Step 1: Go to Comcast office and get CableCard
Step 2: Go to Comcast office again and return bad CableCard given to you in step 1, get working CableCard
Step 3: Call Comcast and sit on hold forever
Step 4: Explain what a CableCard is to the ****wit on the phone
Step 5: Wait while the ****wit in Step 4 has to put in a support ticket because he can't figure out how to activate a CableCard
Step 6: Get annoyed and ***** about it on the Internet


Oddly enough, the first CableCard tuner we setup in our house wasn't nearly as much of a hassle as the second one is being...

My favorite step is step 6!

When you called Comcast, did you get someone in India?

Because when I call Cablevision (for technical reasons), my call gets outsourced.

I immensely enjoy pulling teeth. You're probably just not tying your victim properly

I work for a certain cable co. (not telling) Sorry to hear you are having trouble with this. Sad part is this is normal. Clear QAM FTW...

1) Ask for a supervisor. Don't give up.
2) You can also go to your local comcast place that distributes the set top boxes. They have to provide you with one by law if you go in and request one.
3) These cablecards often are incorrectly programmed so be prepared for the possibility you will have to go back for extas/different ones
4) There should be no charge associated with these. Don't let them tell you otherwise. If they try to charge you for installation then tell them you will install yourself.
5) If they refuse to accept reality bring up TiVo... They should be accustomed to providing cablecards for TiVo devices.
6) If/when they roll a truck, they usually bring extras and will handle the activation of the cards over the phone. If you went in and got the card(s) yourself, then you can call in and request an activation. There is usually a number on the card.

Also, out of curiosity, what are you putting this cablecard in? Is it a PC by any chance? I know ATI makes a CableCard tuner but it only ships in OEM systems. I would love to throw one in my HTPC and use it to record HD cable TV...

Edit: Check out this bad boy: http://hd.engadget.com/2010/03/30/ceton-infinitv-4-cablecard-tuner-review/

I'm aware of how to get a CableCard from Comcast (as I have done already, multiple times), it's just annoying when everyone you get on the phone is clueless and doesn't know what to do with the CableCard ID or the host ID. There's not much you can do in that respect until you finally get someone competent on the phone, which I finally did after a lot of headache.

And yes, it's a Ceton InfiniTV 4. We have 2 of them now in our house, and they're awesome. The only problem with them is they're very hard to get (either have to backorder one and wait a few months or pay a premium for one off of eBay).

Darth, can't wait to hear how the InfiniTV4 works out. How much did you end up paying for them?

They both ended up being around $600 a piece, which seems to be the going rate for them on eBay. So you can pay $400 and get one in a few months, or around $600 and get one in a few days.

We would've been fine with one in my house if my network was a little more robust and I had another Xbox 360 (can only stream live TV to Media Center Extenders, can't stream to other PCs), but that wasn't the case so I opted to get another one.

We've had the first one up and running for about a month or so, and it's been serving live TV to the Xbox 360 in our living room from the PC (which is also used for TV) it's connected to in another room just fine. They're both on a gigabit router, so bandwidth isn't an issue between them. Your average live TV stream eats up about 20 Mb/s of bandwidth, give or take (at least with Comcast's channel compression). Then we've got all of the recorded TV being offloaded to my file server, so it can be streamed to any Windows 7 computer in the house (as long as it's Copy Freely).

The Ceton side of the experience has been awesome. The hardware works great with M-Cards and it supposedly supports SDV adapters (we don't have to worry about that here). There's a pretty active community of people who use them out there, so getting info or help with them is easy. I've heard those ATI tuners are a nightmare to deal with in comparison.

It's definitely an expensive initial investment, but the experience is leaps and bounds better than standard cable hardware (WMC blows away any set-top box interface I've ever used), and it can save money in the long run since you're no longer renting cable boxes (each HD DVR we had in our house cost us $16/month I think).