Charter Cable - Tuning adapter (with Prime)

[KryptoNyte]

I'm in the process of getting some relatives hooked up with Charter Cable and cablecard (HDHR-Prime + Motorola MTR700). The plan was to get Sage with SageDCT up and running this evening, called Charter for the pairing, and I made it all the way to all three tuners showing up in Sage, and even tuning the local channels in the lineup, but was not able to tune any of the encrypted channels, which is pretty much most channels.

I finally stopped struggling with Sage and switched the HDHR setup to Windows Media Center, fired it up, with exactly the same results, local unencrypted channels only. In the meantime, I noticed that the Motorola tuning adapter's amber light was flashing all the while. After a little research, I found that the light must be solid for the tuning adapter to be working properly with the Prime and cablecard. I checked and rechecked my connections between the Prime and the tuning adapter, and all is as it should be.

Eventually gave up and called Charter again, which resulted in the usual verification of all the different serial numbers and such on the various pieces of equipment, flipping things on and off, and of course, a truck roll ($$) appointment. I checked one of the tuner web pages, and the tuning adapter is only passing the first item, stuck on the second item, and basically disabled on the rest.

Does anyone have any other tips or experiences that they could share that might be a clue as to something I may be missing on my end?

[KryptoNyte]

I should probably add one more question while I'm at it - when I had Sage up and running recording three programs (local channels), the machine was using about 70% processor usage to pull that off. When I did the same thing with WMC7, it was hitting right around 30% or less.

I was expecting a simple packet moving experience that might take a few percent to get these packets to the hard disk, but apparently that's not the case - can anyone explain this processor usage when recording in Sage?

[zoundz]

Charter and I have gone around and around a number of times WRT cable card, tuning resolver, and HDHR Prime. They seem to have some difficulty getting the whole <authentication> <activation> thing right. If you look on the HDHR Prime main page, you should see:
Card Authentication success
Card OOB Lock success
Card Validation success
Tuning Resolver ready

In my most recent failure mode (actually the cable cards have been pretty reliable most of the time), one of my 2 cable cards lost its "validation" at which point a lot of the encrypted channels started showing me "copyonce" on the tuner status page. After a number of go rounds with the CSR's (who are very nice and DO try to solve the problems), a visit from a tech (to no avail), an unfulfilled promise of a phone call from someone at the real head end, and all sorts of frustration, the problem finally DID get solved.

Fortunately, my local charter brick and mortar is not far away and they are very cooperative and friendly. I exchanged my misbehaving cable card and tuning resolver, plugged in the new ones, and found that the tuning resolver would not bond/pair with the HDHR Prime. Green light flashed for a while and then it just shut off and gave up. Exchanged that tuning resolver, got the new one initialized and then the CSR was unable to get the card to validate. We tried all the unplug, turn around twice and clap your hands while standing on one foot, face east and whistle a happy tune - all to no avail. Took the card back and exchanged it for a new one, called the CSR's one more time and yea verily, we got it to validate and all was well.

The moral of this story is twofold: 1 - Charter recycles the cable card hardware and sometimes, even though the techs have tested and passed it, the cards and tuning resolvers may still be defective and 2 - the CSR's that validate and activate the cable cards come in varying degrees of knowledge and experience. Some are much better at it than others. Sometimes just calling again and trying again can solve the problems.

nb. when trying to get the cable card activated over the phone, make sure that the CSR checks to verify the host-id. I had one situation where their computer did not have the host-id and the card would not validate. The next CSR said "Oh, I don't show a host-id here, can you give it to me?" As soon as the host-id was in the system, the card was able to validate successfully.

When talking to the CSR's and trying to get a card going, it really helps to have the HDHR Prime web page up so you can look at all the relevant stuff.

In my case, what I found was the after the CSR sent what turned out to be the successful activation signals to my card, I had to tune at least one encrypted channel to get the validation to "take".

Lot of blather, but once the cable card is up and running, the only common problem is that the tuning resolver will sometimes get confused and not be able to tune some channels. Powering it down and back up usually solves that. Apparently this is a common problem....

My experience here. The usual disclaimer: YMMV

[KryptoNyte]

Thanks for sharing the experience, good tips in there.

I have now dealt with Charter and Time Warner, and you mention the primary difference - the folks at Charter really do seem to be trying to help get it right, something I rarely get from Time Warner. There is a tech coming today, hopefully they will be able to get this thing running.

[KryptoNyte]

Tech visited today, made a couple a phone calls, had the office make a couple hits on the tuning adapter, seemed to get it confirmed operational on the HDHR tuner webpages, but still couldn't pull in the encrypted channels. Tech made one more phone call and office made a couple more hits on the equipment, and it started working about 5 minutes ago, we'll see if it lasts over my testing. After having the deal with Time Warner for the past 10 years, I'm very impressed with Charter's ability to solve problems, so far.

[KryptoNyte]

For anyone else out there with Charter (or Comcast as I understand it), the actual Hardware setup on my end as well as the Sage and SageDCT setup was fairly painless.

I donated and downloaded the latest SageDCT software, installed it using the "setup.exe" executable after extracting the downloaded SageDCT zip file, then followed these directions at MissingRemote:

http://www.missingremote.com/guide/s...guration-guide

[KryptoNyte]

I'm chasing down some issues with the SageDCT setup via HDHR Primes right now and would like to do a firmware update. I'm told on the Silicondust forums that the firmware update is basically done via a reinstall of the HDHR software entirely (it's all one package).

I'm planning to shut down Sage and SageDCT services before installing the latest Prime software (maybe even Beta). Is anyone aware of what I will experience the first time I re-fire Sage and SageDCT services? Am I looking at a complete re-do of the tuners, or will they just be recognized without issue?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I'm chasing down some issues with the SageDCT setup via HDHR Primes right now and would like to do a firmware update. I'm told on the Silicondust forums that the firmware update is basically done via a reinstall of the HDHR software entirely (it's all one package).

I'm planning to shut down Sage and SageDCT services before installing the latest Prime software (maybe even Beta). Is anyone aware of what I will experience the first time I re-fire Sage and SageDCT services? Am I looking at a complete re-do of the tuners, or will they just be recognized without issue?

No need to reconfigure anything Install update firmware .... I would do a reboot so the new HD Homerun services start ok.

[KryptoNyte]

So, don't uninstall the old HDHR software, install the new HDHR software, which will also sideload the firmware, reboot, and that's it?

[nyplayer]

Yes

[KryptoNyte]

Thanks NYP. I'll give it a go.