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Multi-stream Cablecard / M-Card Availability

DFWDraco76

I've read in other forums that these are available, yet when I called to order I was told they are not, and never have been.

Can somebody that knows confirm or deny availability? And if they're available -- how do I get one?

Comments

Teasip

As posted in response to your inquiry in TiVocommunity.com, Plano has M cards (I've got two in two separate TiVo HD's). Installed (primarily by self with tech watching) about 3 weeks ago.

DFWDraco76

Thanks. I haven't posted anything at that site; I don't think I even have a membership there. I appreciate it though!

I guess I'm going to attempt another call to Verizon. ">😐

KenAF

@DFWDraco76 wrote:
Thanks. I haven't posted anything at that site; I don't think I even have a membership there. I appreciate it though!
I guess I'm going to attempt another call to Verizon. ">😐

Any CableCard order in the DFW area should include a M-CARD.

DFWDraco76

Well, we'll see...

I placed an order and had 3 people verify that it was a regular S-card, so they ordered 2. AND they insisted it would be shipped to me (along with a box to return the Verizon DVR). Despite the fact that everywhere else I've read they must have a tech do the install...

I posted in the Verizon Direct forum at DSLR asking them to verify the order.

Teasip

My apologies. One too many groups to keep up with. You had actually posted at BBR. Bottom line, place the order and you should see M cards arrive. There is a large letter M plastered on the card. You can't miss it.

KenAF

Verizon does not differentiate between M-CARDs and S-CARDs in their system. The system just says "CableCards."

Customer service representatives are not educated on the differences between the two types of CableCards (M-CARDs and S-CARDs). That's why chats go something like this:

You: Do you have CableCards?
Verizon: Yes.
You: Do you have M-CARDs?
Verizon: No, we only carry CableCards.
You: But a M-CARD is a type of CableCard. Do you have those?
Verizon: Sorry, sir, but we only have CableCards, not M-CARDs.

For those who do not know, S-CARDs were discontinued about a year ago, and Motorola has manufactured M-CARDs exclusively since. M-CARDs are virtually identical to S-CARDs with one key difference -- they can support multi-tuner products with a single card, thereby eliminating the need for the second card in dual-tuner products like the $199-$250 TivoHD.

Outside of possibly CA and some parts of PA, I don't know of any FiOS service areas that still deploy the older S-CARDs. S-CARDs were discontinued a year ago, so once an area runs out, they do not get any more (outside of customer returns). For all intents and purposes, Verizon has now standardized on M-CARDs for new CableCard orders.

While we're on the subject, Verizon will not ship CableCards to customers under any circumstances. What representatives see on their screen suggests they can order and ship CableCards (just as they do STBs and DVRs), but they cannot. They can place a CableCard order, but any order without an accompanying appointment is automatically canceled by the system at a later time.

Message Edited by KenAF on 02-26-2009 01:28 AM

prisaz

I have long considered a TIVO but don't want to pay for the truck roll, which I along with many thing is dumb. Has anyone tried to get the cards installed at the Verizon store, by bringing their TIVO to the store. Seems like to me it should be an option that will let Verizon verify the serial number and device they are installed into. I know Verizon is busy enough and should let this appen to save service calls.

Message Edited by prisaz on 02-26-2009 02:01 AM

TimSykes

@prisaz wrote:
I have long considered a TIVO but don't want to pay for the truck roll, which I along with many thing is dumb. Has anyone tried to get the cards installed at the Verizon store, by bringing their TIVO to the store. Seems like to me it should be an option that will let Verizon verify the serial number and device they are installed into. I know Verizon is busy enough and should let this appen to save service calls.
Message Edited by prisaz on 02-26-2009 02:01 AM

There is no charge for a cablecard install truck rool. When I had mine, I was told there is not even a way to bill it if they wanted to.

lisar97

I am in NJ and was told by a tech who was at my home today (phone service) as well as fios phone tech support that M cards are available. I was also told that they would not need to do a truck roll and that i just needed to ask the orders department for a swap. I was transferred to that department and they insisted that they could not do this. They didn't know what the m card was, of course. But then they got tech support on the phone again and this person claimed that NJ has never ever had M cards and they did not know if they would ever get them. I told them that S cards were no longer made and they said that they guessed they would eventually get them one day then. He was adamant that if I ordered a card, it would wind up being the s card that arrives.

KenAF

Verizon has now standardized on M-CARDs. You won't find a Verizon installer with S-CARDs unless they just removed them from another customer's home.

lisar97

any suggestions as to how to get them to realize this and let me place an order to swap them?? they are not very easy to deal with in general but they were especially difficult on this issue despite the fact that an installer in my home told me they have them as did the tech support guy. The last tech support guy said he needed to look into who these people are and would personally educate them about verizon. he had quite the attitude.

TimSykes

What I did I called them up and told them I wanted to replace my cablecards. If they ask why tell them they now have the multi-cards, and you want to get rid of the s-card.

MrStylz

I just got off of the phone with support - I had a great experience with them on several problems with my account (after a previous bad experience....).

When it came to the M vs S card talk, the support person didn't know so she asked around and I said it was for a TiVo (tivo hd) and she said that the standard is to send out two cards. She didn't know about M or S but put a note on the account for the tech that I wanted an M card.

Bottom line, try that approach - to have a note put on for the tech doing the truck roll. I need to finalize this tomorrow as other account changes need to be put into affect before the cable card order but I'll let you know how it ends up...

M2inOR

I have to say that getting a cable card of any kind is still quite a process at Werizon. Let me tell you my experiences so far:

Just got a Moxi DVR from Digeo; after fussing with the in-the-clear QAM to verify things were working, I decided to get a cable card for the DVR. I've already got 2 other Verizon provided Motorola 6416 HD DVRs, as well as the 6200 and 2500 boxes in my home
Can't order the cable card online, so gave a call to the FiOS 888-553-1555 number, and after a bit, I talked to a rep who said a card could be sent out or I could pick one up at the local office. After confirming the location of the nearest office a few miles away, I got my order number, and drove out to the Verizon Plus store.
At the store: no cable cards; never had them, probably never will. I asked the store rep to call their internal FiOS contacts to arrange for a card to be sent. This took quite a while, so I left and asked them to call me later when they had everything taken care of. They gave me a confirmation number and the next day, called to confirm everything. This was this past Wednesday and thursday. Card should arrive on Tuesday, 5/26
Today, Sunday, I get an automated call from Verizon confirming an appt for 8am-5pm on Tuesday for Verizon to come out and install FiOS. I already have it, and I don't need the 4-6 hours they said to reserve for the installer to complete the work.
So...I called the tech line again to see what was going on. They saw minimal detail on their computer screen for the order, so the tech was not sure what was actually going on. I asked that he place some notes in the call record. He also said that billing could probably sort this out, but they were closed for the holiday weekend.
I work from home, so it will be interesting to see what happens on Tuesday. I'll be sure to post a follow-up.

Can anyone comment as to why it is so difficult to get a cable-card? And why the overall order system/tech support/online order tracking is so sparse with information?

Thanks for any replies or comments.

Mike

Bob_Robertson

It is difficult for them, because it is not something that many of them deal with on a daily or even monthly basis.... Because of it being different, assumtions, that it will be the same as the normal stuff, are made....

Think about it like this..... There is a closet with 100 little drawers... Somone else arranged everything in these drawers but none of them are marked.... In order to do your job, everyday, you use the same 5 drawers and those 5 always have the things you need and after a while you don't even have to look at the drawers, you just know which one has what you need for that particular job... then one day someone needs a cable card... you don't know what that is, so you ask and someone that has heard of one of those, says "its in one of the drawers".... or maybe someone says "it not in the drawer, its at the store".... or maybe they dont say and they just run in the closet real quick and come back with one..... either way, you still don't know what it is, and you don't hear about one again for months...

All of the Verizon employees have access to information about or have been notified about cable cards.... most of them just did not reatain the information for whatever reason or another... with it not even being on the fios website (other than a brief overview buried in the support section) It is obviouly not a piece of hardware that is being pushed for sales and such...

Best of luck withe CableCard.

KenAF

@M2inOR wrote:
I
Can anyone comment as to why it is so difficult to get a cable-card? And why the overall order system/tech support/online order tracking is so sparse with information?

Don't expect anything to arrive on Tuesday.

Verizon will not ship CableCards under any circumstances. Any order for CableCards without an installation appointment is (a) is automatically cancelled, or (b) automatically scheduled with an appointment by the computer system at the earliest available date and time. That's why you received the automated message.

Verizon service representatives are told this, but they don't retain it. Why? Their system does not give any warning when a CableCard order is placed -- as far as the rep can tell, they are able to place an order to ship the CableCard. The CableCard uses the same order process as the STBs and DVRs, but it is the only device that requires an installation appointment. CableCard orders will show order confirmation numbers, possibly even tracking numbers, but they will never be shipped. If a rep doesn't remember what they were told about CableCards during their training, they may not understand why this happened.

There is no difficulty getting a CableCard so long as you schedule an installation appointment. If you try pickup a CableCard, or schedule one for delivery, nothing will ever happen. No matter what a representative would like to do, no matter what they think they can do, the Verizon system will never fullfill shipment or pickup orders for CableCards. There is nothing a representative or their supervisor can do to change this, so don't blame them for it. You must have an appointment.

There is some good news. It looks like Verizon recently eliminated the $79 installation charge for CableCards.

Message Edited by KenAF on 05-24-2009 06:26 PM

M2inOR

To KenAF and Bob Robertson,

Thanks to both of you for a quick reply on a holiday weekend (ribs on the grill for me!)

Bob, yes I understand tech support quite well having managed a department for several years and providing 2nd and 3rd level support for the tougher situations. I had reviewed the FAQ available from verizon, and did a cursory search here first before posting by questions (perhaps more of a rant).

Yes, Cable Cards are obscure; perhaps partly because Verizon would rather customers use their provided hardware. Bob, you are right on that it is difficult for a support person to know and retain everything taught in trainging sessions. I would suppose though, that for even the most infrequent questions, there would be an FAQ available to them to advise the callers more accurately. Well, live and learn.

KenAF, thanks too for the more detailed reply. I'll report back on my Moxi experiences. Perhaps the installers are trying to learn more, too. I would have thought there might already be lots of experiences with TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD boxes.

What I learned from Digeo when I asked about the channel mapping was that a cable card would take care of things for me. Without a cable card, one scans for the available channels, and after a few minutes, you are presented with a long list of frequenies with no programming info. Without the cable card, you go channel-by-channel to view what is visible, then you match it to the appropriate guide listing. A long and time-consuming process. Wore me out for the less than 30 clear-QAM channels I had. With the hundreds of channels with my full-boat subscription, I could not even begin to imagine trying to map all of them maually!

My older EyeTV for the Mac requires manual mapping for clear-QAM, as does the SiliconDust HD Homerun. And it is really fun when Comcast and Verizon decide to shift the channel allocations around, like Comcast has been doing recently in my area.

Thanks again.

Mike

M2inOR

I can report success today with my CableCard installation into my Digeo Moxi DVR.

The top tech from the local Verizon area showed up around noon today after calling ahead to be sure I was home. His first question was whether this was a TiVo install. I informed him that this was a Moxi install. He had never heard of this box, but was up for the challenge. My tech did the first TiVo install in the area and has quite a few under his belt. We had quite a good discussion about CableCards and security.

I had everything ready for him - a 2nd tap, power, clear work area, etc. I had also setup the Moxi for Clear QAM previously, so my account was set up, and the box was working.

He swapped out my splitter and cables with verizon parts, annd then used his signal tester to make sure the signal feeds were within spec - they were.

Next he inserted the Cable Card (no printed instructions), and he proceeded to get the info off the Moxi screens to start the activation - lots of numbers and codes to be sure. Using my computer, he checked out the Verizon router, and his signal unit also ran some network tests. He tried using his actgivation wizard to get things going, but I confounded him since I had changed the default IP address range as well as locked down the router with my own username and password. He had to do the rest manually, and wait for the activation to complete.

All in all, it took about an hour to do everything, and it is clearly a manual process. Didn't need to do anything on the Moxi box except to gather 3 sets of numbers from the Cable Card after it was inserted.

Could this have been a self install?

Maybe.

I had no way to verify the cable signal levels, or run any of the Verizon diagnostics. A prudent step to be sure all was OK with the wiring and networking.

Perhaps calling in to a tech center to pass along the vaious numbers and codes could have worked, too, but would be just as time consuming.

Too bad the process is not more straightforward.