Ok, this is longish, slightly amusing but pretty much illustrates the state of Tivo v Cable Co relations.
So my Charter tech arrived a little after 9am on July 5. When asked he had never worked with Tivos before. I told Charter when I placed the order that they needed a Tivo literate tech or someone available to help out. It always ends in tears and desperate laughter when a total Tivo newbie has to do an install. I show him where the three Tivos will be located. Downstairs in the living room, downstairs in the den/family room and upstairs in the master bedroom.
In the Den, I have an 8 foot LAN rack more or less and it's about 30" offset from the wall. I work at home and I am constantly fiddling with the equipment on the furniture. Eventually it will hold 3 big monitors, a 32" TV on the main counter workspace and on the upper shelf I have the self-contained boxes like the Tivo, it's external hard drive, the data switch, a NAS server, other widgets, boxes etc. On the floor shelf will eventually live 3 PCs, assorted UPS units and the like
The wall behind the rack/furniture has tws coax outlets that are live, he'll use one for the data modem and the other for the Tivo. He hooks up the modem first but leaves little slack between the wall and the furniture. I tell him that won't cut it, I need some service loop for wire managemnt and to eventually cover the wall to furniture wires with a mat or tape. He redoes it but he doesn't like it.
He hooks up the first Tivo, a Series 3, two tuner model. He slaps in a Motorola multicast card and tells me it's ready. I stifle a laugh. I turn it on and of course nothing is tuning. I navigate to the HOST ID screen with the information he needs to call in to his service desk and I tell him he has to pair the cable card up with the mothership. I also ask him if they've done away with Tuning Adapters. He blinds rapidly. I continue and tell him that my research indicates that Charter in Duluth, GA uses Tuning Adapters with Tivos. More blinking. He says he'll be right back. He comes back about 20 minutes later with 3 Tuning Adapters. I guess I am fortunate that he has them in the truck.
I ask him to get the Internet up and I can show him some wiring diagrams for the tuning adapters. I tell him it's best practice to split the coax with one cable assigned to the Tuning Adapter and the other to the Tivo. He does that but he wants to finish the Tivo installations before working on the Internet. I wish him well and continue unpacking my main desktop computer so that I am ready when the Internet comes up.
He starts on the master bedroom installation but won't leave me 20 feet of service loop on the coax because of safety concerns. My wife and I weren't completely settled on which wall to put the TV/Tivo but I can deal with that later so we pick and wall and gets going.
The Living Room install requires that he run coax around the exterior of the back of the house. The exterior is painted beige-ish and I ask him to use white cable. He doesn't have any. Fine. He does a nice and neat job and gets the outlet installed and he's done with the physical install.
He calls in for tech help. The poor guy is on hold, the first time for 40 minutes. He's on speaker with the Tivo "expert" on the other end and she is asking for all sorts of information in the wrong place. She wants him to find the HOST ID and Unit Address on the outside of the Tivo box. I let him suffer for a bit and then I step in and pull up the CableCard Pairing screen and show him what he needs. Trumpets blare and peasants cheer and the ball moves a little more down the field. He then asks me about the Tuning Adapters and registering those and I tell him he is on his own because I from Comcastia and in Comcastia we didn't have to use Tuning Adapters. This new land of Charterville is a mystery to me.
He fiddles with all the installations, loses his over the phone help and has to call back. He's 30 more minutes on hold and I leave him to it and get back to unpacking. Finally after getting more help on the phone and more fiddling that doesn't work he says he'll get the Internet going because that's pretty straight forward. He does that and it comes up without a hitch. More cheering.
The mothership had him remove the cablecards and put them in slot 2 even though it's posted on the Tivo boxes and on two different screens that Multicast cards MUST go in slot 1. I point that out and I tell him I am dead solid sure that the cards need to go into slot 1 for both tuners to work. I am saved this discussion about our third Tivo because it's a Premiere with just one card slot. Now another tech arrives but I don't hear their conversation and he does more fiddling but nothing is working. He's back on hold again to the mothership, this time for more than 30 minutes. More fiddling. No joy.
Finally at 5pm, eight! hours later I go out to his truck and he is on hold again with the mothership. I ask him what he's game plan is. He says he's basically stuck working on this until I sign off. I tell him I am not signing anything until it all works. He looks very dejected. I've offered him drinks through the day, I told him it was cool if he took to get some food but he didn't want to leave at all. I tell him ok, we've got to get out of here and go back and get some odds and ends from our old house. I tell him that they have until close of business on Tuesday the 9th to get it all working or we are done, and I will call AT&T for Uverse. He, of course, doesn't know that Uverse doesn't support Tivo and that I am mostly bluffing.
He says he'll come back tomorrow morning, Sunday, at 9am. I ask him to call me first.
Sunday at 10am, the doorbell rings. New guy. He says he's Tivo literate and he'll get it figured out. Alas, the first guy had left a giant turd bomb for the second guy. He had started guided setup on the two old Tivos, one of which had no valid data connection. I had run setup just before moving and loaded the Charter profile so that I wouldn't need a data connection during install. I had planned on buying a wireless adapter for the master bedroom unit during the week since it had 12 days of data already. I learned that rebooting the Tivos during guided setup just picks up where it lets off. Fortunately I had 100 foot Cat 5 cable handy so I ran that upstairs so the master bedroom Tivo could get through setup. So, we get setup going and during that time he gets the Premiere paired up and working. Huzzah!
He works his calling into the mothership magic and I learn that he has to call THREE! different call centers to get it all setup. One of them is in India and he can't always understand what the techs on the other end of the phone are saying. He's been at this for a couple of hours and he has another Tivo install waiting. While the Tivos are still processing the guided setup data he asks if he can take off. I foolishly sign off on the paperwork but he gives me has cell number and a promise he will come back if the two units don't work.
Of course they can't tune anything. I call him up, he says he'll come back within two hours. He comes back in about 40 minutes. More mothership phone calls. Numbers were transposed, mistakes were made and they get all the numbers registered correctly. Both the Tivos come up correctly.
I also tell him that if I replace one of my old Tivos with a 6 tuner Roamio I am calling him because odds are the cablecard firmware will not be updated and he'll likely end up over here anyway.
8 hours on day one, 3 hours and change on day two and I am a happy Charter / Tivo customer.
For now.
Three cheers and a Tiger for Rodrick, a truly nice guy, of Charter Cable in Duluth, GA!
So my Charter tech arrived a little after 9am on July 5. When asked he had never worked with Tivos before. I told Charter when I placed the order that they needed a Tivo literate tech or someone available to help out. It always ends in tears and desperate laughter when a total Tivo newbie has to do an install. I show him where the three Tivos will be located. Downstairs in the living room, downstairs in the den/family room and upstairs in the master bedroom.
In the Den, I have an 8 foot LAN rack more or less and it's about 30" offset from the wall. I work at home and I am constantly fiddling with the equipment on the furniture. Eventually it will hold 3 big monitors, a 32" TV on the main counter workspace and on the upper shelf I have the self-contained boxes like the Tivo, it's external hard drive, the data switch, a NAS server, other widgets, boxes etc. On the floor shelf will eventually live 3 PCs, assorted UPS units and the like
The wall behind the rack/furniture has tws coax outlets that are live, he'll use one for the data modem and the other for the Tivo. He hooks up the modem first but leaves little slack between the wall and the furniture. I tell him that won't cut it, I need some service loop for wire managemnt and to eventually cover the wall to furniture wires with a mat or tape. He redoes it but he doesn't like it.
He hooks up the first Tivo, a Series 3, two tuner model. He slaps in a Motorola multicast card and tells me it's ready. I stifle a laugh. I turn it on and of course nothing is tuning. I navigate to the HOST ID screen with the information he needs to call in to his service desk and I tell him he has to pair the cable card up with the mothership. I also ask him if they've done away with Tuning Adapters. He blinds rapidly. I continue and tell him that my research indicates that Charter in Duluth, GA uses Tuning Adapters with Tivos. More blinking. He says he'll be right back. He comes back about 20 minutes later with 3 Tuning Adapters. I guess I am fortunate that he has them in the truck.
I ask him to get the Internet up and I can show him some wiring diagrams for the tuning adapters. I tell him it's best practice to split the coax with one cable assigned to the Tuning Adapter and the other to the Tivo. He does that but he wants to finish the Tivo installations before working on the Internet. I wish him well and continue unpacking my main desktop computer so that I am ready when the Internet comes up.
He starts on the master bedroom installation but won't leave me 20 feet of service loop on the coax because of safety concerns. My wife and I weren't completely settled on which wall to put the TV/Tivo but I can deal with that later so we pick and wall and gets going.
The Living Room install requires that he run coax around the exterior of the back of the house. The exterior is painted beige-ish and I ask him to use white cable. He doesn't have any. Fine. He does a nice and neat job and gets the outlet installed and he's done with the physical install.
He calls in for tech help. The poor guy is on hold, the first time for 40 minutes. He's on speaker with the Tivo "expert" on the other end and she is asking for all sorts of information in the wrong place. She wants him to find the HOST ID and Unit Address on the outside of the Tivo box. I let him suffer for a bit and then I step in and pull up the CableCard Pairing screen and show him what he needs. Trumpets blare and peasants cheer and the ball moves a little more down the field. He then asks me about the Tuning Adapters and registering those and I tell him he is on his own because I from Comcastia and in Comcastia we didn't have to use Tuning Adapters. This new land of Charterville is a mystery to me.
He fiddles with all the installations, loses his over the phone help and has to call back. He's 30 more minutes on hold and I leave him to it and get back to unpacking. Finally after getting more help on the phone and more fiddling that doesn't work he says he'll get the Internet going because that's pretty straight forward. He does that and it comes up without a hitch. More cheering.
The mothership had him remove the cablecards and put them in slot 2 even though it's posted on the Tivo boxes and on two different screens that Multicast cards MUST go in slot 1. I point that out and I tell him I am dead solid sure that the cards need to go into slot 1 for both tuners to work. I am saved this discussion about our third Tivo because it's a Premiere with just one card slot. Now another tech arrives but I don't hear their conversation and he does more fiddling but nothing is working. He's back on hold again to the mothership, this time for more than 30 minutes. More fiddling. No joy.
Finally at 5pm, eight! hours later I go out to his truck and he is on hold again with the mothership. I ask him what he's game plan is. He says he's basically stuck working on this until I sign off. I tell him I am not signing anything until it all works. He looks very dejected. I've offered him drinks through the day, I told him it was cool if he took to get some food but he didn't want to leave at all. I tell him ok, we've got to get out of here and go back and get some odds and ends from our old house. I tell him that they have until close of business on Tuesday the 9th to get it all working or we are done, and I will call AT&T for Uverse. He, of course, doesn't know that Uverse doesn't support Tivo and that I am mostly bluffing.
He says he'll come back tomorrow morning, Sunday, at 9am. I ask him to call me first.
Sunday at 10am, the doorbell rings. New guy. He says he's Tivo literate and he'll get it figured out. Alas, the first guy had left a giant turd bomb for the second guy. He had started guided setup on the two old Tivos, one of which had no valid data connection. I had run setup just before moving and loaded the Charter profile so that I wouldn't need a data connection during install. I had planned on buying a wireless adapter for the master bedroom unit during the week since it had 12 days of data already. I learned that rebooting the Tivos during guided setup just picks up where it lets off. Fortunately I had 100 foot Cat 5 cable handy so I ran that upstairs so the master bedroom Tivo could get through setup. So, we get setup going and during that time he gets the Premiere paired up and working. Huzzah!
He works his calling into the mothership magic and I learn that he has to call THREE! different call centers to get it all setup. One of them is in India and he can't always understand what the techs on the other end of the phone are saying. He's been at this for a couple of hours and he has another Tivo install waiting. While the Tivos are still processing the guided setup data he asks if he can take off. I foolishly sign off on the paperwork but he gives me has cell number and a promise he will come back if the two units don't work.
Of course they can't tune anything. I call him up, he says he'll come back within two hours. He comes back in about 40 minutes. More mothership phone calls. Numbers were transposed, mistakes were made and they get all the numbers registered correctly. Both the Tivos come up correctly.
I also tell him that if I replace one of my old Tivos with a 6 tuner Roamio I am calling him because odds are the cablecard firmware will not be updated and he'll likely end up over here anyway.
8 hours on day one, 3 hours and change on day two and I am a happy Charter / Tivo customer.
For now.
Three cheers and a Tiger for Rodrick, a truly nice guy, of Charter Cable in Duluth, GA!
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