[mythtv-users] Insight Cable Company willing to work with me to get firewire connection fixed

[Joe Borne]

I live in northern Kentucky and I have Insight cable (a Time Warner
subsidiary). I ordered the HD package back in April and everything worked
great. I hooked up my Mythbox to my Motorola 61xx STB and I was watching HD
content on every channel I subscribed to in a matter of minutes. But then a
few weeks later, several channels stopped working. My Mythbox was able to
make the STB change to the channel, but then after a few minutes it would
kick back out to the main menu. It wasn't an HD issue, because some of my HD
channels still work.

I talked to my cable company about this several times, but there wasn't
anyone there who could understand what I was talking about. Eventually I
connected my STB to one of my mythbox's PVR-150's with an S-Video cable so I
could view the channels that had disappeared.

Recently, I got fed up with this again, convinced they had turned on 5C
encryption. Since most of the now failing channels are available for free
OTA, I emailed and called to let them know they are in violation of the FCC
regulations.

Suddenly I got action. I got a phone call back today. They assured me they
are definitely NOT encrypting. They are talking to Motorola and the high-end
technicians in the home office. They originally thought that Motorola had
not activated the firewire ports at all. So I set them straight by letting
them know that I can view some, but not all channels through the firewire.

Amazingly, I told them I was using a MythTV system, and what it was for and
THEY WERE PERFECTLY OK WITH IT! Not only that, they want to get ALL of my HD
channels working for me, not just the ones required by the FCC! (Hooray,
here comes DiscoveryHD!)

Since I am off work on Friday, I volunteered to work with them all day on
this issue, even letting them come to my home. They are going to try to set
that up.

My concern is that I may not be able to give them the info they need. I'm
relatively technical, but not a programmer by far. I need some tools or
help.

So is there a way to test to see if I am getting an mpeg 2 stream from a
channel other than just tuning to it and seeing if it fails? Is there a way
to see WHY it fails? (No data, scrambled data, poor signal, what?)

This is a RARE opportunity in my opinion. I may have a chance here to help
others who are having similar problems worldwide. I know lots of users out
there are unable to tune in certain channels despite there being no
encryption. I think we should reward Insight for being this open and
cooperative. It's the first instance of a cable company cooperating like
this with MythTV that I can think of!

I'd even be willing to provide root level ssh access to my box and a three
way conference call with the cable tech to the right (trusted) developer for
MythTV.

Any volunteers?
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