Charter Dumping my Cable Card

[JonUrban]

I got a letter informing me that my installed Cable Card in my Pioneer Plasma would be "ineffective" after May 18, and I should pull it out and bring it down to swap it for a "free for a year" digital cable box. Of course, after that year, it will cost me $10 a month. They charge $6.40 for the box and $3.60 for the GUIDE (!!). The Guide???

Anyway, I am going to tell them to F Off, dump their digital expanded services, and be done with that. I want to keep the High Speed Internet and possibly the basic service. However, I have a questions.

The basic service includes the HD local stations, but to get those I still need the Charter box, with the $10 fee and guide. Is there a QAM Tuner box that I can buy on the internet that I can attach to the cable feed and get the local HD channels without any hardware or guide from Charter?

Is this possible? The reason I ask is that in the fine print at the bottom of the letter it says:

Customers with TiVo Series 3, Tivo HD, or TiVo HD XL DVR's should call to obtain a waiver-fee tuning adapter lease and standard installation that will allow you to continue to receive all digital cable channels with your current TiVo cable card equipment.

I don't know anything about TiVo's, but if they can continue to get the channels, why can't an external box work. I really don't care about premiums, or even cable channels, just the local HD channels.

THANKS

 

[Kirby Baker]

Tivo's have the ability to use the TA, I'm not sure of any TV's that have this support. You could still use your CC in your TV, but any channels on your local system that move to SDV (switched Digital video channels) you will lose access to.

If your Pioneer has a cable card slot in it, then its surely must be able to tune Clear QAM. Why not yank your CC and rescan for channels, you should get the locals in digital and or HD. They wont be on the same channel numbers though that you are used to. Also, an internet only house would still have access to those clear QAM channels (they dont filter out specific digital frequencies, only analog's).

You will likely have no guide data, or maybe very little on the clear QAM channels (2-3 hours maybe?).

 

[thedamaja]

Are you sure you can't just get another cable card? I've heard of Charter ditching all the single stream cards and only offering multistream.

Maybe they just used it as a opportunity to push the cable box on you. Don't they have to offer cable cards by law?

 

[Kirby Baker]

Its not the cable card at issue here. His Charter system is turning on SDV. In doing so, any cable card device would need the TA in order to tune all the channels on SDV. It doesnt matter if its a S or M card, SDV requires a TA as well as the host device (tv, tivo, etc) to have software on it to utilize the TA and request the appropiate channel from the system.

Cable cards must be provided by FCC rules, however nothing says that you have to get all programming on that cable card (i.e. the SDV channels). Thats where the TA comes into play.

 

[JonUrban]

Thanks to all. I guess I'll dump them and just stick with my Dish. I used them for a backup in the past, and when Dish didn't have the locals in HD.

 

[remiley]

Cable Card rescue, new rules issued Oct 2010 forces cable providers to support cable card devices with "Current Technogoly" CableCards. See -
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1014/FCC-10-181A1.pdf If they still won't give you a working cablecard, fill out Fcc complaint form 2000E. I did. I need a cablecard for my TV and Motorola DVR I own.

 

[TECHID1714]

Thanks to all. I guess I'll dump them and just stick with my Dish. I used them for a backup in the past, and when Dish didn't have the locals in HD.

How old is that tv 2003-04?

 

[TheTechGuru]

Depending on which model of box they give you, some like my Scientific Atlanta have a cable card in them you could probably remove then put into the TV. I don't have anything with a CableCARD slot to be able to try it in.