Kelly and I recently bought a Tivo Bolt. Having both grown up with a Tivo, we have discussed getting a DVR for a while. The time seemed right to buy one after receiving some very generous wedding gifts and with the Olympics coming up. Kelly loves the Olympics and we’ll be busy during a significant portion of it for a wedding Kelly is in and some other activities. This is the story of setting up that Tivo Bolt.
To be more accurate, this is the epic tale of setting up a Tivo Bolt with Comcast. The Bolt has been great so far but Comcast made it an extremely trying experience.
When we first ordered the Bolt I looked up the installation process. Basically, you get a CableCARD from Comcast, install it in your Bolt, and activate the card. I called Comcast to ask how I get a CableCARD and they said I should go to my local Comcast branch.
On the day that the Bolt arrived I took our Cable Box back to the local Comcast office and asked for a CableCARD to use in my new Tivo device. The Comcast office was surprisingly sleek and I was out of there in less than ten minutes full of hope. Oh how foolish I was…
I went home, put the CableCARD in the Tivo, and connected it to our TV. I called the CableCARD activation number. After providing the necessary information to the Comcast employee on the phone they told me they were unable to pair the CableCARD. The CableCARD was coded as a Cable Box and could not be set up as a CableCARD within a Tivo device, they told me. I was instructed to go back to the Comcast office and get the CableCARD properly coded. While the office I went to was closed, another location in D.C. was open for 45 more minutes so I hopped in an Uber headed for that location.
Now at D.C. Comcast location #2, I explained my situation to an employee and what I was told over the phone: my CableCARD was appearing as a Cable Box within Comcast’s system and I needed them to change it to be coded as a CableCARD. The nice employee looked at this in their system, wasn’t sure what the problem was, and just gave me a new CableCARD which she said was indeed coded as a CableCARD.
Heading home in an Uber, I put this new CableCARD in our Bolt and called up the activation number. After going through the activation process I was told that this CableCARD was once again labeled as a Cable Box. Only local offices, not the call center, can change this coding. Unfortunately by now all Comcast locations near me had closed for the evening. After calling the activation number and trying again, only to be told the same story, I went to bed frustrated and angry.
Trying to put on a positive attitude in the morning, I went back to the second Comcast location. After telling them about my trails and tribulations the previous day, an employee attempted to change the coding on my second CableCARD from Cable Box to CableCARD. After many efforts she told me the coding was correct but didn’t sound so sure about it. Gulp. Reluctantly, I went home to put the CableCARD back in the Bolt and restarted the activation process over the phone. Once again, I was informed this card was labeled a Cable Box and could not be paired. And once again, I was told this could only be resolved by a local office.
Looking back, I’m not sure what I thought would happen, but I went back to the Comcast office and told them that their latest effort to record my CableCARD was unsuccessful. The office employee had me call up the CableCARD activation line and then she spoke directly with the activation employee on my phone. After she was transferred at least three times, she spoke to an activation person who said that while he saw in my account this was showing up as a Cable Box he could tell based on the serial number it was a CableCARD. He suggested I go home, try the activation process again, and say over the phone that while this may show up as a Cable Box that they should check the serial number and see it is indeed a CableCARD.
Well, I went home and did as he instructed, but I was once again told the coding was incorrect. Absolutely infuriated by being told to go to a local Comcast office, I demanded to know what other options were available. The person over the phone told me that they could ship me a CableCARD from their warehouse that will be compatible with a Tivo. Woah! Why hadn’t I heard about this earlier?! From my original inquiry into setting up a Tivo device, to my four stops at Comcast locations, to my many calls to the CableCARD activation line, this was the first I heard of this option! So I requested a new card be shipped to me even if it was going to take 3 to 5 business days. I also requested a technician come out later in the week for safe measure in the hopes that he could get this loop of confusion resolved.
Two days later, while I am at Towson University for work, UPS comes to deliver the CableCARD but needs a signature. Our building hasn’t added our phone numbers to the call box even though we’ve lived there for over a year, so UPS left a note on the door and didn’t leave the package. Ugh. After we authorized the note UPS left it at our building on Monday. Hope! I put this CableCARD in our Bolt and called the activation line. Once again the activation failed however this time it was not a coding error. She noticed I had an open work error (a technician scheduled to come out on Thursday) and apparently the CableCARD could not be paired unless she cancelled that appointment. Okay, whatever. So she cancels that and voila! The CableCARD is paired!
This is where the Comcast element of the story ends but a few hiccups remained. Pretty early on in this whole process the screen started flickering when our Bolt was on. I was hoping this was just a glitchy activation screen. But when this flickering continued when the CableCARD was paired and the channels were all set up I really began to worry. I quickly had a hypothesis. Our TV has 3 HDMI inputs but we have more than 3 HDMI devices so I have a separate 4-HDMI switch which goes into one of the TV HDMI slots. The Bolt was feeding into the switch. Maybe that’s where the problem was! So I unplugged the switch and sent the Bolt directly into the TV. No flickering! But, naturally, a new problem arose. On the TV my Bolt informed me that HDMI was not prohibited. But, but, just minutes before it was showing up fine via HDMI albeit with a flicker. Well, after some additional research, it turns out that today Tivo devices need to go into a TV equipped with copyright protection. Naturally I assume this means our TV doesn’t have copyright protection and I begin to panic. After another Google search I find that our TV does have copyright protection. For all that is good and holy what is the hold up then? Well as it turns out not all HDMI cables are made alike. After going through three of them I found one that is, I guess, capable of communicating the TV is enabled with copyright protection.
We now have a fully operating Tivo Bolt. It is pretty great. I am particularly a fan of the four tuners running simultaneously. Last night we were able to pause, play, rewind, fast forward between two baseball games and the CNN & CSPAN feeds of the Democratic National Convention!
An appendix: You may ask why I kept going back and forth to the Comcast office to get the coding on my device changed rather than calling them on the phone. Well Comcast has no mechanism for calling or being transferred by phone to a local office. We wouldn’t want them to make this easy on us now, would we?