# Comcast Cablecard Activation - Roamio Pro



## qz3fwd (Jul 6, 2007)

Yesterday I stopped by my local Comcast store to pickup new M cards for a new Tivo and a HDHR Prime only to find out they moved about 2 miles away and rushed to get there before they closed I thought at 1PM to find out the new bigger store was open to 6PM on Saturdays. I walk in and a guy asks me what I need, takes my name and gives me a ticket for the long line. Luckily they had a couple couches, a bunch of tables, a bunch of tablets, and a large flat panel showing Oblivion - which I proceeded to sit down and watch. Fast forward an hour and its my turn. I tell the gal I need cablecards (2) and seh gets them from the back, scans them, asks for my drivers license, and sends me on the way after circling the telephone number on the bottom of the receipt print which is maybe 6 font.

Saturday night at 11PM I call the 877-405-2298 number i got here and waited on hold for about 10 minutes. A friendly gal answers and asks for the Cablecard Serial Number, Host ID, Cablecard ID, and Data. She reads it back and puts me on hold for a few minutes and then comes back to tell me there was an error pairing the card and she was going to elevate the issue and could I hold. At this point I though it was going to be really painfull but a few minutes later she came back and confirmed pairing was successfull. In the meantime while on hold I noticed the Tivo was stuck at 72% acquiring channel map so I rebooted! When she came back she asked me to check a local channel and it was again at 72% channel map. I was a bit concerned it was still stuck after the reboot, but she said just wait and sure enough after a few minutes the locals tuned fine, then encrypted channels like AMC/SciFi/UHD/Disney were coming in, and I thanked her for her help. She told me some of the higher channels will take a while to come in and just leave the tivo on overnight. I went to sleep a happy Tivo Roamio Pro owner.


The actiavation gal was very helpfull and the whole process including the intial 10 minute wait time took a bit less that 40 minutes. I was happy with Comcasts service especially compared to my initial cablecard install in 2005 which required a truck roll and 3 techs, $20, and about 3 hours of my time for my first flat panel sharp LCD with cablecard and firewire (still like the tv)......



I will say the initial Tivo experience leaves a lot to be desired. 
1. Tivos for some reason take forever to boot up.
2. Upon initial setup, you are forced to wait for a painfully slow guide data download/insertion to some sort of databse.
3. Upon intitial setup, you are forced to wait through a painfully slow software update process.
4 Upon initial setup you are forced to sit through at least 2 reboots.
This does not count the cablecard activation process.
What I thin Tivo should do is boot to the GUI, take the user through a short wizard and collect the information it needs and then in the background download guide data and software updates. The it can ask the user if they want to reboot to take effect or wait until early AM or a time when it is not in use. I mean these boxes are called Roamio and they include streaming services and not just traditional linear services nowadays. Just my 2 cents opinion.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I still want to know why I have to talk to a person who can then transcribe the number I read incorrectly. I want a web page where I can type in what I see on the screen. Better yet I want a web page the TiVo can access directly and tell comcast to activate the dadgum card I just plugged in, then I don't have to wait on hold or anything, I just plug in the card. This is not remotely difficult, yet after all these years we still don't have it.


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## joewom (Dec 10, 2013)

tomhorsley said:


> I still want to know why I have to talk to a person who can then transcribe the number I read incorrectly. I want a web page where I can type in what I see on the screen. Better yet I want a web page the TiVo can access directly and tell comcast to activate the dadgum card I just plugged in, then I don't have to wait on hold or anything, I just plug in the card. This is not remotely difficult, yet after all these years we still don't have it.


Umm why would a company do some thing like this for maybe 1% of their customers. Makes no business sense.


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## qz3fwd (Jul 6, 2007)

tomhorsley said:


> I still want to know why I have to talk to a person who can then transcribe the number I read incorrectly. I want a web page where I can type in what I see on the screen. Better yet I want a web page the TiVo can access directly and tell comcast to activate the dadgum card I just plugged in, then I don't have to wait on hold or anything, I just plug in the card. This is not remotely difficult, yet after all these years we still don't have it.


True, and you should be able to call them up and have them mail you the darn cards. 
Why do you have to go in person. 
You can get a cable modem, a DVR, pretty much anything but a cablecard through the mail.

It is all about hindering your use of a cablecard, and that is why they do it this way. They could easily setup a website for cablecard activation-but choose not to. Remember they still see cablecard as a threat to their business model, even thoug the cable industry created the technology [under the gun of the FCC/Federal Govermnent edict to implement legislation] years ago. Is it really suprising the industry created an activation process which puts up roadbloacks to consumer use for a system they did not want in the first place????


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

joewom said:


> Umm why would a company do some thing like this for maybe 1% of their customers. Makes no business sense.


Because it would be utterly trivial, save them the cost of a phone support person taking the call, not to mention the cost of rolling a truck and sending a tech out so he can call a smarter person with the exact same info when the morons on the phone are unable to activate the card correctly. Plus Comcast already has a web activation page, and for an extra nickle they could have made TiVo one of the devices you could activate over the web.


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## joewom (Dec 10, 2013)

tomhorsley said:


> Because it would be utterly trivial, save them the cost of a phone support person taking the call, not to mention the cost of rolling a truck and sending a tech out so he can call a smarter person with the exact same info when the morons on the phone are unable to activate the card correctly. Plus Comcast already has a web activation page, and for an extra nickle they could have made TiVo one of the devices you could activate over the web.


I'm saying the cost of all you said for less the 1% of their customers is not with it to them. It's like Verizon spending money on POTS its not worth it to them. It must be worth it to a company not it would be nice.


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## DeltaOne (Sep 29, 2013)

joewom said:


> Umm why would a company do some thing like this for maybe 1% of their customers. Makes no business sense.


I'm not a FiOS customer, but believe I've read here that Verizon has a web page for activating cablecards.


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## joewom (Dec 10, 2013)

DeltaOne said:


> I'm not a FiOS customer, but believe I've read here that Verizon has a web page for activating cablecards.


I read on here their techs do so they do not have to call into someone.


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