Once upon a time sanr shaped the electrons to say... > the 8th person to come out just for this problem) and try to > synchronize a TiVo technician to talk with them. But I don't know if > Charter will WANT them telling them what to do; just like they > didn't listen to you until two hours later and couldn't do it.
I'd call TiVo first and see if you can arrange things, to be sure they can/will do it before scheduling Charter. Coordinating them will probably be a bit of a pain. > I didn't understand what you meant by the 'luck of the draw and > which tuner and card you get.' I know that these CC are not always You have two tuners and two cards in the TiVo. When you tune a channel you get one of the tuners and one of the cards. You're not always getting the same one. One combo can work and the other can fail, so sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. > them? I don't think they could be that costly. Is it possible to > purchase these myself somewhere and pair them up on a phone call > with TiVo and/or Charter? I read on a forum that you can do it > yourself if you know the steps. I would give it atry rather than No, you cannot buy CableCARDs. They are uniquely configured to work with the head end of your local cable system. A card that works for you would almost certainly not work for me, and vice-versa, so you need to get them from your local cable MSO. If you do know who to call then yes, you can get them paired over the phone. That's what I do with the contact I made in my local office. But officially Charter does not do that, and you still need to get the cards from them. > keep going through this Charter drama. Sometimes they will keep me > waiting for an app't and not show up or call to cancel. They did Yeah, I had them blow off four visits in a row before I went into my local office and complained. That's how I ended up with a direct contact. > The last one out said it was a mistake in the pairing of the second > card, and seemed to fix it. And that brings up the question, why is It does sound like a bad pairing in one card. > it that when they leave here, all the channels ARE working if the > pairing is off, and also, if there is a badly paired card, why do > the channels come in SOME times? Wouldn't an off-code cause nothing > to happen at ANY time? So it's not a BAD CARD, just a bad pairing? Two tuners, two cards. And you can't control which is used. Odds are Card 1 works and Card 2 is bad (or vice-versa). So they think they fixed Card 2, but when they tune the channel the unit uses Card 1 and it works. So they leave - but Card 2 is still bad. You have to test BOTH tuners. If you know one of the 'bad' channels, there is a way to do it. Say the bad chanel is 200. Tune one tuner to 200, tune the other tuner to something else - say 100. Make sure both tuners are working OK. Now, go to the tuner that is on 200. Tune it to 101. Now go to the tuner that is on 100, tune it to 200. (You switch tuners by hitting Live TV.) Make sure you use digital channels for all of this, if you use analog channels then it doesn't use a CableCARD. Doing this first foces one pair, and the the other pair, to tune 200. Because the unit won't swap them on the fly. So you tune one tuner to 200 and the other to 100, the one on 100 is 'fixed' there. Then moving 200 to 101 'fixes' it to 101, and changing 100 to 200 only changes that tuner. You can also do testing in the diagnostics screens to specifically test each tuner/card. Note that a bad pairing can also impact just a few channels. That's what I had. The installer insisted a bad pairing would mean NO digital channels, so he wasted a few hours trying to find the cause when if he'd listened to me and just checked the pairing first thing it would've been a five minute job. And it is possible that a card is bad and isn't pairing correctly, if all the numbers are entered correctly. > Also, one of them suggested running a cable around the outside of > the house so that the jTiVo in the living room would have a > dedicated line for a stronger signal, I think he said. It would only > be about ten dollars. Should I do this? Probably can't hurt, but it might not help either. -MZ -- megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me. http://www.TiVoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
