Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Comcast CableCARDs Suck

So the new HDTiVo is wonderful. I've taken the CD changer and VCR off the TV Rack. The HD TiVo replaces the old TiVo and two cable boxes (one connected to the TiVo and one HD cable box that I switched with the receiver). So what was 7 boxes is now 3.

I bought the TiVo on Monday, called the cable company and was amazed that they made the appointment only 2 days later between 9 and 11am. The cable guy came at 10:30 and he knew what he was doing, he'd previously setup about 8 HDTiVos. Most of the time was spent with him on the phone to the office as they "activated" things and reading numbers back and forth. Unfortunately he got some errors so then he was on hold for 15 minutes waiting to get to tech support. Tech support wasn't that helpful, but we quickly determined that the cards were bad (thankfully it wasn't the card readers, I don't need to replace the TiVo). He had one spare and that worked.

Now I have to wait for them to come back to install the second. I had the installer call to make the appointment thinking he might have an easier time, but they said the appointment would be December 4th. I can't make that day and wanted it sooner. So I called Comcast Customer Service myself, it was about 12:15, and was told Dec 4th was the earliest. I asked politely saying it was their mistake they needed to fix and now I have less service (only one tuner instead of two) than before they got here. He said could connect me to someone in leadership and after being on hold for 15 minutes I now have an appointment on Nov 29th between 12-4. Not great, but I can live with that.

In the mean time the TiVo is great. I think because it's connected to my home network instead of a phone line I get much more interesting Internet stuff (Yahoo Traffic, Weather, Movie Times/Tickets, etc.) More info when I have more time to play.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you think that your title is a little extreme. Here's how you would blog this.


Howard M claims that "Comcast CableCARDs Suck", but when you read his blog you find out that only 2 of the 3 cards he has ever seen are bad, it does seem like a hi rate of failure, but the sample is small. How do we know that the technician didn't sit on them an it has nothing to do with the cards? I would have liked to see a higher sample before jumping to a conclusions. I find it telling that the technician had installed them 8 previous times and didn't mention anything about card problems.

Howard said...

Yes I agree my title is a little extreme, it's still my experiences. After Wednesday I (unfortunately) will be able to expand my sample size. For other opinions see this thread. My post did have my complete data, so if the only problem is the title, I'm not so concerned. If it all works out on Wed, maybe my title will be "Comcast CableCARD technicians are great".

Anonymous said...

The cards do truly suck. They should have PPV capability but they don;t. And the picture quality sucks too. Tivo sucks.. It all sucks. If you can see HDTV off air its so much better than all these cheap crappy things we are forced to buy. Its like comunism the FCC is killing us.