W.O.W. → Re: Tivo Elite 4 Tuners on Wow Cable Card

Dan- Seems like I can't get a tech out to install a cable card until the 25th - Both Wow and myself are busy and had to find a time. Anyways, once my tivo elite gets activated I will be pulling my M-Card out of my other tivo just to get the elite working. I can wait until the 25th on my old tivo until the 25th. As you mentioned before, I can just call up and have the card moved over the the new tivo. Just want to make sure as I don't want to loose 2 tivos waiting.

Also, when did wow start charging for a cable card install?? I've never had it before. If I could, I would just go to the local office, pick one up and give you guys a call to give the information. If the card doesn't work, then I would drive back and try another one. When will wow allow the consumer to install a cable card just like the boxes? I know friends on Comcast and others on Cox that are able to just go to a local office and pick one up, install it, and call to have it activated.

Thanks again for your work.

Actually WOW does allow you to that. Just last month I picked up a Tivo and drove over to the local WOW office in Schaumburg off of Golf Road and had no problem asking for a cable card to self-install. They even had a self-instal guide to follow for setting up a Tivo with WOW.

I ran into the same problem, and only managed to get the fee waived because I WENT to the office (after they said I could) and the rep at the counter told me they didn't hand out cablecards. Pretty sure that there's an FCC mandate in effect soon (if not already) that forces providers to offer the same service for cablecards as they do the regular boxes, but I'm not sure of the official date. Either way, it's worth calling customer service and complaining. At least twice.

Cabelcos have to allow self-installs on cable cards now. But the FCC doesn't have any rules forcing local cable offices to always keep them in stock (just look at the Comcast forum to see what they sometimes put people through). And I don't believe that cabelcos are forced to allow On Demand, VOD or PPV through cable card devices.

It's not even possible to offer these services without having the cable card in a device provided by us. It's not that we don't want to give it to you, it's that those services require two-way communication that a customer owned device is not capable of. You can get PPV if you call customer service and have them purchase it for you and push it to the card, you just can't get iPPV without a return signal.

Dan, thanks for the clarification on that.

Dan & Others-

Thanks for the help in getting the cable card. Ran over to the Schaumburg office and picked one up this afternoon. Put it in the tivo and is now up and running. Better than waiting a week.

Dan-
Thanks for you insight on getting the cards set up. The rep I was talking to didn't know much about the cable cards and setting them up and your post got me right to where I needed to go in the wow system to get to the right person to get the card working. Didn't have to wait too long and they had me up and running without having to figure it out.

Awesome, glad to hear it went so smoothly. Cable cards aren't exactly the best technology out there, but if they are setup just right, they can work very well.

I actually like the one way communication, it prevents the kids from running up my bill.