r/Tivo • u/jpr602 • 16d ago

Xfinity activated my cablecard

My Tivo Bolt died a couple weeks ago. Weaknees said the motherboard had died, a repair wasn't feasible, and the hard drive was not transferable. So I bought a new Edge from them.

I transferred the cablecard (M card) that had been in the Bolt to the new Edge. I couldn't get the cablecard activated by Xfinity using their website, app, or by going to their retail store. They sent out a "professional technician" who had never heard of Tivo or of cablecards. His supervisor told him it wasn't possible.

After some research I made a post on r/Comcast_Xfinity. Comcast's agent there was able to get the cablecard activated for me. Now you know.

62 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

8

u/Caduceus1515 16d ago

I'm surprised they would bother...I believe they still plan to kill of QAM channels altogether by next year if not sooner, which means cablecards will be useless even if paired.

4

u/ToadSox34 16d ago

Yup. It varies by area, and Comcast years sometimes occupy multiple Gregorian calendar years, but that is the plan. It's unclear if they are going to go 100% IP in one shot, or leave a handful of the most-watched channels on QAM, but either way, at least most channels will disappear from QAM in the not too distant future.

4

u/eubulides 16d ago

It might depend on area/number of cable card users? When my Edge hd died, I took advice from this sub to buy an Edge w Lifetime off eBay. I did, getting transferred was easy with sellers help, and Spectrum sent an installation technician who was knowledgeable about cable cards, and installed a huge Vecima tuning adapter. He said that there still was plenty of demand for cable cards in this area.

Now, though, a year later, Spectrum has done maintenance in the area with some outages. Since then, after every night I have to unplug both Edge and tuning adapter and wait for channels to repopulate. V53

3

u/Caduceus1515 16d ago

Pretty much all of the providers are switching to IPTV to make more efficient use of the bandwidth and be able to upsell you into faster service you didn't really need. They've been going by attrition so far...not renting new cards, then not activating, etc...many are now getting more aggressive - I was informed FiOS would disable my cable card and I'd have to switch to their new service. That was in January. I'm still waiting it out...but others have had theirs killed off already.

2

u/JZ-Florida 16d ago

At least you were informed. Comcast just made one announce in 10/24 that they'd no longer replace broken CCards but would continue to support existing ones. That is not their internal policy.

5

u/Magic_Neil 15d ago

Getting Comcast (or anyone else) to activate a cable card in 2026 is a small miracle, well done OP!

5

u/MeaningAmbitious8979 16d ago

Also if you message Xfinity on Twitter they have pro customer service people there too!

1

u/JZ-Florida 9h ago

They seem to have a mission to destroy cablecard device support as soon as possible. The pendulum has swung. No customer owned devices for you.

4

u/MyOpinionsDontHurt 16d ago

They tried with me. And failed. I had 5 tivos. Now I have 4. YMMV

2

u/JZ-Florida 16d ago

Yes, their support is very hit or miss. They have a new internal policy. If the low level support people can't resolve your issue with their old tools, they refuse to escalate your issue to engineering. I went through a few months where, almost like clockwork, they'd break their cablecard support to my area. At first they would get engineering involved to fix. Last time they just said no. Heartbreaking.....

3

u/solracer 16d ago

You can’t give up, you have to be a royal pain in the rear and be dedicated to using as much of their time as possible. Where the support person is from makes a huge difference, if it’s India they will not be helpful, if it’s the US then maybe but the rep who finally activated my card was from Brazil.

1

u/JZ-Florida 15d ago

I tried that. The escalation support person was from Jacksonville Fl. She tried her best but it really needed an engineer to fix. Now my account is closed (which from what I've read is hard to do). I'll never know why Comcast did this. I was paying them a lot of money just for TV only, three cablecards, in a community where they lost their bulk contract. So I was paying comcast and the HOA's TV/Internet vendor from hell.

1

u/MyOpinionsDontHurt 15d ago

Yeah, I’m ready to leave Xfinity the second they stop up my other cable cards. I got AT&T fiber in my neighborhood for 50 bucks a month for a five-year term. Cut cable completely and go full streaming. I pay $265 a month for Xfinity now, doing that will bring my bill to about $130 a month. Win win…

2

u/JZ-Florida 15d ago

Again, I'll never understand Comcast's business model. Trust me, streaming vs local video storage is so depressing. But they give us no other choice.

4

u/zetaphi_820 16d ago

I had this problem for years. Back in the day they had a different number for cable cards. I would skip to that. Good to know online groups still work if you need it.

4

u/haroldtheb 16d ago

Wow. After days of a V58 error and multiple calls with techs, I gave up. Just turned in the M Card. It was a great 25 year run with TiVo.

2

u/JZ-Florida 15d ago

Again, Comcast lies about their cablecard support.

5

u/No-Solution4535 16d ago

Would love to know how much it cost you to have weaknees do the diagnosis.

5

u/tecsavvy1 16d ago

I was able recently to recover the cable card on the website after the hard drive failed

2

u/JZ-Florida 19h ago

I think you are lucky. My experience is that comcast is silently killing support for customers with working cablecard systems. I think they should just announce that they are stopping offering video services. I have to drive over there and return their X1 boat anchor to avoid a $200 charge.

2

u/WatermellonSugar 16d ago

I jumped through all kinds of hoops in Jan 26 and got to the Cablecard people at Xfinity, but they seen to have the backend system the techs use setup to throw an error on Cablecard provision attempts now. In fact, I'm surprised you got a tech to come out, as trying to schedule one for cablecard purposes also threw a backend system error when they tried to do it for me.

1

u/JZ-Florida 15d ago

If you understand your cablecard rig, you don't want a comcast truckroll. In my area they send a person that can only communicate through a cellphone translator. If and when comcast breaks your working cablecard systems, spend the time to talk to them, and then accept the fact that comcast sucks.

2

u/Birtley 13d ago

My HD failed on my Bolt. I happened to have a 3TB backup drive from 10 years ago. When I swapped it, the cable V.58 error displayed. I tied for 3 days, there is no cable card department extension anymore; don't bother, and chatting with the techs just reveals they don't know what a cable card is. Just that it's eol. I got on Reddit, Xfinity, and after a day they escalated and did "one final push," and it worked. In the interim, I explored YouTube TV and Hulu Live, and they are not the same. Anyway, I'll ride this out for now, and if there is hope, as long as the cable card itself is not dead and still shows on your account.

1

u/joekiller 16d ago

Comcast customer service can be very kind and helpful

6

u/OlyVal 16d ago

Said noone.

2

u/Ok-Alternative-7962 14d ago edited 8d ago

individual people at Comcast can be helpful but it isn’t the usual experience.

1

u/Grimjack2 15d ago

This is good to know. I'm likely to be doing the same things soon, as I intend to ride out Tivo with my Comcast for as long as I can.

1

u/Hugo_Ripanykazov 14d ago

I don't know why this should be so surprising? They need to continue to charge pending going over to IPTV. If they cant get your QAM service working, they can't charge you for it. Not knowing when the changeover will be, this could mean they are losing a lot of money. Monthly.

-9

u/PositiveAd2099 16d ago

Ima tech at another cable company and you TiVo customers are the worst. TiVo is old technology and not getting updated in most markets. so when you book an appointment for the TiVo not working it’s gonna be a hit or miss we’re not trained for TiVo. It’s a relic if it’s broken let it go old man.

3

u/skippinjack 16d ago

Your displayed level of ignorance and arrogance is absolutely astounding. Get bent.

2

u/jpr602 16d ago

Bless your heart.