Comcast Disables All CableCARDs?

It’s no secret that Comcast Cable doesn’t care for cableCARDs — those magic silver cards that free consumers from having to rent a bulky, user-unfriendly Comcast cable box (or their terrible DVR). When I first requested two cableCARDs to put in my Tivo Series 3, Comcast employees pretended they could only give me one. When the Comcast “installer” finally arrived, he had no idea what cableCARDs were … no idea how they worked … and no idea what to do with them.

On Tuesday of last week, my Comcast cableCARDs quit working. All my HD channels — the “Digipic 2000 package” I’m paying extra for — vanished. (Mysteriously, one channel — 1006, a FoxHD channel — remains.) After the problem persisted for days, I called Comcast Customer Serivce.

You know what happened next, don’t you? Yep: I’m down a Comcast Customer Service black hole … and I still don’t have any HD channels.

A Visit with Mike

Last Thursday, a Comcast technician responded to our first call. Despite the fact I’d been very clear that we were having problems with our cableCARDs, Mike the Technician told me from the very start: “I don’t know anything about cableCARDs. They gave me a sheet of paper about them once, and now they say I’m supposed to be an expert.”

Mike wasn’t lying. Despite the fact my cableCARDs are both in my Tivo, he kept trying to “reset them” by turning my television on and off. When I finally convinced him that both cableCARDs were in the Tivo box, he started looking for “the off switch.”

“There isn’t an off switch on a Tivo Series 3,” I told him.

“Has to be,” he said … and he continued to turn the box around and around, looking for a switch that wasn’t there.

Five minutes later, having confirmed the Tivo had no power switch, Mike decided to remove the existing cableCARDs. He pressed the ejection buttons and pulled on the cards, but couldn’t budge ’em. Finally, he looked up at me and said, “I’m going out to the truck to get pliers. These cards are stuck. That’s probably what’s wrong.”

I quickly dropped to the floor, pressed the eject button, and popped out both cards in a matter of seconds.

Mike blinked. “Oh.”

Mike eventually called the Mothership, where, as 5:00 PM loomed large, someone told him to tell me the problem would solve itself eventually. “We can’t fix this today, but it’s the sort of thing that works itself out,” Mike said. “You just keep looking for the channels to come back, and eventually, they will. If they don’t, you can call us back.”

A Call from the Mothership

On Friday, I got a call from a Comcast Technician who identified himself as Wes. Wes told me that every cableCARD in Jackson, MS had been disabled by an accidental “firmware upgrade” from Scientific Atlanta. “Right now, no one in the Jackson area has a working cableCARD.”

As luck would have it, I had just gotten off the phone with a friend here in Jackson … who was sitting at home watching HDTV on his Tivo Series 3. “Actually, I just talked to another Comcast customer with the exact same hardware, and his cableCARDs are working perfectly.”

“They shouldn’t be,” Wes said. “No one in Jackson has a working cableCARD just now.” Wes went on to explain that, as the new firmware “upgrade” was rolled out in Jackson, our friends would eventually lose their service, too.

“Um, if you know the upgrade will shut down service … wouldn’t it make sense to stop the upgrade from rolling out?”

Wes didn’t think such a thing was possible. Meantime, he assured me: “We’re on the phone with Scientific Atlanta right now, and we’re working to solve the problem.”

“When will it be solved?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

Four Days Later

Four days later, our cableCARDS are still unprogrammed. In the meantime, Comcast has done little more than give their front-line customer service agents a cableCARD script to read.

“Now this is very, very technical,” said William. (William was the Comcast rep I spoke with this past Monday … after Trisha put me on hold for twenty minutes, then disconnected me.) “But I’m a pretty technically-savvy guy, so I’ll go slow and make sure you understand it. Your cableCARD has something called ‘fear-um-ware.’ This ‘fear-um-ware’ is very, very technical. Nobody understands it. But it’s the problem. As soon as they fix the ‘fear-um-ware,” your cableCARDs will work again.”

“It’s called ‘firmware,” I said. “And after doing some research on Google, I’ve heard that the way to fix my problem is to disassociate each card from my account, reassociate it with the account, “blow out” the account,” and then send what’s called a “superhit” to my cableCARDs. Can you take me through that process, please?”

William was quiet for several seconds. “Actually, I’m in billing. Let me transfer you.”

Still No Service

Our HD channels are still inaccessible. Using Google, I found a rumor that has a ring of truth about it: some people claim that Comcast reps, when installing the cableCards, neglected to make a record of the Host ID (a unique serial number identifying a specific television or Tivo) of the hardware they inserted the cards into. As a result, Comcast cableCARDs would work in any television or Tivo at all.

That meant, of course, there was some potential for subscriber abuse. I, for example, had two cableCARDS; if I had wanted to, I could have given one to a neighbor … who would then receive Comcast’s HD premium channels without paying.

According to the rumor, Comcast, suddenly realizing this, purposely chose to disable all cableCARDs and call the snafu a “firmware issue.”

I don’t know whether or not that rumor is true … but I do know one thing: we still don’t receive the HD channels we’re paying for.

The Fix — for Now

Unable to get HD programming from our cable company, we waltzed down to Circuit City and picked up a newfangled pair of rabbit ears that are supposed to do a fine job of pulling in HD programming. (Note: later, we found the identical antenna at Walmart for five bucks less.)

We hooked the antenna into our Tivo … and, lo and behold, we now receive, with perfect clarity, all our HD channels except the local NBC channel. (And since they just cancelled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, we no longer have any NBC shows we watch, anyway!)

So: with a one-time twenty-dollar hardware purchase … we’re getting all but one of the local channels Comcast charges us big bucks to receive.

Knowing that — especially if you don’t subscribe to premium channels like HBO or Cinemax — you might want to think twice before shelling out your hard-earned money for the privilege of being perpetually jerked around by Comcast’s clueless reps and technicians.