Official TWC CableCard Thread
- Thread starter Admin65
- Start date
Hope this is helpful for someone thinking of trying Cablecard:
After using Clear QAM USB tuners successfully for the "OTA" channels for a year or two with Windows Media Center I finally took the cablecard plunge last week. I have no urgent need to make any radical changes to my setup because I'm in a pricelock through summer 2013 but I'm fed up with the inflexibility of the 8640HDC/8300HDC setup I have vs the advanced features of Windows - eg larger hard drives, ability to skip around in recordings rather than just fast forward/rewind, and do commercial skip forward, search from keyboards, plus ability to watch same recording from multiple locations which is otherwise only possible with Whole House DVR. So I bought a Silicondust HDHomeRun Prime three tuner network cablecard tuner and installed on my network so I can record from any PC subject to there being a free tuner on the network. It's a breeze to install. I picked up a (used) cablecard and (used) Tuning Adapter at Ware court for free self install. Inserted the card, got the necessary numbers from the Slicondust software and called TWC tech to authorize. No surprises nothing had happened after 30mins. Two more calls got me a range of stories from Tech support - they they claimed the SiliconDust was not on the approved devices list (until I pointed out it's on their list of devices you need a tuning adapter with), then claimed they never get this tuner to authorize. I read them a recent post from the Silicondust forum which says that when TWC can't authorize it that always means that either the card is bad and untested (especially if it's clearly old ike this one) or else it's just not been set up with the head end before issue. No surprises they had no interest in this and would only set up a truck roll for me. The tech was a very nice and patient guy but had little cablecard experience. To his credit he did not waste time measuring signal strength all around the house and other standard time wasters but got straight on the phone to cablecard support. His calls to tech sounded much like ours: they tried to re-authorize and then told him maybe my account "hierarchy" was wrong(?) but he should wait and it would all be fine and then got him off the phone. Eventually he agreed he should try another cablecard but in spite of it being a cablecard appointment he had none with him - he had given his to a colleague the previous day as he never needs them. After some calls to his nearby super who didn't have any either he called the guy who he had given the cards to the day before who still had one and drove off to meet him. Once he got back (now two hours in) he installed the replacement card and it needed a firmware update (20 mins). When that was done he called in to authorize it and surprise this card was immediately fine. I had a moment of concern when I couldn't call up the encrypted channels on Silicondust's "QuickTV" but luckily it gave an error message pointing out that that app is not authorized to show encrypted channels, unlike WMC, so the tech waited while I went through the process of re-setting WMC (another 20 minutes). Surprise, when that was done, ESPN fired into life and everything was perfect... Three cablecard tuners available and also my old USB QAM tuner which I can now merge into the guide to make 4 total tuners (if I dump my cable boxes I will upgrade to the 6 tuner version and use Tunersalad to install them beyond WMC's standard 4 tuner limit). Went to my other htpc and installed the silicondust software and reset WMC on that with the same result (after a reboot). Only problem with this setup is that due to the copy protection flags TWC put on cablecard channels you cannot record those channels on one pc and watch on another (which you can for the free OTA channels, subject to your network being up to it). I am therefore experimenting running an Xbox 360 as a WMC extender in another room: that is working really well so far and is far less glitchy that streaming from one pc to another.
Early days but so far I'm pretty happy...
After using Clear QAM USB tuners successfully for the "OTA" channels for a year or two with Windows Media Center I finally took the cablecard plunge last week. I have no urgent need to make any radical changes to my setup because I'm in a pricelock through summer 2013 but I'm fed up with the inflexibility of the 8640HDC/8300HDC setup I have vs the advanced features of Windows - eg larger hard drives, ability to skip around in recordings rather than just fast forward/rewind, and do commercial skip forward, search from keyboards, plus ability to watch same recording from multiple locations which is otherwise only possible with Whole House DVR. So I bought a Silicondust HDHomeRun Prime three tuner network cablecard tuner and installed on my network so I can record from any PC subject to there being a free tuner on the network. It's a breeze to install. I picked up a (used) cablecard and (used) Tuning Adapter at Ware court for free self install. Inserted the card, got the necessary numbers from the Slicondust software and called TWC tech to authorize. No surprises nothing had happened after 30mins. Two more calls got me a range of stories from Tech support - they they claimed the SiliconDust was not on the approved devices list (until I pointed out it's on their list of devices you need a tuning adapter with), then claimed they never get this tuner to authorize. I read them a recent post from the Silicondust forum which says that when TWC can't authorize it that always means that either the card is bad and untested (especially if it's clearly old ike this one) or else it's just not been set up with the head end before issue. No surprises they had no interest in this and would only set up a truck roll for me. The tech was a very nice and patient guy but had little cablecard experience. To his credit he did not waste time measuring signal strength all around the house and other standard time wasters but got straight on the phone to cablecard support. His calls to tech sounded much like ours: they tried to re-authorize and then told him maybe my account "hierarchy" was wrong(?) but he should wait and it would all be fine and then got him off the phone. Eventually he agreed he should try another cablecard but in spite of it being a cablecard appointment he had none with him - he had given his to a colleague the previous day as he never needs them. After some calls to his nearby super who didn't have any either he called the guy who he had given the cards to the day before who still had one and drove off to meet him. Once he got back (now two hours in) he installed the replacement card and it needed a firmware update (20 mins). When that was done he called in to authorize it and surprise this card was immediately fine. I had a moment of concern when I couldn't call up the encrypted channels on Silicondust's "QuickTV" but luckily it gave an error message pointing out that that app is not authorized to show encrypted channels, unlike WMC, so the tech waited while I went through the process of re-setting WMC (another 20 minutes). Surprise, when that was done, ESPN fired into life and everything was perfect... Three cablecard tuners available and also my old USB QAM tuner which I can now merge into the guide to make 4 total tuners (if I dump my cable boxes I will upgrade to the 6 tuner version and use Tunersalad to install them beyond WMC's standard 4 tuner limit). Went to my other htpc and installed the silicondust software and reset WMC on that with the same result (after a reboot). Only problem with this setup is that due to the copy protection flags TWC put on cablecard channels you cannot record those channels on one pc and watch on another (which you can for the free OTA channels, subject to your network being up to it). I am therefore experimenting running an Xbox 360 as a WMC extender in another room: that is working really well so far and is far less glitchy that streaming from one pc to another.
Early days but so far I'm pretty happy...
Sadly the people I got on the phone were Tier 3 support - I specifically asked for and got that. Not particularly impressive... Bottom line is they do seem to hand out a lot of non-functional used cards (see Silicon Dust forum): next time I'd insist on one that looks new.Admin65 said:
I called TWC today to see if I could pick up a cable card and t.a. for my Ceton tuner and was told that I could not self-install. I thought that self-install was allowed per FCC ruling. Has something changed, or was the representative incorrect? Should I just go down to Ware Court and request the parts?
fblack_111
Member
I have a question on Ceton products. With a Tuner card and a Windows 7 Computer, can you stream a recorded program to a TV in another room? I have wifi and cat 5 wire between the computer and the TV.
Also, has anyone tried some of Ceton's newer boxes like a InfiniTV 4 USB. Their web site says ".. InfiniTV 4 enables you to watch and record up to four live channels of HDTV at once, and stream live HD channels or recordings to multiple HDTVs throughout the home, all from a single cable connection and a single CableCARD™." And what about the Ceton Echo?
Also, has anyone tried some of Ceton's newer boxes like a InfiniTV 4 USB. Their web site says ".. InfiniTV 4 enables you to watch and record up to four live channels of HDTV at once, and stream live HD channels or recordings to multiple HDTVs throughout the home, all from a single cable connection and a single CableCARD™." And what about the Ceton Echo?
I don't use Tuner sharing, so I cannot answer that! I do like my InfiniTV4. I have the PCIe version installed on my desktop PC and it works well. I think you can either record or watch live TV on each tuner. I do not have the Echo, so I cannot vouch for that. That product has a few bugs, but Ceton is working to fix those bugs.
I yesterday added a second three tuner Silicondust HD Homerun Prime cablecard tuner to my system, using a second cablecard and tuning resolver picked up from Ware Court. The activation phone call this time went well and within minutes my cablecard was showing authorized. However, repeated channel scans for the new tuner, identical to my existing tuner, showed just 65 channels (unencrypted) available instead of the 431 found for my package by the other tuner. Attempting to start a channel that was not showing available produced a "channel not subscribed" message. However in the log it showed:
20130411-00:03:50 CableCARD: Tuner0: vchannel 729 access = subscribed
20130411-00:03:55 CableCARD: Tuner0: vchannel 729 access = not-subscribed
i.e. it first said the channel was subscribed, then that it was not.
Since the webpages for the cablecard and tuning resolver were showing identical successful authorizations to my other tuner/card combo I started to think it must be a hardware issue until I found the following in a post on Silicondust's excellent forum:
"When it shows subscribed, then not-subscribed 5 seconds later, that means that the CableCARD hasn't been staged correctly. Usually they need to do a hard reset on the CableCARD to get it staged. After that, they may or may not need to send a refresh to the card to update it with the correct channel authorizations. In some cases, they actually have to take the card off the account, reassign it to inventory, then pull it back out and readd to your account, and set everything up again. Depending on the provider, they may just keep swapping cards till they find one that has already been staged. The card will lose its staging if it sits on the shelf for too long, and apparently the exact process to correct that isn't well known among cable provider support people."
I called up TWC again, asked for level 3 support and after they assured me that everything looked fine from their end and that it must be my problem in setup or hardware I read them this and they then went off and did an RHT(?) hit and a regular hit and asked me to try another scan. Although there was no change in the logs or device webpages when I did this the missing channels began pouring in and all is well...
Moral is that even when it looks like everything is good from your end and their end, it's still likely that your problems will be resolved by TWC reinitializing or whatever you can persuade them to do. Meantime, I now have my own 6 tuner/1.5TB whole house DVR system and it is great. My DVR boxes are gathering dust until my pricelock ends.
20130411-00:03:50 CableCARD: Tuner0: vchannel 729 access = subscribed
20130411-00:03:55 CableCARD: Tuner0: vchannel 729 access = not-subscribed
i.e. it first said the channel was subscribed, then that it was not.
Since the webpages for the cablecard and tuning resolver were showing identical successful authorizations to my other tuner/card combo I started to think it must be a hardware issue until I found the following in a post on Silicondust's excellent forum:
"When it shows subscribed, then not-subscribed 5 seconds later, that means that the CableCARD hasn't been staged correctly. Usually they need to do a hard reset on the CableCARD to get it staged. After that, they may or may not need to send a refresh to the card to update it with the correct channel authorizations. In some cases, they actually have to take the card off the account, reassign it to inventory, then pull it back out and readd to your account, and set everything up again. Depending on the provider, they may just keep swapping cards till they find one that has already been staged. The card will lose its staging if it sits on the shelf for too long, and apparently the exact process to correct that isn't well known among cable provider support people."
I called up TWC again, asked for level 3 support and after they assured me that everything looked fine from their end and that it must be my problem in setup or hardware I read them this and they then went off and did an RHT(?) hit and a regular hit and asked me to try another scan. Although there was no change in the logs or device webpages when I did this the missing channels began pouring in and all is well...
Moral is that even when it looks like everything is good from your end and their end, it's still likely that your problems will be resolved by TWC reinitializing or whatever you can persuade them to do. Meantime, I now have my own 6 tuner/1.5TB whole house DVR system and it is great. My DVR boxes are gathering dust until my pricelock ends.
fblack_111
Member
Can you stream saved TV shows feom the Home Run's to a TV (not a computer) in another room via Ethernet or DLNA server or anything?kevinc said:
I'm currently using Windows Media Center (Windows 7) on the htpc and certified Windows Media Extenders (which for Windows 7 are Xbox 360s, the new Ceton Echo and a list of discontinued Linksys/D-Link and other boxes available used on eBay). These give a consistent experience around the house and of course full whole-house DVR functionality.fblack_111 said:
The HDHomeRun tuners are compatible with DLNA devices so in theory you can use them with a DLNA TV but unfortunately as TWC flags all channels other than the network as "copy-once" you'd only be able to get the network channels unless the TV is also DTCP-IP certified which enables it to deal with the TWC copy protection. I'm not clear whether there are yet any DTCP-IP TVs sold which brings you back to adding a box of some kind - the PS3 seems to be certified as does the Boxee DVR. I'd have a search through Silicondust's excellent user forum and maybe email them for extra help. If you're interested, there are many ios viewing/scheduling apps too, but ios devices are only DLNA so that limits them to network channels only for viewing too. Of course the TWC TV app for ios provides better functionality than that. Hope this helps.
I see Ceton is launching a 6 tuner InfiniTV 6 ETH 6-tuner ethernet network cablecard tuner which would be the perfect replacement for my pair of Silicondust 3-tuner ethernet network tuners:
http://cetoncorp.com/
It only requires one cablecard and one tuning adapter so would save money simplify the system.
Question to Admin: Ceton seems to have confirmed that the M-Stream Cisco/Scientific Atlanta cablecards provided by Time Warner will provide 6 channels at once with this tuner. Does the firmware in the Cisco tuning adapter provided by TWC also support 6 channels at once?
http://cetoncorp.com/
It only requires one cablecard and one tuning adapter so would save money simplify the system.
Question to Admin: Ceton seems to have confirmed that the M-Stream Cisco/Scientific Atlanta cablecards provided by Time Warner will provide 6 channels at once with this tuner. Does the firmware in the Cisco tuning adapter provided by TWC also support 6 channels at once?