Comcast XFINITY TV → Re: Tivo Series 3 Cablecard Nightmare

Well I didn't specify but this was simultaneous recordings of 24 in HD on the HD local Fox channel and also HEROES on HD on the local NBC HD channel.

(and, no OTA antenna)

The point tishoo was making was that both of these programs are on local HD channels, most likely, not encrypted. This means that you could receive them even without cable cards as long as your TV has a QAM tuner. All these cards are doing for those channel right now is making your Tivo match the channels HD feed (something like 90.1, 102.3, etc) to the channel it is shown on in the cable system (502, 806, etc).

Since your Tivo has had the card installed and now recognizes the corresponding channels for the local HDs, it is able to easily record off of both channels at once without any need for the cable card.

As for your encrypted channels, however, you will still need the cable card to receive these, in case you were to think you could ditch the card and still receive them without.

Thanks...ok I need some additional advice. My 2nd Tivo arrived and everything is working fantastic. The problem was a defective Tivo all along.

Question though, I was thrown at first because both CableCard configuration menus say "in order for service to be activated for this device please call 804-xxxxxx" when I never saw that before. I saw messages such as "service authorized" and a few other similar messages.

Also, the original broken Tivo was giving me CRAPPY vomit-dripping-on-screen analog channels as soon as the cards were 'hit.' The analog
channels looked GREAT _until_ they were hit. On this new Tivo, BOTH cablecards look great in all analog modes (and premium and HD). I'm pretty sure that I don't want the cards to be hit. I'm going to cancel tomorrow's service appointment until I have any trouble. Everything's just so nice and smooth.

Both cablecards say in the diagnostic screen:

"Waiting for CP Auth"
"No ECMs detected
Powerkey status: Ready

Does anyone know enough about this situation to tell if I'm sitting on a device that's going to 'time out' and no longer work and should I set up a service appointment - and if I do care to guess if my analog channels will go vomitous as they did on Tivo1 when the cards were hit?

Thanks