| not the easiest thing When i was in the field i installed about 50 of these and they suck. the firmware from the vendor was always outdated and it usually took 1/2 hour to download the newest firmware. then we would wait to see if it would work then call our head-end and wait another 1/2 hour for them to do their voodoo magic then if all the planets were aligned it might, just might work.
If it did actually work then we'd hope that we didn't get called back in a week cause it lost its provisioning. I tried as hard as i could to convince people to stay away from them. |
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ace1974
join:2007-06-09
Goldsboro, NC | I know the feeling, when I use to work for Cox I use to hate those dam things, sometimes they would work and sometimes they wouldnt, and the one's tht did work we were right back out there in a week for a service call because they kept going out...Cable cards are one of the worst devices ever made.. |
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| I think the problem is with the cable operators, it's either their system suck, or their just making it hard for people to adapt them, or both.
It should really be a plug-n-play device, which requires some provisioning and activation. |
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said by okie11:When i was in the field i installed about 50 of these and they suck. the firmware from the vendor was always outdated and it usually took 1/2 hour to download the newest firmware. then we would wait to see if it would work then call our head-end and wait another 1/2 hour for them to do their voodoo magic then if all the planets were aligned it might, just might work. If it did actually work then we'd hope that we didn't get called back in a week cause it lost its provisioning. I tried as hard as i could to convince people to stay away from them. Considering that Cable Cards we designed by Cable Labs, which is owned by the cable companies this just reflects on the cable companies. If, like the phone companies post-Carter Phone, cable systems were an open spec & application system, they probably won't such because "the market" would make them easy and dependable. Instead your cable companies just make a crappy product that they don't want and complain about at every step of the way.... |
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 djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
kudos:1
 ·Verizon Wireless..
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·VOIPo
·PHONE POWER
1 edit | reply to okie11
We got a S3 TiVo. Took the installer about 10 minutes to install, and he had never seen a S3 TiVo before. Never had a single problem with the setup, either. I watched him perform the setup. There was nothing difficult about it. So it CAN work, and it CAN work easily if done right by all the parties involved.
Satellite has been provisioned with cards, installed by end users for over a decade. Sounds like CableLabs, Motorola, and Scientific Atlanta just need to get their shit together. I'm sorry if it's been a pain in the ass for the field techs, but it doesn't need to be that way.
If cable really wants to reclaim that analog spectrum, they need to realize people don't want clunky, ugly cable boxes on every TV in their house. We also have things like S3 TiVos and Windows Vista Media center that can utilize CableCARD. CableCARD is not going anywhere, so cable companies NEED to fix the broken processes.
-- Rob
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Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams. |
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 qdemn7Smurf in My LoopPremium
join:2003-09-16
Fort Worth, TX | reply to okie11
The problem is Wit the new HD Tivos is you HAVE to use a Cable Card. They have NO analog inputs. |
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Re: not the easiest thing Agreed. Here's an idea to help the tech's... don't require a tech to install it. Any monkey can install and setup a cablecard... that's why they were designed the way they were. Unfortunately, most cable companies require a tech to install and charge some outrageous install fee to do something that anyone can do themselves and call in to activate.
The only thing I'll add for Sat cards is that the card isn't actually doing the decoding, it just carries an ID and authorization, the tuner in the box still decodes the video. For CableCards, both is happening on the card. Or so I understand it. |
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One other problem with cablecards is that the 2 vendors(Motorola, Scientific Atlanta) making them seem to have turned out a number of dead cards. A friend of mine bought a TIVO3(2 cablecards needed) and went thru about 5 of them before they found 2 that worked.
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Re: The problem is said by qdemn7:Wit the new HD Tivos is you HAVE to use a Cable Card. They have NO analog inputs. That is incorrect. I have a Series3 TiVo and a new TiVo HD. Both are capable of using analog cable without a CableCard. You do have to have a CableCard in the unit if you wish to access any of the channels that are in the digital cable programing packages. |
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said by qdemn7:Wit the new HD Tivos is you HAVE to use a Cable Card. They have NO analog inputs. No, the new TivoHDs have analog NTSC tuners along with digital ATSC & QAM tuners. They certainly can be used for analog cable and TV broadcasts. The ATSC tuner can be used to receive and record free over the air digital & HD broadcasts from your local stations. Of course, it would be silly to use an TivoHD only for analog recording, but it does have that fallback if the cable system has not yet implemented Analog-Digital-Simulcast (ADS) of the analog tier or if you want to record a local broadcast station or translator that is only available in analog NTSC. |
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qdemn7Smurf in My LoopPremium
join:2003-09-16
Fort Worth, TX | Yes you are right. I was thinking of the regular non-cable analog inputs. Still wouldn't do me good since cable is dropping the analog signal and going all-digital. |
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Re: not the easiest thing Actually the biggest problem I've found is CSG. They are still stuck in the 1980s. Lots of hand keying of equipment ID numbers, adding stuff to inventory that really doesn't need to be, and authorization queues that hold up the whole process.
»www.csgsystems.com/ |
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 MadMANNPremium
join:2005-08-19
kudos:2 | reply to AlphaOne
said by AlphaOne:I think the problem is with the cable operators, it's either their system suck, or their just making it hard for people to adapt them, or both. It should really be a plug-n-play device, which requires some provisioning and activation. Right. EVERY cable system in America sucks. It couldn't be the lack of standards amongst TV/STB manufacturers, right?
Everyone has some conspiracy theory. 
»Huh?
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