Tales of Abject Failure - Part 1

HDTV is nice. HD DVRs are nice things to have. Cable company provided DVRs, however, are the unholy spawn of Satan himself, and that's when they're working. Some time ago, our 56" DLP was finally given the loving embrace of HD cable content via one of these things. Immediately, I hated the interface on the bugger, and the horrible workarounds required to get the box working as well as it should. Namely, in this case, I had to run the video over component directly to the TV, and set up overrides in the hidden service menu to make sure SD content was not upscaled in order to use my TV's regular aspect correction tools, instead of directly into my AVR which has a higher quality scaler than my TV or the DVR itself, because it can't do any aspect correction despite clearly having its own scaler.

This is crap, and I hate it.

That was all back when the damn thing was working. That box decided one night during House to reboot about 5 times during the first 40 minutes of the show. Obviously, this is sub-optimal, so we called for service. Initially, they gave no guarantees about when they would be able to fix their faulty equipment, suggesting that it might take over a week to get someone out here, but some mild complaining later yielded a service appointment by Wednesday (House airs Mondays this year, in case you are not aware). The technician, upon arriving, was carrying a new box, which suggested he had no interest in diagnosing problems and wanted to jump straight to replacing it. He noted a high current running through the cable itself, which is odd, and promised to look into it before leaving. If he did, he never reported his results, because shortly after walking out to do that, he got into his van and drove off. There were unwatched shows on the first box, but what the hell the internet can fix those problems (though with the bandwidth capping it gets a little hairy). At least we had a working DVR now, right?

The answer to that question depends on what you consider a working DVR. I could watch any digital and/or high def channels with the box, which is exactly what you expect. Pausing live broadcasts however, was problematic, as resuming typically inserted 10-15 second pauses at various times followed by jumping ahead. After a few such pauses, the screen would turn black and all transport controls (fast forward, pause, rewind, stop, play) would return an error on the screen that those only work while viewing a video. Well shit. Changing channels or forcing to LiveTV "fixed" that, so it was not a stream breakdown. Scheduled recordings followed the same pattern of recording fine, but not playing back at all. I'm pretty sure playing back recorded content is the major point of having a DVR in the first place, so I was not particularly amused by this.

It's around this point that I realized TiVo's service, if paid for yearly or 3-years in advance, is cheaper than Comcast's total charge for the DVR. The interface is less irritating, there are more features (though we lose access to Comcast's own anemic VOD service), and the hardware is much less likely to fail spectacularly. Of course, the catch is that you need a CableCARD to access everything, but how hard can that be to get?

For those not in the know, CableCARD is a standard device to let unofficial boxes decode cable signals, unscrambling like a cable box but without the box. If you've ever seen an expansion card for a laptop (PCMCIA form factor) you know exactly what they look like. The TiVo has slots up front behind a little door that you just slide one of these cards into, and you're more than half way there. The remaining part of the process is calling a phone number and giving them the serial number of the card, and occasionally a number that is displayed on your screen shortly after the device recognizes that a card is put in. That is it for the home-side installation process of CableCARDs. I am not in any way exaggerating the ease of installation here. Well let's check Comcast's FAQ on the subject. Confusingly, they have two different spots where they talk about the devices, one for just general use and one for TiVos on the series 3 platform. Let's look at what they say, starting with the general one:

Can I install a CableCARD myself or does a technician need to come to my home?

At this time, professional installation by a Comcast technician is required.

Well okay, though I'm not sure what about the process honestly requires some sort of professional. Now for the TiVo specific answer:

Can I install the CableCARD into my TiVo Series 3 HD by myself?

To ensure that your installation is performed accurately, a technician is required to install and activate the CableCARDs. Please call 1-800-COMCAST (2662278) to set up an installation appointment.

Oh. Okay. To ensure that it's performed accurately. I may only have implied it thus far, but I now own a TiVo, I didn't wait to cut through this stupid red tape or try and get a third box before purchasing the object. Before you even get to the installation instructions in the package, you come across a sheet that you are supposed to give to your CableCARD installer. Typically they will claim that they do not need such a thing, but the general experience of the internet is that their complaints are pure hubris and not indicative of their capability in the least. That I now understand how easy it is too is just a side effect of learning that even TiVo themselves do not trust these idiots to slide a card in properly and call a phone number without shitting their pants or licking nearby windows. They even have a hotline for installers to call in case they fail miserably.

Well, that's the official Comcast policy there, but it doesn't take a whole lot of searching the internet to find people who were able to pick up the cards in their local offices, so I attempted exactly this today, while dumping their pile of worthless slag on them to get it off our bill. They told me that they really did not have any there, that they were all with the technicians. Well, that's one way to ensure that you need a tech to install something this braindead simple to install, since you need the tech to even touch the hardware in the first place. Fine. Well, they also claimed to have a wait list for whatever reason, despite the entire lack of actual shortage for these things. A second phone call (the first one basically just gave us the company line and mentioned the wait list the first time) including complaints of the lunacy of how difficult it is to get these damn things, and a drop of the F-bomb got them scrambling about a bit to see about getting this shit done for real. We should be getting contacted within 48 hours about this.

Of course, this CSR drone let slip the standard complaint that CableCARDs don't really work. This is sort of true, but only due to massive statistics altering caused by further intentional stupidity. Comcast techs have a habit of installing a card, and if it doesn't work they don't throw it out or destroy it, they just return it to the pile. Typically, if your card is not new directly from the packaging, it will not work because it has already been proven not to work or they wouldn't even have it on hand. This is common sense stuff here, but Comcast does not work on such principles. Whenever they finally get out here I'll update as to whether they continued their failures.

On the plus side, I get all local HD on my TiVo without the card, though no guide data for those channels. Also, until the CableCARD comes and starts doing QAM mapping of digital channels, NBC is channel 4 and NBCHD is 4-1, which is much easier to remember than 160. All of the HD channels are on subchannel -1 of their SD equivalent, which is pretty sweet. The lack of guide data for these channels means I can't program recordings in a sane manner, but the TiVo software is too nice to let you flounder there; you can set up recordings like on a VCR giving it the time and channel. Sure if something happens to the broadcast time it will record anyway, but it's better than nothing. Hell, it's even better than the Comcast Motorola box that would record but not play. Also, the TiVo does aspect correction itself, so it is hooked up to my AVR via HDMI directly, no more splitting the inputs and just generally complicating my setup. I've read enough online to know that part 2 isn't likely to be a happy ending so look forward to that.