CableCARD Bugs

rmartin00 · Post by **rmartin00** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 10:39 am

I have Scientific Atlanta cablecard and Sharp LC-37GD6U. I don't receive the music channels or encrypted ESPNHD channel. Local CBS, NBC, ABC unencrypted HD channels carried on the cable are perfect. Cox cable has tried to activate ESPNHD several times without success. The question is, "who is at fault?" Is it the TV or is it the Cablecard? Sharp points at Cox, Cox points at Sharp. I have ask Cox to swap the card. They have not done so as of yet. I think they are waiting to get a new Cablecard. I believe files may have been corrupted during the setup. The TV gives you no indication of how the setup is proceeding. It is awfully easy to unknowingly interrupt the download at setup. Then the security setting may see the file header and not allow an overwrite. I hope they get the bugs out because the TV has a beautiful picture.

raff · Post by **raff** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:16 am

Understanding that this technology is still in its infancy, you may run into compatability issues.

Now, from reading your post and taking and educated guess, I would say COX is at fault and it's most likely from the initialization of the CableCard. Remember the cablecard isn't the cable tuner, that's the QAM tuner part of your TV. The TV's internal QAM tuner basically gets the "ok" from the cablecard to display scrambled channels. If channels are not coming up, the cablecard is not granting access.

rmartin00 · Post by **rmartin00** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:52 am

Thanks Raff, The TV recognizes the card. I receive in addition to the local digital HD channels, which are broadcast in the clear, one encrypted channel INHD2. I am unable to get ESPNHD and the Music Choice Channels which are encrypted. To Cox's credit they have spend a lot of time checking this out. One of their trouble shooters came to the house this weekend and spent the afternoon checking channel signal strenght and signal to noise ratio. He found that for some reason there were dropped packets and uncorrectable errors coming throught on some of the high band channels. They plan to have a service truck trace the problem. Could this be the reason the TV will not tune some channels?

raff · Post by **raff** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:44 am

Interesting....

I doubt, but I'm not positive, that the line drops would cause come channels not to descramble. Rather, I would expect them to descramble but have drop-outs and pixelization issues.

I would have them bring a digital cable box too. Connect the cable to the box, rather than directly to the TV, and see if it works. If it does, it has nothing to do with line issues.

This is going to turn out to be something funky like an incompatible firmware rev, or something.

donshan · Post by **donshan** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:20 pm

The whole cable industry and set manufacturers have signed on to the CableCard sysem which got FCC appoval. I am sure they will get it working. Their future depends on it.

The general technology has been used in the Satellite services for years. In the beginning there was a real problem of pirates learning how to reprogram cards to steal service. This has resulted in very complex safeguards that make it harder to crack, but I am sure require exact signals from the cable CO billing office to be accepted by the card.

I have DirecTV with a card and am amazed how well it now works. I can go to their web site, do a click on my account to change my channel package, and in seconds the signal goes to the Sat, back down to my card and it is turned on or off as I ordered. So I know this idea should work fine on cable too, once the front office and the system gets the bugs out.

One difference is that control of the card signals at DirectTV is centralized with one staff. In cable you are dependent on a larger number of people learning the system. In other words don't rule out a dumb clerk in billing.

rmartin00 · Post by **rmartin00** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:39 pm

Cox brought a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000HD the second trip they made. They were able to receive ESPNHD on the STB from the same connection I have plugged into the TV.

I talked to Sharp Customer Service about the problem. They were adamant.

raff · Post by **raff** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:12 pm

rmartin00 wrote:Cox brought a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000HD the second trip they made. They were able to receive ESPNHD on the STB from the same connection I have plugged into the TV.

This verifies that it's not a line issue, and has nothing to do with dropped packets. This is a channel decoding issue between the Cablecard and COX's upstream authentication device(s).

As much as Sharp's rigid stand annoys me, I don't think this is their issue.

rmartin00 · Post by **rmartin00** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:55 am

Thanks Raff, That's what I think and I believe the trouble shooter for Cox thinks the samething. Maybe they will get it worked out before football season is over.

raff · Post by **raff** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:18 am

Please keep us up to date. This stuff is relatively new and it's nice to track the issues.

raff · Post by **raff** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:51 pm

Any progress on this?