# New Tivo Box, Same Cablecard?



## eaglestvo (Dec 27, 2008)

I have had a Tivo Premiere at my fulltime residence for about a year and a half with OTA. I am finally upgrading the Series 3 (using cablecard) at my vacation home to a Premiere. Can I just take the cablecard out of the Series 3 and place it in the Premiere? Or do I need the cable guy to bring a new card or reconfigure the existing card for the new Tivo?

I am trying to figure this out in advance of my next trip to my vacation home because I am only at the house for a few days at a time, and once I get there it will be too late to schedule a cable guy. I use Charter Cable with a single multistream card, without a tuning adapter.

Thanks


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

eaglestvo said:


> I have had a Tivo Premiere at my fulltime residence for about a year and a half with OTA. I am finally upgrading the Series 3 (using cablecard) at my vacation home to a Premiere. Can I just take the cablecard out of the Series 3 and place it in the Premiere? Or do I need the cable guy to bring a new card or reconfigure the existing card for the new Tivo?
> 
> I am trying to figure this out in advance of my next trip to my vacation home because I am only at the house for a few days at a time, and once I get there it will be too late to schedule a cable guy. I use Charter Cable with a single multistream card, without a tuning adapter.
> 
> Thanks


In most cases, you should be able to transfer the card without issue. Note, however, that without re-pairing of the card you will not be able to receive any premium (subscription) channels or VOD.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

What chiguy said. In addition, the re-pairing SHOULD be able to be done over the phone with the cableco's support.


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## eaglestvo (Dec 27, 2008)

Chiguy/BigJim: Thanks for your replies. I don't have any premium channels (hbo, showtime, etc), and I can't do VOD on a Tivo box. But hopefully, re-pairing over the phone is the worst case for using the cablecard.

Thanks!


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## almighty (Jun 17, 2001)

eaglestvo said:


> Chiguy/BigJim: Thanks for your replies. I don't have any premium channels (hbo, showtime, etc), and I can't do VOD on a Tivo box. But hopefully, re-pairing over the phone is the worst case for using the cablecard.
> 
> Thanks!


If you dont have any premium channels, you likely would not notice any difference in the card being paired or not. In the past I have run my XL2 TiVo with an unpaired card when I didnt sub to any premiums and it worked just fine.

If you are a member on DSL Reports or AVS Forums or Twitter, you can communicate with the UMatter2Charter team on any of those platforms, send them your Cable Card ID, Host ID, Data ID, Unit Address and Card S/N and they can do the pairing online (I hate calling in to their tech support).

May i ask where you are located to not be using a TA with Charter? In the Charter system here, almost every HD channel other than OTA locals has shifted to SDV.


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## eaglestvo (Dec 27, 2008)

Hey Almighty, thanks for the reply. Since I don't have premium channels, I really hope it is that simple! 

We are located in The Outer Banks of North Carolina in the town of Corolla. Tuning Adapters are not required. Actually, STBs are not required for analog cable channels and digital local network channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, CW,etc). Most of our TVs are just connected directly by coax into the TV. We have a single Tivo box for the main TV, and we have no cableco STBs.

Thanks!


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## almighty (Jun 17, 2001)

Yeah, you should be all set just moving over the cable card to a new Tivo as long as its full activated already (conditional access screen showing "Auth:S") and is an M card. I've even put one of my M cards in a Tivo on someone else's account and it worked for all non-premium channels. But that was only to verify the Tivo worked and the M-card they had was bad (there was a concern the slot in the Tivo had failed somehow).


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I would recommend re-pairing it anyway. You never know when your cable company might start protecting the non-premium channels and you may end up losing recordings until you realize what's going on. Better to do it now while you're thinking about it.

Dan


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Annoying things if you don't pair you card&#8230;
(1) You get the annoying cable card page the first time you go to every non-OTA channel
(2) I guess this isn't really relevant for this sub-board since I think none of the Premieres have Save to VCR anymore.. darn, now I honestly don't remember the exact situation. Something like if you save to VCR, then at the end it ends up going back to the cable card page, you can get stuck and end up having to pull the plug. At least on my S3 & TivoHD.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Why do you need "Save To VCR" anyway? That was never anything more then simply playing the video with a little bumper at the front with the program description. 

Dan


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## Johnwashere (Sep 17, 2005)

I just upgraded my HD to a premiere the other day. I called time warner and they said to put the new cable card in the new unit and it should be good, but it was not. They transfered me to a cable card support team and we got it fixed in about 20 minutes (should have been much less). Its pretty simple for them to do and by law all cable companies have to be able to do this without a truck roll.


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## eaglestvo (Dec 27, 2008)

Great, thanks for all the replies. I am hoping it will work right off the bat, but I will probably pair it just to be safe. I am just glad to know it does not need a truck roll.

It just arrived today. I ordered it on Monday from Tivo with the sale on the 45 hour boxes for $69.99. Great deal! My first Premiere box (18 months ago) cost me $229.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Dan203 said:


> Why do you need "Save To VCR" anyway? That was never anything more then simply playing the video with a little bumper at the front with the program description.


Yes, the bumper at the front with program information is PRECISELY why it is useful. That helps me determine right away what episode it is recorded onto the other device or DVD or whatever.

Plus, it prevents me from accidentally changing channels or something during the dub.. though I admit if it's something I care about, I would be annoyed by the graphic that shows up when you do that.. But nowadays I'm mostly dubbing for temporary use (I download things I Want to keep).. but it's still useful to have.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

eaglestvo said:


> I have had a Tivo Premiere at my fulltime residence for about a year and a half with OTA. I am finally upgrading the Series 3 (using cablecard) at my vacation home to a Premiere. Can I just take the cablecard out of the Series 3 and place it in the Premiere? Or do I need the cable guy to bring a new card or reconfigure the existing card for the new Tivo?
> 
> I am trying to figure this out in advance of my next trip to my vacation home because I am only at the house for a few days at a time, and once I get there it will be too late to schedule a cable guy. I use Charter Cable with a single multistream card, without a tuning adapter.
> 
> Thanks


As has been mentioned, you can swap the card into the Premiere if the card is an M-card. I'm assuming your old box is the S3HD which only required a single card, not the original S3 which required two cards (which may be S-cards). Call to get it paired, otherwise you may not get some or all of the digital and HD channels that are part of the Basic service (e.e.: non-premium channels).


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Why do you need "Save To VCR" anyway? That was never anything more then simply playing the video with a little bumper at the front with the program description.
> 
> Dan


It was also more than that. It prevented you from accidentally changing the channel or navigating away from the program that is playing.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

eaglestvo said:


> ...
> 
> We are located in The Outer Banks of North Carolina in the town of Corolla. ...


So the hurricane party's at your place, right?


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