lock-ups, over a year period. At that point, I can't believe he didn't offer you the most obvious solution of "cable cards" and TIVO, or Windows/Linux based DVR. Duh. He didn’t even offer an apology for his rude ass behavior. This guy is in technical support?

"Stolen Motorola boxes", please... Nobody is buying that! Is that the best excuse “Jeff” could come up with? That statement was next to lame. Verizon's Fios IP Services is using very the SAME Motorola boxes, but with the original IU in them. Are they’re boxes stolen? Thanks again “Jeff”, for proving once again that the general public knows far more then Comcast Tech Support, when it comes to basic technology.

Comcast know that box is a piece of crap; I wish they would just admit it. They have got to be losing money every time they replace a cable box 3 and 4 times per customer? How is this benefiting them?

Posted at 4:51AM on Jan 6th 2007 by I, Robot

9. Comcast in my market uses both Motorola and Scientific Atlanta SD/HD DVR models. I don't think it matters what brand. It appears that the Chat rep was confused about compatibility. Obviously Comcast doesn't want you to buy a stolen box, which cannot be updated to work on any market. The box would need to be addressable (two-way) to take updates and communicate with Comcast. Motorola will not sell any Cable TV product directly to the public, they do not license firmware to the public, only cable companies. I'm not sure about Scientific Atlanta. Buyer beware, don't spend big bucks and find out you can't use it. The Tivo S3 units do not work with free ONDemand, only PPV. So it's pricey for not being able to get the free ONDemand movies. I wouldn't invest $800 on a unit that might be obsolete within a couple years, or become defective, which you may have to foot the bill for repairs. It seems the average life for most DVR's is about 1.5 years, before some major issue.

Posted at 4:01PM on Jan 6th 2007 by newcs

10. From someone who worked in the cable HW industry...

The user, while correctly annoyed at their box, was wrong, and the CSR was right. If Comcast has a Mot plant in that area, you cannot (technically) use a SciAtl box there. The authentication is different. It's possible to have different manufacturers in a single system, but rarely done in practice. I suspect 95%+ of Comcast headends are single-manufacturer, if not 100%. (Note: it's by headend, not area.)

FiOS-TV uses the same hardware, but (quite) different firmware.

Motorola has really long, painful validation of outside firmware for the boxes. Not that they're bug-free...

One should not expect a CSR to suggest what amounts to a homebrew system to replace the standard Comcast DVR box (that they get paid for), especially since the customer in this case didn't ask about alternative DVRs, just SciAtl.

No cable company I know of allows bring-your-own cable boxes, since all of them use custom firmware (and it creates an incentive for leased boxes to "go missing"). Their solution for bring-your-own (as mandated by the FCC) is cablecard.

Posted at 1:35PM on Jan 7th 2007 by Randell Jesup

11. Yes, you are absolutely correct: you can replace any Comcast dvr with your own tivo and a lease cable card. Cable cards cost is usually a) free for the first card with subscription to a digital package or b) a couple of dollars per month for additional cards / card rather than additional set-top box. Be advised that cable cards issued by Comcast do not work with all equipment.

As for problems with the Motorola DVRs: it has to do with the Motorola firmware. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_use_a_Motorola_DVR/Bugs#Bugs
Is a link to many of the known issues. These are not problems with Comcast, except that, like many cable companies, Comcast supplies motorola equipment.

As for why you can't simply buy your own PVR or, for that matter, set-top box and expect it to work: each network company uses its own propritary encoding scheme. This is to prevent people from stealing cable or satellite service. If you wish to connect to the network, you must have the proper decoder in the box. I'm sure some of you are saying "that's not fair!": you're right, but you live in a capitalist world. If you insist on dedicated entertainment networks then you have to pay for it. Otherwise, put an antenna on your tv.

The more astute of you may be thinking "why can't I just bring in my own box and have it tuned to the network?" This goes back to my earlier comment about cable cards and compatibility. There is no real standardization in home entertainment systems. In fact, there's an awful lot of bodging going on with manufactures. It's a lot like the early days of home computing: everyone is running DOS but not all DOSs are the same. Providers make supply deals with manufacturers based on who seems to have the most stable equipment. Comcast can hardly be blamed if the motorola cable cards are not 100% compatible with every type of tv and pvr out there. And if you think everyone buys the same quality products, try spending 3 hours on the phone trying to troubleshoot a Sci Ata HD DVR hookup to a Maxent plasma tv from Costco, along with a home theatre system from the neighbours kid and a digital switch box from Radio Shack!

My advice: if you are having issues with Comcast DVR's, swap it at your local office and try to get a different model or firmware version. Until motorola fixes the problem, there's not much you can do other than complain in the internet!

Posted at 7:44AM on Mar 21st 2007 by Anon Comcast Vid Tech

12. You know, I was going to keep my name out of it since a) it happens to be Jeff and b) I happen to do tech support for MA. No, that's not me in the log. I work the phones.

Justin is a little turd. Why contact support if you won't even listen the answer? Yes, some of the problems he is having is firmware related: the lack of response to the remote followed by the sudden burst of commands. The green screen/snow comes from trying to run everything off of 1 remote (universal remotes DO NOT sync properly, stick to the original ones).

As for the rest: if he is connected to the Newburyport head end, has/had a line amp, has at least 2 DVRs and a modem, and is running a Voip modem over top of everything, then his biggest problem is signal distortion. Newburyport HE flooded a last fall during hurricane season and Comcast is still trying to find all the damage (you try running full signal diagnostics on a hundred thousand cable lines and see how it takes you!). On top of which, the line amp says low signal strength and 2 broadband modems and 2 hd boxes is a lot of load and bandwidth on any line. Not to mention the other possible signal factors, including 20 year old coax, squirrel damage, water damaged underground drop, bad connection points, failing splitter, bees nest in the cable blind, junction box iced up, and any other of a long list of physical factors that can cause signal errosion.

By the way, don't contact your cable operator unless you actually want help. If you just want to complain, call somewhere else.

Posted at 7:44AM on Mar 21st 2007 by Jeff former Anon