Question regarding cable card

There's usually no problem transferring a card from one device to another, but it will require a call to the cable company to get it authorized on the new device. If you are renting the cable box, there's no point in keeping that box with no card. Just return it and get another card. You'll have to lease a card anyway. Depending on your provider, it could range from a small credit to a couple of dollars. Charter, for example, charges $2.

Your card should look like this:

Are you in the US.? I thought cable companies were required by the FCC now to provide self-install packages.

What they are telling you is a violation of FCC Rules.

Some do not, due to the problems that happen a lot of times, when people attempt the Cable Card install themselves. Most times it is that the company would like to remove the liability from the customer, and if there are problems, have the tech on site to resolve.

As for the OP, you may be able to entice them into a credit towards X amount of months, if you let them know that you are on a limited income, and may end up having to disconnect, due to you cannot afford the extra costs toward the Cable Card Install, etc..

If they insist on installing, it insist that it is free as they have to let you instal it yourself. I did that with Charter and ended up having to walk the tech through the installation as the tech didn't have a clue.
Edited by Sammy2 - 1/14/13 at 8:44am

Open a support ticket with Ceton. They can contact the right people at your cable company and get you going. Cable card self install is the law.

That's correct, see the FCC rules:

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cablecard-know-your-rights

Getting a small operator to comply with self-install is a different story, you might also need to contact your local franchise authority and point them to this.

As others have mentioned, cable opertors are required by the FCC to allow self-installations. If you have a Ceton InfiniTV, please open a support ticket on our website and I will get out the clue stick and beat them with it. If you have another manufacturer's tuner, you're on your own

Is Ceton pompous enough to believe they are the only manufacturer with customer service? IDK about Hauppauge but I know SiliconDust has customer Support too...

Wow. When's the last time you saw an SD developer post in this forum to help their customers, especially nights, weekends and holidays? And when's the last time SD called your cable company on your behalf to get your tuner working? It's not pomposity, it's a fact that Ceton is head and shoulders above their competition in terms of customer service. My SD tuners had bugs for years that are still being ignored.

I disagree. SiliconDust doesn't usually post on avs because they have their own forum on their website. I've had responses from them to posts I've made over there.

When I first got my Prime I had a few issues. I was able to run diag logs and they pointed me to pairing problems with the CableCo and offered to help If I couldn't get it straightend out with the CableCo. I was able to get it straightened out without further assistatance from SD but am pretty confident that they would have stepped in if neccesary.

The 04052012 f/w is pretty stable but I know they've had a bad run of beta f/w's which I don't use. I have a Prime tuner and an echo. I find that both companies are pretty close in responsiveness.

I agree that Ceton's customer service appears very helpful and committed to helping their customers (even in places like AVS - outside their own support forums)

I don't understand the need to try and spread "bugs for years" comments about their competitors without justification

I use the SiliconDust HDHR Prime because a networked tuner made more sense to me. I don't have any problems with it or bugs. I didn't get every channel upon first installation, but that was my CableCo not the tuner.

What bugs have you had for years and with what tuner?

Dave is probably talking about the "tuner not availabale" bug, which happens if the TA times out before the channel tunes. I am not convinced that this is SD's issue but they are trying to get it straightened out by modifying their f/w to acommodate issues with crap equipment provided by others. I know that they've had a string of rogue beta f/w's so I'm still on the nearly year old stable release.

In this case, at least the way I interpret it, "on your own", means you are on your own to find someone else to beat them with a clue stick as Eric only will do so it if you have one of their cards, perfectly understandable as his plate is full and doesn't have time (or perhaps authority) to do it on behalf of another company's product, though it may be in his/ceton's interest to contact that provider regardless on whose device they have to make it easier for the next customer.

$90 seems a little high for an install. One thing that caught my eye about the $90 fee was that seems like a fee I've seen before when someone does what the op was suggesting in taking out a cablecard from their cable box and putting it in another device. I've seen fees from $90-$120 whenever someone removes a cablecard from a company box. That may be changing as there is some "growing" pressure to make the STB install just like a cablecard install with no pre-pairing of the devices. The only thing listed at the generic metrocast site is a $2.95 monthly card rental fee... there may be more at one of the local specific sites but I didn't know what zipcode to key in. If this is in a very rural area, the fee might actually be a "delivery fee" to send a truck out with a card as some providers don't ship cards to you as well as to pick up your old box... but most providers have a somewhat local office to do this. I would have made sure to present this as a new device and not mention the other box, not sure if this is what happened or not.

The tuner not avail bug also happens without TAs (I'm on Comcast, no TA here), and seems random to me. I never looked at the Prime logs but I suspect it's a MS ehrecvr.exe bug and not an SD one, because rebooting WMC fixes it without any reboot of the Prime.

Yes, the tuner not available bug. That's the main reason I dumped SD for Ceton. Since that never happens with Ceton, I don't see how it could be a WMC problem.

Bugs aside, I still contend Ceton goes the extra mile on CS compared to others. I just thought it was bad form to dump on Ceton right after Eric jumped in to help the OP. They've earned bragging rights. SD has not.

I think that ceton had to do a f/w work around for the issue too because I've read that they had problems with this too. They're probably quicker to the draw on getting official f/w out than SD but that said, it's been a couple weeks for a f/w release on the echo and the last two beta/omega/whaterveritscalled f/w releases have caused issues for me with my echo and I'm still waiting for a good fix to this.. and mkv.. and dts decoding.

My tuner not available HDHRP problem was related to my direct connect of the device to my network card, and a windows setting on the network card.

OK, you've all reacted with appropriate amounts of indignation. My original objection was (and still is) not to the offer to help. It was to the implying that Ceton is the only company to offer tech support. Specifically this statement, smilie included:

My implication was not meant to be that Ceton is the only company that offers technical support; rather, to the best of my knowledge, we are the only company that has contacts at all major (and many smaller) cable operators, and will "go to bat" for the customer. From what I have seen, another manufacturer tends to direct users to file FCC complaints directly, with no attempt to reach the operator first to resolve the issue. Conversely, we generally consider FCC complaints a last resort, and do everything that we can to avoid the customer having to file one.

I've got two InfiniTV4's in my HTPC and I see the "tuner not available" message all the time. I've never missed a recording so it's nothing more than a nuisance message to me. It's definitely a WMC issue and is not specifically a tuner problem nor is it related to a particular brand of tuner. The way I understand it, WMC polls each tuner until it finds one that's available. Sometimes it takes a bit longer than usual to initialize the tuner for recording so you get the message indicating it's unavailable. WMC will continue to poll each tuner in order of priority until it finds one it can use. I can only surmise that a simple registry hack that would increase the time limit required for a tuner to respond would fix the problem.

I recently rebuilt my HTPC with an Ivy Bridge CPU and MSI Z77 motherboard. I couldn't help but notice that the blue LEDs on both InfiniTV4's didn't start blinking at the same time like they used to. The new motherboard has two PCI-e 3.0 X16 slots which have been configured as PCI-e 2.0 slots in BIOS. The tuner installed in the first slot closest to the CPU doesn't even come on until the 2nd tuner has stopped blinking and the LED is on steady. I can only assume that this is the set of tuners that gets polled first and for some reason it's slower to respond and eventually times out before being fully initialized. This is the slot that would normally be used by a graphics card. I should also note that this is a 1st generation InfiniTV4 and the 2nd InfiniTV4 is of the newer design. I may try swapping them around to see if it makes any difference since I have seven PCI-e slots to work with (actually only six since I can only use either slot 3 or 4, but not both).

I can confirm, when I bought my infiniTV, Ceton was very accommodating, working directly with my less than interested provider (Charter). I've found they take ownership of issues, even when it is not necessarily their issue to fix, but to merely help the other partners figure out how to work their own system(s).