This is a pretty nasty tale, but it reflects well upon Comcast as far as I am concerned despite the present state of my gear.
New building, new apartment, first people to reside in this space. Zip is 94704 - Berkeley Ca. 140 units in the building, 9 stories. Each place has a little wiring door/closet in the master closet where wires coming in, and wires into the place terminate and cross connect. Big, fat RG11 from the IDF down the hall, an eight way splitter with three live drops in the apartment (living room and both bedrooms. Tested by Comcast, levels are spot on.
New Tivo XL4. New (in plastic box) CableCard. Net result is no channels after multiple, successful pairings. When I say "no channels" I mean it. It never shows a single channel after the full Guided set up, pairing, etc. What I do get, consistently, is a giant blue bar graph saying "loading channel information" 75% complete. It sits on this in perpetuity. The same screen manifests itself if "test" channels, or "live tv" or in the case of the XL4, the "zoom" button is pressed from Tivo Central. NO CHANNELS of any kind ever show up after hours of "loading".
The CableCard menu, Conditional Access screen shows the right stuff... Con: yes Foo: yes and the last one changes to the letter "V".
Steps taken
* swap CableCard with two more from local (on University if you know the area) Comcast store. No change of any kind.
* grab 2 tuner DVR from local Comcast store to validate the cable drop, per say, is working. It pairs and loads channels immediately. Within 30 minutes it is fully loaded.
* grab my trusty Series 3 Tivo, successfully pair it with the two cards it requires, and it presents the same thing - no channels of any kind after 40 or 50 minutes. After three hours it is still showing nothing.
* call Tivo and they ship me a completely brand new XL4. I get another new CableCard from Comcast, go through the entire pairing ordeal, and the same results.
*Call Tivo Tech support and begin a 4.5 HOUR conference call with Tivo Cable Card tech support and Comcast pairing. Tivo tech support tries everything, nothing changes. The Tivo tech then starts digging into which "Berkeley" head end I am using, etc. Comcast pairing says "Pinole" and the Tivo guy has me install the 2 tuner Comcast box and we start looking at specific numeric channels. He finds half a dozen or so incorrectly mapped channels and asserts this is why the XL4 is gagging on the channel download, etc. He is not pointing fingers at Comcast, just reporting this building is not using whatever is defined as the default Berkeley "cable card" channel lineup.
* he has me re-do guided setup (tenth or so time? I've lost count) and we get to a screen which does reflect four or five "Berkeley" mappings from which to choose. Some are named after local large apartments. One is the CAL Berkeley campus, etc. This seems to support his contention that this specific building is not using one of Tivo's pre-baked guide/channel mapping instances.
* the Tivo tech submits a formal, escalated request for this new mapping to some group at Tivo. This was last Thursday 7/25. I am told it will take three to five business days for this load to be available.
* in the interim, Tivo says they will not refund my money until this final load is used, and will do so if it fails to fix the issue. So I am stuck using a 2 tuner Comcast device (which works but is very primitive). As I do not use "triple play" I cannot use the (apparently) good 4 tuner Xfinity box. Why this is the case seems to be political or based upon marketing but I don't know for sure. (I use far faster and cheaper services for Internet and phone but I mention this only to support why I do not qualify for the 4 tuner DVR not to diss Comcast).
My Conclusion: something very strange about this new building and pairing anything non-Comcast.
I wonder if anyone can shed ANY light upon this? Comcast has been great about trying to help my Tivo working but this issue appears to be some previously undefined issue of synergy.
thanks.
regards,
patrick
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