# Tuner adapter/cable card



## Richard Hollingshead (Nov 2, 2020)

With the newest tivo 4k edge cable dvr do u have to have tuner adapter with wide-open west (wow) for it to work and get all of there channels i cant seem to get an answer from wow or tivo, and secondly the cable cards im seeing on eBay will they work with wow are the universal to all providers and call wow with Mac number or whatever I need cable installer says they don't carry them to call wow and have them mail them and wow call center says installer has them and want to keep setting up install apt even though installer says they don't have them im feeling like I've gotten ripped off buying this system thx


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

If WOW doesn't know what you're talking about, you probably don't need one. WOW is the only one who can answer that question, not Tivo.

You must get your cable card from WOW. An ebay card won't work as most are stolen property and cable company specific. No cable company will activate a card that you didn't get directly from them. The only exception is FIOS, for reasons I don't fully understand.

Since cable companies are no longer required to support cable cards (which you're experiencing first hand), you'd be better off returning your Tivo and using the cable company box, or better yet, dump cable TV altogether and get something like Youtube TV which has the same channels but no cable cards, boxes, contracts or bogus fees and simply records to the cloud.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

mdavej said:


> If WOW doesn't know what you're talking about, you probably don't need one. WOW is the only one who can answer that question, not Tivo.
> 
> You must get your cable card from WOW. An ebay card won't work as most are stolen property and cable company specific. No cable company will activate a card that you didn't get directly from them. The only exception is FIOS, for reasons I don't fully understand.
> 
> Since cable companies are no longer required to support cable cards (which you're experiencing first hand), you'd be better off returning your Tivo and using the cable company box, or better yet, dump cable TV altogether and get something like Youtube TV which has the same channels but no cable cards, boxes, contracts or bogus fees and simply records to the cloud.


Good info except: Depending on who you talk to at a cable co (and typical telephone support agents are the worst) they may well *not* know anything about whether they use SDV (i.e., about Tuning Adapters). That's because 99+% of their customers (using set top boxes and DVR's furnished by the cable co) have no occasion to ever be concerned about such topics. If you're lucky their web site may provide such info, usually pretty well buried.


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## Abbott25 (Feb 9, 2018)

Spectrum tuning adapter , Frontier FIOS no Adapter.


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