I have two cablecards. One running in an HDHR Prime and another in a lifetime Tivo as backup.
In August, we had a power outage and when it came back the cablecard in my HDHR would not work. I was at my house in Italy and tried to troubleshoot from a distance but Comcast insisted that I needed an on-site visit. I scheduled it for September when I returned. The service tech arrived and we tried to get it working but the card looked fried. I swapped in my cablecard from the TIvo (still working) and it got further but then we needed to change the Comcast backend to bind the card to the HDHR in their system. The tech was a little reluctant as we could end up killing both cards on Comcast's system and for no gain if the problem was the HDHR. Both cards got ooblock but the bad one wouldn't get card validation and neither got card authentication (Comcast system would need to align the good card with the HDHR for that). I bought a second HDHR prime to make sure the card rather than the HDHR was the problem and it behaved the same with each card so I was pretty sure the card was fried.
Yesterday the tech arrived to swap my good cablecard (TIVO) to my HDHR. To my amazed surprise he was Santa Claus as he had found a working cablecard for me! I was shocked. We put it in and he called Tier 1 to get them to bind it and they wouldn't do it (they said they didn't have the tools) nor would they escalate it. He found a way to broadcast a help request and a Tier 2 who knew cablecards responded and we were able to get the new card online and working!
I am ecstatic as Channels & the HDHR Prime are the backbone of my TV system. My main home is in a gated community and we get "free" cable as part of our HOA. I have a pied-a-terre in NYC and a house in Italy and Channels is my US TV solution for both of those homes as well as my main home. For Italy, in particular, time and place shifting is a necessity.
Christmas came early for me this year!!!
