I just recently purchased a new TV that has a built-in HD tuner. As a bonus, I received a new Tivo HD box for free with the TV purchase. At first, I was going to sell it. I don't receive HD channels and I don't pay for any. I have the basic lifeline service from Time Warner Cable which only provides about 7 or so channels for $5/month.
Imagine my surprise when I had the TV do an Auto Scan and I found out that I receive my local HD channels in the clear over my cable. As it turns out, this is normal and it is supposed to be that way. Of course, I got pretty excited as I didn't think I'd be getting ANY HD stations at all unless I messed with an antennae and where I live, it is doubtful an antennae would work. This was great or so I thought.
I immediately unboxed the Tivo I was planning on selling and hooked it all up. I did the channel scan and it found the HD channels. I'm home free, right? WRONG.
As it turns out, the tuner finds the HD channels on these subchannels such as 85-13 and 85-14, etc. The Tivo has no way of knowing what the channels are on Time Warners channel guide/list. Is it channel 100, 120, 240, what is it? No biggie I thought. It's been this way for a while so they probably just have a way to go into the channel listing and say 84-13 = X on the channel guide and it will download the channel info.
I guess I was asking too much. According to Tivo and forums online, I need a cablecard to plug into the TV so it can tell the Tivo what channel is what. It won't be doing anything else. It won't get me more channels, it won't decode encrypted channels, it will do nothing but take the 4 HD stations I get (yeah, that's right, there are only 4) and tell it what they are on the channel guide.
At the moment, I'm not even sure if TimeWarner will provide a cablecard to me at all. If they do, I get to spend $3-5/month to RENT the cablecard. So essentially, I'll double my cable bill so I can do nothing more than what the most simple of software development skills could take care of for me in a pinch. According to the Tivo propaganda the cable companies can change these frequencies at any time so the cablecard is the only reliable way to get the channel mapping info. Who cares? If it changes once every couple of months I can change it. I do have the mental capacity to handle this myself. Point of fact is that the channel mapping hasn't changed in over 2 years according to friends who have had HD over the lifeline service.
So is Tivo being paid off by the cable companies or do the fear their ire if they add this feature? How can such a simple thing be left undone after a year or more of this problem. It seems to underscore a trend in music and movies and entertainment in general. Screw the customer and refuse to listen to them. I can guarantee if Tivo didn't have a virtual monopoly on this market, this wouldn't be happening.
I'm still not sure what I'm doing with the Tivo. I can't decide if I should sell it or keep it. Frankly, I don't feel like paying $5 more per month just for the HD channel guide info when I'm already taking the Tivo hit. I had a ReplayTV before this that cost me $7/month (I still have it, it works) and the Tivo is going to be $12-$13/month or somewhere around there. If only Replay had stayed in the market, I'm sure they would have addressed this issue and made this simple and painless.
Tivo, if you are listening, you are a bunch of lazy blankety blanks. Looking at forums, customers have asked for this feature for over a year and you've not delivered. Did you forget who pays your bills????
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9 comments:
suck it up and get a cable card and stop whining. it says on the box that a cable card is required for HD content. you should have read the box .
Direct quote from the box:
"Cablecard decoders MAY be required..."
The keyword here is "may". Point of fact is you are completely wrong anyway. I receive the channels just fine without a cablecard. They come in fine on my TV and the come in fine on my Tivo HD, all without the help of a cablecard. If I had an antennae, they'd come in fine that way also.
What isn't working is the channel guide. Tivo blames the cable company and is pushing it off as a cablecard issue. It isn't, it is pure Tivo laziness.
So I guess Tivo should "suck it up" and fix this problem once and for all.
I'm not sure this is TiVo's problem. Certainly they could solve it, but I think it's more of a stranglehold that the cable companies have over television content. There's virtually no competition in any given market, and they can do what they damn well please. TiVo probably relies on them for guide data and other things, and probably wants to be friends in a really bad way.
If cable companies invest a lot of money into their own DVRs, TiVo will die pretty quickly.
So TiVo plays ball. It defers to the cable companies and the advertisers who both want to bigfoot the customer experience and inject their revenue needs into your TV experience. That means cable cards, paused advertisements, etc.
Bottom line, I think TiVo is walking dead. Cable companies are going to offer this service themselves for broadcast service, short term. And long term, you won't be recording a broadcast show, you'll be downloading it when it's posted to the server.
There's no future in an independently branded DVR service that relies on cooperation from cable companies, who are offering their own competitive services. Frankly, the only thing TiVo has going for it right now is it's interface and ease of use. When the cable companies get THAT right, there's no reason to own a TiVo at all.
So, as a company, it's on life support, pretending to be relevant, and playing REAL nice with the big dogs hoping TODAY won't be the day one of them decides to eat it.r
Yeah, I love Tivo but I don't get how they are still alive.
Of course, Apple was once on death row too. So who knows.
I'll be pulling for them.
I'll grant you that their survival is suspect. I'd have never bought my Tivo.
However, there is a large percentage of people out there I would imagine that DON'T pay cable companies for TV and/or pay the absolute minimum (me) to get basic service.
I'd be tempted to get a DVR from my cable company instead of a Tivo and avoid the hassles BUT I have to pay a minumum of another $45/month over what I pay now and then on top of that I have to pay the DVR rental. Want HD recording, pay another $10/month but wait, I need to pay another $10 or $15 for digital cable first.
Bottom line is I can't just get a DVR from Time Warner. Of course, in keeping with our "Service Charge Society" I'll now end up having to at least get a cable card for $3.10/month so I can't get guide info.
I understanding the dynamics of this and Tivo perhaps reluctance. It is very frustrating as a customer though knowing that the information is there and they lack the mechanism to make this work. It makes it even worse when it is something so incredibly simple.
Since I seem to do nothing but complain lately, I'll let this be my last complaint for a short time.
I decided to "suck it up' get the card. As befits a cable company, I went to my cable providers local office as instructed by the technical support people I called a Time Warner to pick up a cable card and of course, they don't have them there. They don't give them to customers to install by themselves and instead insist on installing them at the house in person.
I was pretty much ready to blow a gasket. I spent my time and gas money to drive over there for nothing. Worse, I have to wait until Saturday because that is the soonest someone can get there to push a card into a slot. God forbid they allow us stupid users to plug the card in. I mean, what would happen if it didn't work, we might need an installer to come out. Oh wait...
So now I'm stuck waiting to see if this works and worse, my 6 day free trial expires on Friday. Hopefully Tivo will extend it a day or two so I can verify this actually works. I hate to sign up for the Tivo service and hassle with it for want of one day to check if it works. It wouldn't be a big deal but Tivo seems to think they are a cell phone company and wants a one year commitment even if paying monthly. They have the 30 day money back guarantee but why hassle with that if I don't have to.
I guess I'll see what happens on Saturday.
I had the same issue with Comcast needing to send a tech out to my place to insert the card.
Except my tech was clueless. He didn't even know where the card went, nor whether the multiplexing card would work in a TiVo, or whether it would work as advertised.
It may not matter to you, but cards to NOT work with any kind of video on demand or pay-per-view. For that, you need to retain a cable box, and plug it in on another video input port to your TV.
Nightmare city.
Anyway, the tech followed my instructions, inserted the card, called the office, activated the system, and was visibly surprised when it worked.
I would absolutely not count on TiVo extending your trial period a single minute, though.
I like having TiVo a lot. The company has lost its way since it first came out, and it's in danger of becoming more of an annoyance than the fees justify. But for now, I still use it, and I put up with the headaches, and I keep my fingers crossed that it shakes out in the end.
That's what I'm worried about too. Hopefully I'll get a tech that knows what he is doing but I'm not holding my breathe.
Originally I was thinking if it didn't work out I'd dump the Tivo and just forgo the ability to record HD. However, we just watched our first TV show in HD last night and I think I'd get lynched now by my own family if I did away with it.
It really is pretty hard to go back once you've had a taste of the HD life. I watched Appleseed: Ex Machina the other day on blu-ray and it the picture quality is jaw dropping. Of course, nothing can beat a totally digital production transferred directly to disk.
Yikes, I think I'm going to turn into an HD bigot...
Just so the conversation is complete, the cablecard did work and fixed the guide issue.
Of course, they said the install was free and then charged me $15 for it.
The guy literally put the card in and then followed the directions on screen to get it to work. I'm quite sure I could have done that. At least it was $15 and not $50.
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