<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 11:58 PM, Ronald Frazier <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ron@ronfrazier.net">ron@ronfrazier.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">> I'd be quite interested in hearing about your CableCard setup struggles. I<br>
> just picked up my card from WOW and will be going through the activation<br>
> once the Prime ships.<br>
<br>
</div>Wait....you got WOW to give you a card for a self install? That's what<br>
I wanted to do, but they would not give me the option. When they<br>
wanted to schedule an installation appointment, I specifically asked<br>
if I could just get the card and do a self install, and they told me<br>
they can't do it. </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
Before I got my card, I had my ceton working in linux as a QAM tuner.<br>
We inserted the cable card, and the ceton's control panel instantly<br>
recognized the card was installed. The tech called in the info and<br>
paired it, but the Ceton kept saying the card was unauthorized. He<br>
double checked things, and get the NOC to verify everything, but no<br>
luck. He had 1 more cablecard, so we swapped it out. He paired it to<br>
the new card, NOC confirmed they had the info, but nothing was working<br>
still. He called his supervisor looking for suggestion, but no luck.<br>
Nobody really knew what to do. At this point, the tech had been at my<br>
house for 1 hour.<br>
<br>
On the <a href="http://dslreports.com" target="_blank">dslreports.com</a> website, there is a forum for WOW cable, and<br>
there is an employee there (Dan) who works in the NOC. The guy has<br>
been really helpful with everyone, and I knew he had personally setup<br>
a Ceton in Windows, so he had a little bit of experience with the<br>
card. I sent him an IM through the forum (and included my phone<br>
number). Two minutes later, the install tech's phone was ringing...it<br>
was Dan. He tried talking through some things with the tech, but he<br>
wasn't familiar with this sort of stuff (he'd just installed<br>
cablecards in a few Tivos), so he just handed me the phone and I<br>
talked with Dan. We worked through a whole bunch of stuff...trying to<br>
swap cablecards, wiping my account, authorizing me for everything.<br>
Nothing worked. After a half hour of the tech just sitting there while<br>
we talked, we decided to let the tech leave while we worked the rest<br>
out over the phone.<br>
<br>
Finally, we figured lets see if we can get this up and running in my<br>
Windows 7 machine. Maybe it would upgrade the firmware (we couldn't<br>
find any firmware on ceton's website other than the beta firmware) and<br>
that would solve the problem. Put it in, installed the drivers &<br>
diagnostic utility, but it wouldn't recognize the card. I reset the<br>
card's network settings, and now the utility could see the card. It<br>
said there was newer firmware, so I had it install it. It said it<br>
succeeded, but after a reboot, it once again said I had the old<br>
firmware and there was a newer version available. We toyed around with<br>
a few things here, and we got some of the checkboxes in the utility to<br>
be green, but there were still several red X's. However, when I went<br>
into the Ceton's control panel, it was now saying that the card was<br>
authorized and validated (don't recall the exact words, thought its<br>
likely different on the Prime). At this point, I figured that although<br>
it didn't want to work in windows yet, we had gotten over the most<br>
important hurdle (getting the card authorized). I got off the phone<br>
with Dan and figured I'd put it back into linux and see where I could<br>
go from there.<br>
<br>
When I got it back into the linux box and tried tuning my HD stations,<br>
they weren't working. I was getting an error message in the control<br>
panel that said something like "No entitlement". I was afraid I had<br>
been misinformed, and that everything wasn't Copy Freely, so I put it<br>
back into the windows box to see if I could get it working there. In<br>
the diagnostic utility, there is a section where you can try tuning<br>
channels (even though it's not yet working in media center). I tried<br>
it and got the same error message...no entitlement...and it also said<br>
something like contact your cable provider if you should be receiving<br>
this channel. I sent Dan another IM telling him about this. He<br>
promptly replied that my account was missing one of the HD flags, so<br>
he added it in. Now when I tried tuning, it succeeded. I threw the<br>
card back into the linux box, tried tuning, and it succeeded. I piped<br>
the output from /dev/ceton into mplayer and I was watching HD video in<br>
linux.<br>
<br>
<br>
So, it was a very trying experience...took about 4 hours, but luckily<br>
Dan was patient and helpful. Neither of us are really sure what the<br>
trick was to getting it working. It seemed like everything should have<br>
worked in linux, but it didn't want to do the initial authorization. I<br>
would have said the firmware update fixed it, but as I said, even<br>
though the upgrade said it succeeded, it apparently failed as I ended<br>
up with the same version.<br>
<br>
Much of this was Ceton specific stuff that will be different with the<br>
prime, but hopefully something here will be of use to you.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
--<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5">Ron Frazier<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
mythtv-users mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org</a><br>
<a href="http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users" target="_blank">http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br>
When I brought it up to a tier-3 support tech, they didn't think they
allowed a self install either, but suggested I ask at the local WOW office. When I
got there, they handed over an M card right away (they had a whole
stack of M and S cards) and said I would just have to call up and work
through activating it and getting the device up over the phone.<br><br>Thanks for the info, I'm crossing my fingers that most of this was due to the Ceton device being an early model with some buggy firmware. I'll be sure to check out the reports on that forum.<br>
<br>The point about the HD flag is interesting; apparently with WOW you only get your HD package when you add any other package of digital channels on top of the basic one. But of course for 99.9% of people that means signing up for an HD receiver/DVR, otherwise you'll still only get SD. So I'm guessing since you didn't have one of those on the account, they assumed you weren't getting any HD and didn't set the flag.<br>
<br>-Alex<br>