FIOS And TIVO Series # and Cable Cards
JTVenetia
Newbie

I recently lost one tuner on my series 3 TIVO HD.  Asked for re-activation and eventually a new cable card to restore the lost tuner.  After the second visit I had nothing on either tuner.  Techs claim they have never been trained on cable cards, inventory is not controlled so they know good ones from bad ones, there is no way to test a cable card in their shops.  After and extended discussion and a visit by two senior techs and a supervisor I got back a few channels on one tuner.  I get only locals up to channel 50, USA.  I get the locals in both SD and HD so I know the tuner is working. 

I went to the Tivo Community Bulletin Board to see if anyone else had this problem.  I found that on December 4, 2009 in Western New York TIVO owners with cable cards lost all channels above 50.  This was resolved in about one week and was clearly a back office problem with FIOS software used to authorize the cards.  I thought I could go to the national FIOS support center and get my problem fixed in the same way since this appears to be an identical problem.  NO SURPRISE. 

Verizon national FIOS technical support refused to investigate the problem or solution with Western New York.  The one and only thing the tesch would do was to order another truck roll without any attempt to contact their center in New York.  At one point he said he did not have the telephone number and could not look it up (Verizon is one of  the largest phone companies in the country and they have no way to find an internal number in the same FIOS support organization??   

I have a lot of respect for the techs who try to solve problems (not this one) and I expect this will be resolved once I speak to a supervisor, but why doesn't Verizon provide adequate support and training to their techs on TIVO and cable cards.  I suppose they just want to continue to push their own HD STB by making it so hard to use anything else that you eventually just give up. 

In my humble opinion Verizon, along with the other cable providers so abuse the process of installing third party equipment that they should be prohibited form selling or renting equipment.  They should provide only the service and equipment, as was the case with ATT, should be divorced from service.  That process revolutionized phone service and it could do the same for television service. 

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Re: FIOS And TIVO Series # and Cable Cards
Hubrisnxs
Legend

well without a lot of reports from other customers in your area, they are going by the assumption that it is not an outage, and that there is no sizeable amount of customers experiencing the same issue, so they are treating it as an individual case basis.   You're right the Tech's don't have a lot of training on tivo's because they aren't supported items.  They rely on tivo technical support to support their own product.   The cable cards are a simple thing to verizon.  make sure they are activated - possibly send you a new one if their is suspicion that the cable card is bad, and 'possibly' a field tech.  field tech's aren't a whole lot of good as you have come to experience, because they are not tivo technicians. they are fios technicians and they support their own product.   

I would reach out to the tivo bulletin boards and post your issue there, and see if there is a consensus as to what the problem is, maybe one of them have had a similiar issue.  Please remember that absent any other reports in your area, that verizon can't consider it a back end thing, if it were it would naturally affect multiple tivo customers in an identical fashion.  

Is it possible it's the tivo box itself?  tivo's go bad just like any other piece of hardware.   

Also keep an eye on this forum post of yours, there are others here with tivo's that have a good deal of experience, and may have ran into the problem themselves,   they may be coming along and reading the posts soon I would hope.  

another great resource is the dslreports.com forum for issues like this.

give them a shot too.  http://www.dslreports.com/forum/vzfiostv

sorry about all your trouble, but for the record, if your cards only get channels upto 50 it sounds like a reactivation of those cable cards would correct it.    I can imagine that if you have talked to a supervisor and a few technicians that they would have tried that, but if you are unsure that they did, I would call back in to tech support again and ask them if they can deactivate and reactivate the cards.      normally when a verizon dvr gets 1-50, it is that same issue.   if they haven't replaced the cable cards, I would pursue that, if the reactivations don't help.

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Re: FIOS And TIVO Series # and Cable Cards
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

@JTVenetia wrote:

 why doesn't Verizon provide adequate support and training to their techs on TIVO and cable cards.  I suppose they just want to continue to push their own HD STB by making it so hard to use anything else that you eventually just give up. 


You hit it on the head. 1st they will not train their employees on non verizon equipment. Mostly because they dont have anything to do with that company and partly because they dont have the equipment TO support it. With their own boxes they have the ability to send signals to test and diagnose because it is running their software. Third party devices like TIVO and Moxie, do not have verizon software, so they have no way to diagnose it.  2nd, they dont want you using 3rd party devices, they want you to rent theirs. thats one of the ways they make money. The only reason they provide cable cards in the first place if because they are required to by law. No provider wants to use cable cards, they all want you to use their equipment.  

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Re: FIOS And TIVO Series # and Cable Cards
Hubrisnxs
Legend

@spacedebris wrote:
The only reason they provide cable cards in the first place if because they are required to by law. No provider wants to use cable cards, they all want you to use their equipment.  

bing!

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