dimanche 1 février 2015

Comcast Cablecard Activation - Roamio Pro

Yesterday I stopped by my local Comcast store to pickup new M cards for a new Tivo and a HDHR Prime only to find out they moved about 2 miles away and rushed to get there before they closed I thought at 1PM to find out the new bigger store was open to 6PM on Saturdays. I walk in and a guy asks me what I need, takes my name and gives me a ticket for the long line. Luckily they had a couple couches, a bunch of tables, a bunch of tablets, and a large flat panel showing Oblivion - which I proceeded to sit down and watch. Fast forward an hour and its my turn. I tell the gal I need cablecards (2) and seh gets them from the back, scans them, asks for my drivers license, and sends me on the way after circling the telephone number on the bottom of the receipt print which is maybe 6 font.



Saturday night at 11PM I call the 877-405-2298 number i got here and waited on hold for about 10 minutes. A friendly gal answers and asks for the Cablecard Serial Number, Host ID, Cablecard ID, and Data. She reads it back and puts me on hold for a few minutes and then comes back to tell me there was an error pairing the card and she was going to elevate the issue and could I hold. At this point I though it was going to be really painfull but a few minutes later she came back and confirmed pairing was successfull. In the meantime while on hold I noticed the Tivo was stuck at 72% acquiring channel map so I rebooted! When she came back she asked me to check a local channel and it was again at 72% channel map. I was a bit concerned it was still stuck after the reboot, but she said just wait and sure enough after a few minutes the locals tuned fine, then encrypted channels like AMC/SciFi/UHD/Disney were coming in, and I thanked her for her help. She told me some of the higher channels will take a while to come in and just leave the tivo on overnight. I went to sleep a happy Tivo Roamio Pro owner.

:)



The actiavation gal was very helpfull and the whole process including the intial 10 minute wait time took a bit less that 40 minutes. I was happy with Comcasts service especially compared to my initial cablecard install in 2005 which required a truck roll and 3 techs, $20, and about 3 hours of my time for my first flat panel sharp LCD with cablecard and firewire (still like the tv)......







I will say the initial Tivo experience leaves a lot to be desired.

1. Tivos for some reason take forever to boot up.

2. Upon initial setup, you are forced to wait for a painfully slow guide data download/insertion to some sort of databse.

3. Upon intitial setup, you are forced to wait through a painfully slow software update process.

4 Upon initial setup you are forced to sit through at least 2 reboots.

This does not count the cablecard activation process.

What I thin Tivo should do is boot to the GUI, take the user through a short wizard and collect the information it needs and then in the background download guide data and software updates. The it can ask the user if they want to reboot to take effect or wait until early AM or a time when it is not in use. I mean these boxes are called Roamio and they include streaming services and not just traditional linear services nowadays. Just my 2 cents opinion.




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