So my first day with TivoHD and I think its going back already....

[aphex]

Let me preface this with my hatred for my current cableco dvr - SA8300HD. I've been through eight or so in my two years of high definition, from dead boxes, to missed/missing recordings, to audio/video problems... its been a nightmare.

So much to my delight, TivoHD was in stock at my local CC, paid $269 + tax.

I had the appointment to install cablecards set up for a week, the guy finally arrived today. 20 minutes late after his scheduled three hour window appointment.

He activated one card, then the other, checked a few channels and then left. He said some channels would take 30-40 minutes to "activate" and after an hour or two, i still couldn't get ANY digital channels.

I called my cable co and they said I couldn't activate them myself over the phone, they would send him out right away.

Well that was at 2pm, its now 8:30pm and he still hasn't arrived. I wasted ALL day waiting for this asshole.

And with that, I am returning my TivoHD. After reading around the tivo forums and seeing the nightmare people have had to deal with getting the cablecards to work, I am just not going to bother. I wasted an entire day today trying to get this to work, and all I have is one pissed off wife and a non-working tivo.

I know I know, this isn't tivo's fault, but the fact of the matter remains that it appears this "consumer friendly" tivo is far from it, relying on unreliable technology to achieve its goal, sorry, but I don't think i'm gonna play.

Back she goes...

 

[Quasmo]

I hate cable card with a passion. Fuvking cable labs.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Cable card is the reason I couldn't understand people (sorry but Anand himself is included) saying that ATi's new setup would be so great. The cable companies are not fans of cable card and so half-ass installing and setting them up (and also artificially hold very few so as to discourage customers from using them). I hope IPTV shakes things up quite a bit (certainly has the potential to), but it will probably end up being only a slightly lesser (or even greater) of two evils.

This is definitely not Tivo's problem as they have no choice if you want to get the digital channels. I don't think you can really say they're relying on it, as it is the only way they can make a product that does what you're wanting it to do (without having to deal with the cable company's own set-top box).

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Cable card is the reason I couldn't understand people (sorry but Anand himself is included) saying that ATi's new setup would be so great. The cable companies are not fans of cable card and so half-ass installing and setting them up (and also artificially hold very few so as to discourage customers from using them). I hope IPTV shakes things up quite a bit (certainly has the potential to), but it will probably end up being only a slightly lesser (or even greater) of two evils.

This is definitely not Tivo's problem as they have no choice if you want to get the digital channels. I don't think you can really say they're relying on it, as it is the only way they can make a product that does what you're wanting it to do (without having to deal with the cable company's own set-top box).

Agreed, but in the end its gonna come down to Tivo w/ crappy cable cards or a Cable Co box, i think many (regrettably including myself) will stick with the latter.

 

[Kadarin]

I have an original Series 3 HD Tivo, and I had a couple of issues with it:

1. The first unit I got had a broken front display. I RMA'd this through Tivo.
2. I had a hard time getting both cable cards to obtain channel data, and a couple of times I managed to get the box into a continuous reboot cycle. Tivo support thought it was because I had a power outage and this corrupted the file system, so they offered to RMA it again. I researched this on various forums, and discovered it was in fact due to the cable cards not getting a signal through the cable line. I had Comcast come out again, and they found a problem in the line. Since then it's been working great.

The problem isn't Tivo, it's the craptastic cable card standard.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: aphex

Agreed, but in the end its gonna come down to Tivo w/ crappy cable cards or a Cable Co box, i think many (regrettably including myself) will stick with the latter.

Yep. Hopefully IPTV can cause some positive change.

 

[aphex]

heads up, canceling tivo was almost as bad as those aol calls you've all heard. I had to say "cancel my account" all of 8-10 times, she just wouldn't take no for an answer. Normally if things change i may have gone back, but that now just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[weeber]

Sorry to hear about your troubles with TivoHD. Cablecard has been a big let down to me. I had such high hopes for it, but then they screwed it up by only allowing certain pieces of hardware to use it. And even with a closed architecture, they still can get it to install right.

This just reaffirms my past weekend project. I just built a nice HTPC and can record shows from the firewire output from my Motorola 6200 (non-DVR STB). I still have some kinks to work out, but it's coming along.

 

[CorCentral]

I use a cablecard through Charter in my Panasonic 50px50u 50" plasma and have had no problems with it.
Don't have a cable box though, the card goes directly into the tv.