infinitv4 and fios nightmare

[evident]

good lord. I just want to share my experience with my cablecard experience with fios. We signed up for "new" verizon fios service last week and a cablecard came in the mail for self install. At the time I have my HTPC all setup and ready to go, pop in the cablecard, do the activation. the ceton diag tool says its fully activated but no signal. called up fios, they think the card is defective, send me cablecard #2. same thing happens. I thought there was something wrong with my infinitv so i contacted ceton, who let me upgrade to their beta firmware. Still, same problems. Finally, verizon decides to send a tech over. after 2 hours of trying to get cablecard #2 to work, he thinks its defective and pops in cablecard #3 from his truck. He tells me that since the cablecards came in dropshipped that he doesn't know where they're from, and if they happen to be out of state, it will not activate in my state and there would be no way to tell. after an hour of the tech being on the phone the cablecard finally works! 10 days later, we turn the tv on, and its not working again. now they want to send us out another cablecard. I asked them to send out a tech, but they told me that it would cost $80 for them to send a tech out to install a cable card.

i'm almost certain that it's a verizon problem, but the reps on the phone can't seem to do anything but ask me to unplug and replug in my cablecard. is there any other way to get these guys to activate my cablecard correctly?? :'(

edit:yes. I forgot to mention that after the first two cable card problems i asked the verizon dude who came to my house to install a low pass filter and he did.

dont know how i forgot this, but i also forgot to mention, that today we did 2 things. my wife requested that the phone number on our verizon account be changed. Im not sure if this is possible but this may have messed with some of our account settings on verizon's end and somehow de-paired my cablecard, nothing a call to verizon couldn't fix though, or at least that's what i thought. second, i installed a SD card reader on my HTPC into one of the USB headers on the motherboard. both occured at the same time so i have a feeling it could be either/or/or just a coincidence. When iremoved the sd card reader still no tv. if the sd card reader caused the cablecard / infinitv to de-sync i would be pretty annoyed at the technology in general. also, my signal strength is pretty strong at -1dB.

 

[mosco]

Not saying it will fix the problem, but I just wanted to confirm you have a low pass filter installed on the line coming into the Infinitv?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

It's unlikely the problem is due to the omission of a low-pass filter as the filter is only necessary when MoCA is used in the system. Even then it will only affect a few channels and not all of them.

OP, bring up the Ceton Diagnostics Tool in Windows (Start/All Programs/Ceton InfiniTV/Ceton Diagnostics). Click on the CableCARD tab. Is there a red checkmark or checkmarks in Steps 1 through 8?

 

[evident]

yes. I forgot to mention that after the first two cable card problems i asked the verizon dude who came to my house to install a low pass filter and he did.

 

[evident]

It's unlikely the problem is due to the omission of a low-pass filter as the filter is only necessary when MoCA is used in the system. Even then it will only affect a few channels and not all of them.

OP, bring up the Ceton Diagnostics Tool in Windows (Start/All Programs/Ceton InfiniTV/Ceton Diagnostics). Click on the CableCARD tab. Is there a red checkmark or checkmarks in Steps 1 through 8?

yep. went through this several times with the fios phone support. however just wanted to note that even when my tv was working, step 6 would still be red (the send CCV validation signal one). i had them send the ccv signal this time and it changed green, but still no tv.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

What kind of Signal Strength and SNR are you getting?

 

[LSDavinci]

Also, have you checked the temperatures? I think that was the major reason why my card kept on failing/crashing. I now have a slot fan to assist with air flow.

 

[evident]

my snr is around -1. temps are ok according to the diag tool. i got a response from ceton people who say that they think the problem is on verizon's end and that the m-card wasn't activated correctly. that would explain why i didnt get channel 131 ( the verizon channel) but got other channels. they say that the cablecard is timing out waiting for the cci and not receiving program address table. it's either a cablecard malfunction or a problem on vz's back end. I wish i could just connect to a vz rep who knows what the F they are doing. I think they are the source of all my headaches and frustrations at the moment, not the infinitv itself.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

my snr is around -1. temps are ok according to the diag tool. i got a response from ceton people who say that they think the problem is on verizon's end and that the m-card wasn't activated correctly. that would explain why i didnt get channel 131 ( the verizon channel) but got other channels. they say that the cablecard is timing out waiting for the cci and not receiving program address table. it's either a cablecard malfunction or a problem on vz's back end. I wish i could just connect to a vz rep who knows what the F they are doing. I think they are the source of all my headaches and frustrations at the moment, not the infinitv itself.

Is that -1 signal strength or SNR? If it's SNR, that's a problem as it should be @ -35.

When I moved and had to have Verizon change my service over I had a few problems getting things working and I knew it wasn't the cable card because it worked fine at the old place. Finally they hooked me up with a Tier 2 (or maybe it was Level 2, don't recall exactly) tech. That guy was knowledgeable and had things fixed in about 30 minutes. The next time you talk to Verizon support, ask for a Tier 2 tech.

 

[evident]

Is that -1 signal strength or SNR? If it's SNR, that's a problem as it should be @ -35.

When I moved and had to have Verizon change my service over I had a few problems getting things working and I knew it wasn't the cable card because it worked fine at the old place. Finally they hooked me up with a Tier 2 (or maybe it was Level 2, don't recall exactly) tech. That guy was knowledgeable and had things fixed in about 30 minutes. The next time you talk to Verizon support, ask for a Tier 2 tech.

SNR is 35.6dB, Signal Level is -1 dBmV. pretty good from what i'm told. I think i finally got someone from verizon who's willing to look into it for me. i'm almost convinced now that my cablecard problem has to do with me changing my telephone number and they screwed something up on my account

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

SNR is 35.6dB, Signal Level is -1 dBmV. pretty good from what i'm told. I think i finally got someone from verizon who's willing to look into it for me. i'm almost convinced now that my cablecard problem has to do with me changing my telephone number and they screwed something up on my account

That SNR and SL is about as good as it gets.

It could very well be an account problem. The tech told me last time that with cable cards there are actually two separate accounts and the information in them has to match in order for everything to work.

 

[evident]

That SNR and SL is about as good as it gets.

It could very well be an account problem. The tech told me last time that with cable cards there are actually two separate accounts and the information in them has to match in order for everything to work.

the only problem is, that they're going to send out another cable card which's scheduled to arrive tomorrow. doubt it's going to work unless i get some really knowledgable person on the phone. what's going to happen is its not going to activate until they send a tech out. gggaaaaaah

 

[evident]

so... the new cable card
"just worked"!. i used the online activation tool. this will have been my 4th cable card so far. lets see how long before this one craps out?

 

[Tegeril]

I have similarly had to have a cablecard replaced despite things all looking 'ok'. The replacement card has been working fine for a couple months now.

 

[evident]

Turns out Verizon didn't set up my account right and I'm up tok a total of 5 cable cards. Been working fine for a little over a week now....

 

[Plugers]

99% of all cable card issues are account related, especially if they were working fine prior. CSRs don't deal with them often enough to be proficient with them, and most are there just to collect a paycheck.