Cable Card Service A Fraud
dojo
Newbie

Well, I am bummed.  The cable card does not work in the Mitsubishi TV.  This is despite a legal requirement that cable providers make Cable Card service available to their customers.  I will be following up on this with a letter to the FCC.

 

I am sure Verizon will argue that it is the TV’s fault.  But since it worked with Cox for a while I am sure that either Cox broke the TV and/or Verizon is purposely failing to provide working equipment.

 

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Re: Cable Card Service A Fraud
KenAF
Specialist - Level 2

Can you be more specific?  You weren't able to tune channels?  Or are you talking about a guide?

 

If you weren't able to tune channels, then it's possible that your particular installer just did not have much experience with activating CableCards.  Many otherson this forum are successfully using CableCards with TVs and/or TiVos.

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Re: Cable Card Service A Fraud
philhu
Contributor - Level 2

I currently have 2 TivoHD and 1 Mits DLP TV on 3 cablecards.

Working fine.

Before you go FCC'ing the problem, you say Cox might have broken the TV, How?

Are you sure the cable card is activated?  Did you call Verizon and let them try to fix it.

YOU LET THE INSTALLER LEAVE WITH A NON-WORKING INSTALLATION?  Why?

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Re: Cable Card Service A Fraud
dojo
Newbie

The TV is a Mitsubishi LT-37132.  The Cox provided card worked for almost two years.  Somehting changed about a month ago so that the card did not decode anything.  Cox came out several times, replaceing the card.  Each time they replaced the card an additional set of premium services stopped working until there was only the broadcast channels - channels we could pick up without the card.  The HD channels worked fine this way so we sent the the last tech home with his card and called Verizon.

The Verizon sales folks promised us that thier card would work.  They also said that a raw feed would work for another TV (analog) that was running off of the raw feed.  We believed the first promise but had doubts about the second.

As it turns out, the raw feed is entirely digital so the analog TV needs a box of some kind.  And the tech was unable to initize the cable card per his instructions.  The TV did it's initialize but when asked about the status of the card reported the pairing unavailable.  That is, the menu that the card generates came up on the TV without the information the tech needed to OK the decoding.  In all honesty I can not tell you that the TV is not now malfunctioning, but I have no reason to beileve that it is.  It's one of those finger pointing issues when two devices don't work together.  And I am no position to claim where the fault actually resides.

Let me add that I since connected the TV to both the raw feed and the Cable Box.  Using the split creen option I can watch raw HD channels (CBS for example) and those coming from the box into one of the HDMI ports.  The box delays the signal about a tenth of a second.  Both signals are of good quality, although it is only 1080i and not the 1080p provided by the Sony Playstation connected to the other HDMI port.  But we have well over 100 HD channels with all the movie options. 

We can control the cable box with our TV remote after a little work.  The only functions missing are the "On Demand" related functions.  Likewise the Verizon remote can do many of the functions, but can't monitor the signals, do split screen, change format, etc.  So, we can nix the Verizon controller.  Or keep it around for "On Demand". 

Aside from having to use boxes for the two TVs, I am pleased with the service.  That I am going to report this situation to the FCC is because I think Verizon should do more to support Cable Cards.  I am going to post a seperate thread explaining my reasons.  I do not think that Verizon is particularly evil, but just being good business people which is not always in the best interest of consumers.  In fact, I think Verizon is much closer to the desired model than most "cable" providers.  Nonetheless, the FCC should have this data point.

But if someone has a solution, feel free to tell me.

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