Had to pull the USB cables on them 3 times so far today.  Once this morning before leaving for work and twice in the last 3 hours since I've been home.  Going to the in-laws tomorrow, and given the reliability of these junky TAs that means a choice between recording non-SDV stuff or recording nothing.  Which works out for now as there is so far barely any SDV stuff I actually record.  But as they seem to be moving more stuff to SDV at the rate of a few channels a week that doesn't bode well for the future. 

When I figured out which channels are SDV I was able to see they have about a 1 in 3 failure rate on the set top boxes here, and that is before taking into account that even the 2 out of 3 times that the initial tune works, the signal for them comes and goes with problems at least every ten minutes, even on the SA 8300 HDCs.  So I think things will get interesting as they ramp this crap up.

Hurry up Verizon, we need you!

Actually, even if they don't get here, we'll probably be moving to long island eventually, and there they already have FIOS. :-)

I'm not going to disagree the TA's are crap - I mean, just what I need, 2 more points of failure for my system. However, I think if your STB's are having issues, you could very well have an issue your cableco can fix. I was having some SDV errors tuning on my STB a couple weeks ago and they were able to have a maintenance crew come out and fix it. The nice thing about that is they are used to dealing with STB issues, so they shouldn't have a blank look on their face like they do with cablecards. If they can fix that root problem, hopefully your TAs will be more reliable. I've had a few failures, but nothing like what you are experiencing.

My wife called them several times when they first started having stutering all the time in June, even on the non-SDV channels. This started on the exact same day SDV started here, which I very much doubt is a coincidence. They say it must be the box (apparently both of them, and coworkers boxes 6 miles away, etc), and they just say to exchange it for a new one. This is why the majority of people in the payment center are there to exchange the box. I could probably get them to send someone here, and end up paying $45 when they don't find a "problem" and tell me some BS like maybe I don't have Discovery Kids HD, Showtime Beyond HD, Cooking HD, HallmarkHD, or even CSPAN HD as part of my subscription and that could cause it to be "currently unavailable" so often.

I think the issue probably affects more than 1 million customers and that they don't care.

Channel flipping is several times faster without the TAs, and I think the WAF factor would actually be much better disabling those channels... until SDV expands past a subset of HD channels.

I guess Comcast is having some growing pains with SDV. Not that TWC has it down pat, but they are fully entrenched. I don't know exactly how many of my channels are SDV, but it is a lot! No way could I go without a TA unfortunately. I've found TWC (at least in my area) very responsive to my concerns and willing to send someone within 24 hours at a drop of a hat. Not that I have always gotten someone who knew what they heck they were doing, but I do appreciate the fact they are willing to keep sending people out to try :)

Unfortunately I think I'm still having some signal strength issues, but after 8 visits(!) since getting my Ceton, I'm tired of dealing with it and besides ordering some new low loss splitters to try, I'm going to give the TWC techs a rest and live with it for a bit.

I have TWC here, not Comcast. The list of SDV channels they sent in the mailing here is totally wrong. (Thank God!!) May be the case for your area as well? The list they sent had around 200 channels listed that were supposed to go SDV, maybe more. So far we actually have 67 or 68 SDV channels, many of which are newly added and not on the list that was sent out.

glugglug,

I think I might be with you on the ditching the TA thing here in New York City. There are some shows and movies I watch on the SDV channels, but it is almost daily that I get SDV or no signal errors while recording so I agree it might not be worth it. I used to be concerned that a show wouldn’t record but now the unreliability is such a given that I expect the onslaught of errors of missed recordings when I turn on the TV. And forget about leaving town for a few days because you need to babysit the boxes to watch for blinking lights or failed recordings.

It’s not unbearably inconvenient right now during the summer because most of the programming on the cable channels air again at a later time. But when the fall season of TV starts, along with overlapping sporting events, the situation will become intolerable.

Let us know how it works out and how much content is not available.

Oh, sorry, not sure how I messed that up. Based on SDV errors I get when my TAs go flaky, I think many channels we do watch are on SDV unfortunately.

Here's one crazy idea I had, if I scan channels with my HD Homerun, it finds unencrypted SDV channels that happen to be on at the time. Of course they come and go, but they seem to be sent in the clear. So what if we could access the interface to the TA, send a request for an SDV channel, get the mapped channel, and record it without DRM on the HD Homerun (or I guess any Clear QAM tuner)?

I'm already hating having everything locked down by TWC - especially this time of year when I don't really watch any local stations so none of my commercial skipping is working. Sigh, it makes me dream crazy dreams...

woolooloo

Based on SDV errors I get when my TAs go flaky, I think many channels we do watch are on SDV unfortunately.

My understanding is that when you use TAs they overwrite the entire channel table. I might have the terminology wrong, but in essence once you have the TA plugged in every channel requires the TA to be functional, regardless of whether they are on SDV.

DFox

woolooloo

Based on SDV errors I get when my TAs go flaky, I think many channels we do watch are on SDV unfortunately.

My understanding is that when you use TAs they overwrite the entire channel table. I might have the terminology wrong, but in essence once you have the TA plugged in every channel requires the TA to be functional, regardless of whether they are on SDV.

 

I hear what you are saying and was under the same impression. However, I know ESPN 1500 is not SDV and I can usually tune that channel even if a TA is not working.

All switched digital is a way for cable companies to "offer" more channels in the limited bandwidth of a cable.  What cable company's realized is that few, if any, people actually watch those channels like Blue Cheese channel or the Diaper channel within any given area.  So what they do is always broadcast channels like CNN and ESPN, but only broadcast the Blue Cheese channel if someone actually wants to watch it.  If a second person also wants to watch the Blue Cheese channel, your Media Center will be smart enough to tune to that same Blue Cheese channel so you can enjoy it as well.  The TA transmits data to the cable company saying you want to watch one of these channels so they can broadcast it if they aren't, or tell your Media Center the channel its on if someone is already watching it. 

 So, by definition, putting popular channels like ESPN on switched digital is worthless, since its VERY VERY likely someone is always watching that channel in any given area.  On the flip side, channels nobody watches are perfect for this technology.  So, even if your cable company is using switched digital, and you don't have a tuning adapter, chances are you'll never miss it.  TUNING ADAPTERS AREN'T REQUIRED if you can live without the few stations they are using them for.

 I have two tuning adapters that I used with my two ATI tuners, but got sick of the problems so I just unplugged them.  With my Ceton, they seem to be working so far, but in the same token, I rarely watch any channels broadcast this way, Cox leases them free, so they don't cost me anything.  95% of people can unplug these things and you will unlikely miss the channels that you won't receive.

glugglug

Actually, even if they don't get here, we'll probably be moving to long island eventually, and there they already have FIOS. :-)

 

 Enjoy the high property taxes and mandatory flood insurance. :)  I shouldn't really say that since I live in NJ but I heard Long Island can be worse in terms of taxes.

 Time Warner here is taking SDV very seriously.  There are very few HD channels that aren't SDV at this point, and they are working on moving the SD lineup over.

What do we do about the unreliability of these things? Every call to customer service results in either them not knowing what I am talking about, or a claim that I need to swap out my defective TA (inevitably for another defective TA), or 3rd level support saying there is nothing more they can do on their end and has to send out a tech that just comes to cut my wires to add new silver tips. The issues are sporadic enough that I can’t disprove at the time that a new silver tip solved it.

woolooloo

Oh, sorry, not sure how I messed that up. Based on SDV errors I get when my TAs go flaky, I think many channels we do watch are on SDV unfortunately.

Here's one crazy idea I had, if I scan channels with my HD Homerun, it finds unencrypted SDV channels that happen to be on at the time. Of course they come and go, but they seem to be sent in the clear. So what if we could access the interface to the TA, send a request for an SDV channel, get the mapped channel, and record it without DRM on the HD Homerun (or I guess any Clear QAM tuner)?

I'm already hating having everything locked down by TWC - especially this time of year when I don't really watch any local stations so none of my commercial skipping is working. Sigh, it makes me dream crazy dreams...

The TAs most definately affect non-SDV channels. For example, 715 and 119 are not SDV but they fail a lot when the TA is flaky. Often the TAs get in a mode where every channel fails.

As far as using the HDHomeRun to decrypt them, I don't see any SDV channels showing up on the silicondust list. From what I can tell, there are only 4 frequencies they are using for them, 633MHz, 639MHz, 645MHz, and 651Mhz, with the vast majority being stuffed into either 633 or 639, I'd have to look up what QAMs those are, and the program IDs are in the 30001-30068 range which makes them hard to enter into MCE. I think what you are seeing is sometimes they have a free one month promo of a premium package and that gets sent partially ClearQAM. Except for that couple of months where they were sending HBO2 HD, Cartoon Network HD, OuterMax HD, and a couple others... but there wasn't even any SDV yet at that point.

I found a thread about NYC SDV on Tivo Community forums. The list of SDV channels other than premium packages is posted several times there. The other interesting thing I learned reading Tivo forums late last night is that there was a large batch of defective TAs manufactured in May. Since SDV was just turned on in NYC in June, I think we probably got the biggest portion of that batch. Looking at the stickers on the bottom of my TAs I have one from 6/17/2010 and one from 5/9/2010. I guess it can't hurt to exchange the 5/9 one and see if it gets any better.

Surely the FCC has a location for comments.