# Cablevision self install story ...



## I_am_not_randy (Oct 30, 2010)

Figured I would share my Cablevision self install experience.

I am on Long island, and was able to get a cable card from the Optimum store.

Set up the TIVO on a Friday night, and by Sat morning it looked like it had upgraded to 14.5. So I proceeded with the cablecard install, after finding directions on the web (couldnt find any in the documentation that came with the Premiere).

Spent a half hour with a knowledgable guy at Cablevision who was clearing trying to bind the cable card, at the end of which he instructed me to schedule a tech vist. When I asked what the tech would do, he said replace the cable card. so I told him I would simply get a new cable card.

In the afternoon, got a new cable card, and spent appox 45 minutes on the phone with a bunch of total morons at cablvision. This time was spent simply explaining what I was doing, and trying to get transferrred to the correct department. Each new department would simply tell me I needed a tech cist. 

Finally I was transsfered to the right department, and about 20 minutes later I had a working TIVO.


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## Wingershute (Oct 22, 2010)

I just received my m card today, installed it in the premiere, activated it through Cablevision but I can't see any channels. What could be wrong? The tech told me to try rebooting and/or remove a signal splitter I have running to the Tivo. If that doesn't work he said to schedule an appointment for a truck roll. He said I would not be charged for the visit but now I'm afraid that I will receive a bill. Any suggestions?


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## msokad (Apr 4, 2004)

Did you get the Tuning Adapter from CV?


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## jdfs (Oct 21, 2002)

msokad said:


> Did you get the Tuning Adapter from CV?


I just went through this a week ago. Same problem couldn't bind the card over the phone. They had to come out the next day and the guy got it working in about a half hour. Not sure what the problem was, but they said on the phone there was about a 50% success rate doing it over the phone with a Tivo.


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## I_am_not_randy (Oct 30, 2010)

My advice would be to go the the Optimum store, and exchange the cable card and then call cablevision up and try again. I would also not install the tuning adapter untill you were getting most of your channels (the tuning adapter is only needed for a small percentage of channels. I still havent installed mine). 

The reason I suggest getting a new cable card is because when my first cable card didnt work, and the tech suggested a truck roll, I asked what the tech could do that I couldnt. He said all he was going to do was change the cable card, so I said I would just get a new one myself., The second one worked.

Please be aware that I asked asked the tech if there was a signal problem, and he could tell there wasnt, he said he could see the Tivo box just fine. Becasue that is something that the techs can do, that is, imnprove the signal strength.

There is clearly a significant compatibility probelm with the cable cards and Tivo, but it never seems to be resolved. 

Good luck and let us know what happens.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

jdfs said:


> I just went through this a week ago. Same problem couldn't bind the card over the phone. They had to come out the next day and the guy got it working in about a half hour. Not sure what the problem was, but they said on the phone there was about a 50% success rate doing it over the phone with a Tivo.


like the OP said - you have to get to the right people. What cablevision needs to do on their end is properly enter the cable card into their billing system. This is not for charging you correctly for the card
but
so that the correct tiers of service are recognized by the card and they can send down the correct and full channel map to the cable card and you see them on your TiVo.

it seems that only a handful of employees know how to do this currently. then maybe 5% have signal issues or other actual infrastructure issues that need a truck roll


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## Wingershute (Oct 22, 2010)

Well I just got 2 cablecards installed in my 2 Premieres. Both were initially defective, did not bind and required 2 truck rolls from Cablevision. To my surprise, both Techs were intimately familiar with Tivos and cablecards. The first Tech was a Senior Tech and before he arrived at my house, he was at a location that used a Moxi and after 4.5 hours dealing with Engineers and numerous customer service employees he was not able to bind the card. He stated that Moxis cannot handle the new firmware version that the cards use. 
He also said that more people are opting to use cablecards, especially with Tivos. So overall I cannot be anymore pleased with the process...well except that I waited all day until 1 Tech showed up 6 hours late while the other showed up but did not ring my doorbell and ended being 3.5 hours late!


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## Richard in Marin (Jan 3, 2007)

My Premier has performed almost flawlessly since I bought it 2-3 months after release. I did c-card installation over the phone with a few 'side steps', but I have a question. What is the tuning adaptor? I have Comcast, and don't remember anything like that.


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## I_am_not_randy (Oct 30, 2010)

A tuning adapter is only required for some cable systems, in this specfic case, cablevision.

I dont know specfics, but from what I do know there isnt enough bandwidth to transmit every channel, so some channels are shared, and the cable box needs to tell the cable company what specific channel to send you. For example, with cablevision, channels 800 and 801 , 802 and 803 are shared. When you select one of these channels, the cablebox communicates with the cable company to tell them which specific channel to send. For a standard cable box this isnt an issue, as communication is two way. For a TIVO with a cable card however, there is no communication from the TIVO to the cable company, so a tuning adapter is needed to receive any multiplexed channels. 

A tuning adapter is a peice of equiptment from your cable company. The cable comes from the wall, into the tuning adapter, and then into the TIVO. The TIVO then connects to the Tuning adapter via USB. The TIVO tells the tuning adapter what channel it wants, the tuning adapter tells the cable company, and then you recieve the right channel. somehting like that anyway.


So, if you are getting all the challes you subscribe to, you dont need a tuning adapter.


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## Richard in Marin (Jan 3, 2007)

Thank you, randy-NOT


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## Lrscpa (Apr 20, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> like the OP said - you have to get to the right people. What cablevision needs to do on their end is properly enter the cable card into their billing system. This is not for charging you correctly for the card but so that the correct tiers of service are recognized by the card and they can send down the correct and full channel map to the cable card and you see them on your TiVo.
> 
> it seems that only a handful of employees know how to do this currently. then maybe 5% have signal issues or other actual infrastructure issues that need a truck roll


Cablevision has an "HD" Department, generally knowledgeable in TiVo/Cablecard/TA matters. Ask for the HD Department when you first get a human on the phone.


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## Brighton Line (Mar 15, 2006)

It's a crap shoot when you call. I have had them rebind and other times insist on a truck roll. I have just replaced my cable cards in my Series 3 it turns out that it is a hardware issue. The tuner on the Series three is not finishing the tune to the channel.
$150 for a refurb TivoHD (couldn't talk them into an XL), so I went with buying a new Premier.
Since I have a TivoHD in the bedroom on a multistream once the Premier gets here I will swap the MultiStream in the bedroom to the new Premier and the Series 3 single stream cards will go to the Bedroom TivoHD.
I will then call to rebind and roll the bones and see if they will do it without a truck roll.
I'll just use the Series 3 for my 60 days just to transfer or watch recorded shows. I may hook up an HD antenna have on the bedroom TV for those 60 days too.
FWIW


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## lamer01 (Oct 8, 2010)

Tried the self-install, the lady on the phone said the card is not in their system. My question was, why are you handing them out without first entering them in your system?
They insisted on a truck roll (no charge).
The guy called a different number that only the techs can call. The lady on the other side and him were talking some cablevision jargon among themselves. Eventually, they declared the original card a loss.
He had another card with him. We tried that and it also did not work initially.
Then he and the cablevision lady on the phone went through some more cablevision jargon and eventually they got it working. It took about 45 minutes for something that should take 1 minute according to the tech. If the cards were properly set up ahead of time and if cablevision had a self-serve web page were the customer can enter the card's MAC address, etc., everything could be so smooth.


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## senecapa (Jan 29, 2008)

I realize it is a crap shoot, but install went fine for me.

You have to go pick up the cablecard from their store (not sure why they can't just ship it like their cable boxes).

After a bit of - "We don't always have one available, we're checking in the back" they produced one. Said it was free for a year (likely tied to their free cable box for a year promo since they just eliminated Analog channels).

Went home, let the tivo setup fail, got to the cablecard screen, called up Cablevision and within 15 min it was working fine.

i'd definitely advise asking for the HD dept. or saying "I am calling to Bind a Cable Card to my Tivo".


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## chillmen (Nov 19, 2010)

Just got a tivo Premiere xl yesterday, called up cablevision told the rep I was binding my cable card, she thought i was buying a cable card, so she went through the whole thing of having a tech come by and it would cost $30, I told her I already picked up the card and just needed to bind it, she was confused and asked me if I was getting an error message, so I asked her for the "Hidef" department, she said there was not such thing, then I said againg I needed to activate the card, so she put me on hold for 5 minutes, came back with mike from the High def department, lol. the guy was great he asked for the equipment Id and binded the thing in like 10 seconds and my tivo works perfect so far.
the moral of the story is, likeothers have said is ask for high def deparment right away not to waste time.


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## jfig24 (Nov 19, 2010)

I just got a TiVo Premiere yesterday and also tried having the card binded last night. A little background to this story...I picked up the card on Tuesday night and the guy at the Optimum Store I think was new because when I asked for a Cablecard, he looked at me like I had three heads. I think a lot of my issues are due to the way he added the card to my account. The first guy I spoke to on the phone was with the HD Department. He proceded with the steps to bind the card and the screen showed a success message. However, I was not getting any channels (i'm in the Bronx BTW so I don't need the tuning adapter). He tried sending a signal to the card numerous times and nothing was working so he scheduled a tech visit for tomorrow. I hopped online and did a little research and found out that sometimes the card may not be linked to your account properly so I called back a second time and got another tech in the HD Department. This guy was a real ******. I explained to him what was happening and he proceded to tell me that looking over the previous techs notes, everything that could be down over the phone was done so i'd have to wait for the tech to come tomorrow. I asked him if he could rebind the card and resend a signal and he said that the 1st guy had already done that so for him to do it would make no difference. Needless to say, I was beyond annoyed with the guy and tried to keep my cool. So I asked for his supervisor and about 2 minutes later, she jumped on the line. She was very nice and tried to do everything she could but no success. So, I hopped online again and did some more reasearch. I found out that if you go to the Cablecards CA screen and see "Not Staged" instead of "Ready" for the card's status, that this was due to the card not being linked to your account properly on Cablevisions end and to call them up and have them do a "Staged" signal send". I called up a 3rd time and again, got a very nice person in the HD Department but he was not able to do much for me. So, I have no channels coming in. The card binded properly so it more than likely works, but some step was missed because it shows "Not Staged" for the status. When I mentioned this to the 3rd tech I spoke to, he had no idea what I was talking about or what "Not Staged" meant. I was planning on calling back tonight when I get home from work, but wonder if it's even worth it since the techs have been useless. Maybe the tech who comes out tomorrow will know what he's doing.


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## Hallatauer (May 2, 2007)

Just hooked up my Premiere the other night with Cablevision. I dropped off an old cable box and got a cablecard in replacement. Took the sales person a bit to switch... she must have been new but with help, they got it done. Bought it home, hooked everything up, error. Doh, I put the cablecard in upside down. After flipping it, the startup proceeded as expected. Connected to my home wireless network, no problem. Firmware update for the cablecard, then several other updates for the TiVo box. When all was done, about 2 hrs, got an error message to call Cablevision customer service. Rep forwarded me to one of their tech guys. All he needed was the Host ID number from the TiVO, a reboot, and all is good!

Everything works. Got rid of the extra cable box, put everything on HDMI cables, streams from NetFlix and YouTube. Beautiful HD picture. My wife thinks I'm a genius!


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## 912er (Nov 20, 2010)

TiVo Premiere self installed and watching via Cablevision in under 1 hour. Must have gotten lucky. Anyone notice how much better the video looks compared to the SA boxes? Is it just me?


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## bratan (Dec 9, 2007)

I swapped my 2 single stream cards for a m-card on Saturday. At the store they knew exactly what I was talking about, and when I called to bind also no issues. However after that channels started to disappear. After I reboot Tivo HD and wait for some time they will appear but then will be gone again (even SD channels). Called CV twice, no luck resolving it so far. Thinking about swapping the card...


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## Hallatauer (May 2, 2007)

912er said:


> TiVo Premiere self installed and watching via Cablevision in under 1 hour. Must have gotten lucky. Anyone notice how much better the video looks compared to the SA boxes? Is it just me?


I agree, the picture looks even better now.


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## coolpal (Mar 3, 2010)

looks like the folks on phone screw something up... just tried to bind a m-card on my new premiere on tuesday and the card keeps showing "Not Staged", and after trying 3 diff reps on the phone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about, but finally had to accept a free truck roll the next day.

the guy who came on wednesday made my same cablecard work.. he said it's something on their side.. but looks like he got it all working in under 30 mins or so.. 

btw, the un-encrypted channels were working fine from the beginning... just stuff like cnn, etc., that weren't working until the guy came over and fixed it. Now i wonder what channels I am missing out without that SDV adapter (i have family io).. also does CV charge extra for that adapter?

pal


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## rfcarpentier (Mar 6, 2009)

Good Morning All,

Last Saturday I drove out to my local Optimum Store and picked up Cablecard and Tuning Adaptor as that in IO Silver package the 800 channel are all SDV or some are not sure.The card was sealed in a plastic sleave and the TA was in a box(not installed). The Cable Card identifies itself as a Cisco M-Card. 

My Tivo came from Tivo last night. I setup my new Premiere and the unit did the CableCard firmware update and the Tivo updates. After 2 hours of updates and reboots Tivo only sees Channels a very small amount of channels. I get 2-13, no 14 which is MSG Varsity then I get 15-25 and then they stop. I get a few HD in the 700 mostly the channels that are the same as the SD ones in the lower range. 

The channels that I dont get state searching for signal. If you check the signal strengh meter I am at 79/80 and peak at about 85. I see the same levels on channels I do get. 

I call CV twice once for the initial setup and I called back a second time and they sent the signal again. Still I got nothing. I figured I would post hear before calling Tivo for help. 

I am in Woodbridge CT.


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## Lrscpa (Apr 20, 2003)

rfcarpentier said:


> Good Morning All,
> 
> Last Saturday I drove out to my local Optimum Store and picked up Cablecard and Tuning Adaptor as that in IO Silver package the 800 channel are all SDV or some are not sure.The card was sealed in a plastic sleave and the TA was in a box(not installed). The Cable Card identifies itself as a Cisco M-Card.
> 
> ...


Call Cablevision - as soon as you get a live person on the line, ask for the 'HD Department'. They should be able to help.


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## rfcarpentier (Mar 6, 2009)

Lrscpa said:


> Call Cablevision - as soon as you get a live person on the line, ask for the 'HD Department'. They should be able to help.


Called Tivo last night to make sure that everything on there end was corrected and indeed it was. They gave me a case #. Called CV and explained the issue. They tried sending the signal to the card again but still nothing. They stated that they would need to send a truck. I asked if I could do anything till I schedule the call and also what was the tech going to do. They were going to swap the card. I told them that I was visiting family near the Walk In Center and would swap the card myself. So on Monday off to the walkin center.

Details to follow. Thank you for all of the quick responses.


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## nutsnbolts (Dec 28, 2010)

Any updates to this. It's been 5 days for me trying to get this to work. 

CV is coming out again to bring more cards to try and make it work. Hopefully this will resolve the issue per Tivo's recommendation on trying it to 7 cards or so.


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## ablanding (Sep 26, 2007)

Tried self install this week, picked up cablecard and tuning adapter at Optimum store in CT. No problems there. Installed card and made several attempts to bind and authorize with cablevision on the phone. The status screen said authorization was received, yet the TiVO could only tune the basic non encrypted channels. The CA status screen said "not staged" meaning it was not authorized to decrypt the channels for viewing. They gave up and dispatched a technician at no charge the next day. The technician put in a new card, and a few seconds later there was a message saying that the card was receiving a firmware update, never saw that happen on the first card. After the update completed in about 5 minutes, he called in the authorization using the card number and host ID of the TiVO and it worked a few seconds later. Then we put the tuning adapter inline which had been authorized the day before, and all the channels came in as expected.

Other tidbits, the phone support rep said cablevision is planning a technology change in the next 6 to 12 months making the tuning adapter no longer needed. Also the field technician said there were issues with cablecards on their system with the series 4 (Premier) TiVO's but it was resolved with a software change in both the Tivo and cablecard. If you call cablevision for an at home install they will charge for the visit, but if you attempt it yourself and it fails they come out at no charge.


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## nutsnbolts (Dec 28, 2010)

ablanding said:


> Tried self install this week, picked up cablecard and tuning adapter at Optimum store in CT. No problems there. Installed card and made several attempts to bind and authorize with cablevision on the phone. The status screen said authorization was received, yet the TiVO could only tune the basic non encrypted channels. The CA status screen said "not staged" meaning it was not authorized to decrypt the channels for viewing. They gave up and dispatched a technician at no charge the next day. The technician put in a new card, and a few seconds later there was a message saying that the card was receiving a firmware update, never saw that happen on the first card. After the update completed in about 5 minutes, he called in the authorization using the card number and host ID of the TiVO and it worked a few seconds later. Then we put the tuning adapter inline which had been authorized the day before, and all the channels came in as expected.
> 
> Other tidbits, the phone support rep said cablevision is planning a technology change in the next 6 to 12 months making the tuning adapter no longer needed. Also the field technician said there were issues with cablecards on their system with the series 4 (Premier) TiVO's but it was resolved with a software change in both the Tivo and cablecard. If you call cablevision for an at home install they will charge for the visit, but if you attempt it yourself and it fails they come out at no charge.


I had cablevision come out as well. 3 hours later, cablevision still can't figure it out.

A couple questions...

1. Do you have the Premiere XL?
2. Did you really need a tuning adapter, I might pick it up but Cablevision said I didn't need it?
3. Was it scientific atlanta cable card?

This is what I have an basically I am hoping that it's the same setup...


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