Visit 3 - Slot 1 gives everything even HD only after the technician leaves after about 5 hours later, Slot 2 161-4
Visit 4 - everything lost on both cablecards until I wake up in the morning, Slot 1 is happy again, Slot 2 giving 161-52
Visit 5 - Cablecard Slot 1 works fine. Cablecard Slot 2 sits at "not in normal operation." Cable tech swaps out card in slot 2 with card in slot 1 and everything again works great. We both suspect the Tivo. After spending 20 minutes on the phone with Tivo, they agree to send me a new unit.
3 days later, new unit arrives. This 2nd Tivo is working fantastic. It seems that 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.
Seperately, 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. Everything's just so nice and smooth except that 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?
Waiting for CP Auth, could be a problem as it should be reading CP Auth received. No ECMs detected isn't significant if the tuner was on an analog channel when viewing that data. PowerKey status: Ready is normal operating condition so nothing there. Generally speaking the card shouldn't be working because it hasn't recieved CP authorization, although that doesn't seem to be the case so that's a stumper for me. If you are paying for any additional services like HBO or something I'd wager to say they wouldn't be working. If you are just paying for standard service, this might explain why the card appears to be working. Could you clarify your service levels?
Yes I have recorded several movies (Willie Wonka and King Kong) from HBO HD...and several HD episodes of ROME as well no problem.
Now however when turn to LOGO channel 163 I get 3 seconds and the "call 804-xxx-xxxx" to activate service screen pops up. That's the only channel. I imagine it may spread ... and I do like Logo. I'm concerned that my analog channels will disintegrate as they did on my first Tivo but perhaps that was another defect in that particular Tivo.
Henry~ The only thing I can think of is there may be some provisioning issues with your channel 163. Only your cable provider can verify if that service is allowed for viewing with a cable card. The fact still remains that the card indicates no CP authorization which tells me it isn't provisioned properly. I can tell you in my system, no CP authorization adn No ECMs= Non working cable card for any encrypted channels
As a followup - after about 10 days the TiVo started dropping other channels in addition to 163. I called in and had them unpair, repair, and 'hit' the cards again and everything worked except for channel 250. It took about 15 hours for channel 250 to return.
The "analog corruption" issue was isolated to the first TiVo, which apparently had numerous issues. After the hit, analog cable looks fine (well as good as it's going to look).
THE FIX, to resolve this you must make sure your New TIVO's Software is up to date. 1. Set up the Tivo without the Cablecard. 2. Keep updating the TIVO and rebooting unill the box no longer requires reboot after connect to Tivo update. (Mine was Ver. 11) 3. Insert cable card 4. Call cable company to link card to box and Wa-La -Presto