Worst. Cable Installer. EVAR.
May. 7th, 2009 01:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSo, the Comcast-is-screwing-its-customers saga continues.
Cable guy is scheduled to show up from 2-4pm today. He shows up at 5.30. I figure, don't be mad at the guy, because he's just being overworked by Comcast. No worries. Come in and fix our problem.
Except it's immediately obvious that he's really slow. Comes into the house without a cable box. Spends several minutes to go back and get one when he realizes that's what he's doing here. Then later realizes that he's going to need some coaxial cable too. (I mean, who'd have thought he'd need coax cable to install a new digital receiver!?) Spends several more minutes getting that.
No problem, I can live with slow but competent.
Hooks up the box to the Tivo. Nothing happens. Blank signals, just like before. Fucks around much more, finally is able to get a cable box signal straight to the TV, but that's pretty much it. We have to explain carefully (because he's not very fluent in English either), that just randomly taking our Tivo out of the equation isn't acceptable.
Throughout this, the evidence of his incompetence just mounts up. *He* doesn't even know the difference between the gov't digital initiative and the bullshit Comcast is pulling, and keeps telling us how stations are already going away, all of which has nothing to do with cable TV.
Fucks around more, and finally comes to the conclusion that a splitter will solve all the problems. He thus splits the cable from our wall, sending one half of it to the Tivo and the other half to the cable box. Moments later, he shows us that the Tivo gloriously shows stations again.
As he's writing up the order, I look at his setup behind the TV and discover that his brilliant plan involves splitting the cable and then doing fucking nothing with the cable box signal. That's right, he runs the cable to the cable box and just leaves it there. There's no bleeding output!! It's like the Cable Box Fucking California. Such a lovely place.
Now, I'm thinking, maybe I don't understand how this digital cable box works. Despite my looking at the diagrams and seeing it always feeding out to VCRs and stuff, maybe all it really needs to do is sit at the end of the cable and tell our cable provider that we're OK Joes or something.
So I ask him, how does this work?
And he can't tell me a thing.
And Kimberly asks, So we're going to be able to see the digital channels (when they appear) on our Tivo fine? Yes, yes, he assures us. Even though the bloody cable box doesn't have any output.
I finally decide we're not getting anywhere, and we're just holding the poor guy hostage to his own incompetence, and his wife is calling, asking where he is. So I shrug my shoulders and say OK, and he heads out, and I'm still pretty damned sure that he didn't do shit except hook up a cable box that's drawing power and doing no one any good.
(Because, understand, we can't actually test out a digital channel, because Comcast is getting ready to pull out half of our service, but hasn't yet.)
That's Comcast's mighty service.
So I've looked up some info, and it looks like one of the problems is that a TiVo actually needs to control the cable box, because that's where you pick your channel and such. Terrific, just what I wanted, fucking Comcast, another layer of crap. In any case, the Tivo does that with either an IR Blaster or a serial cable. Not one person suggested this, not the guy I talked to on the phone who'd just set up a Tivo with digital cable for his grandparents (seriously, he said that, and now I have to guess he was either lying or set it up wrong, because I carefully quizzed him if we should be doing anything else), not the original person who sent out the (first) digital receiver and assured us that it had full instructions for a Tivo setup, and definitely not Mr. I've Never Seen a Tivo before Installation Guy.
It also looks like the reported problem with the earlier box might be that it doesn't have a serial port, but can be run by IR Blaster.
The other issue seems to be that we should be using the colored wires to connect from the digital cable box to the Tivo, rather than coax.
So I need to pull the bikes out of the closet tomorrow to get to where I (think) any remaining Tivo wires are stored, and we can see if one or both cable boxes work given the setup I outlined.
But now my annoyance at Comcast has becoming a blazing hatred as they've put us to considerable trouble while not solving the problem caused by their money grab.
Cable guy is scheduled to show up from 2-4pm today. He shows up at 5.30. I figure, don't be mad at the guy, because he's just being overworked by Comcast. No worries. Come in and fix our problem.
Except it's immediately obvious that he's really slow. Comes into the house without a cable box. Spends several minutes to go back and get one when he realizes that's what he's doing here. Then later realizes that he's going to need some coaxial cable too. (I mean, who'd have thought he'd need coax cable to install a new digital receiver!?) Spends several more minutes getting that.
No problem, I can live with slow but competent.
Hooks up the box to the Tivo. Nothing happens. Blank signals, just like before. Fucks around much more, finally is able to get a cable box signal straight to the TV, but that's pretty much it. We have to explain carefully (because he's not very fluent in English either), that just randomly taking our Tivo out of the equation isn't acceptable.
Throughout this, the evidence of his incompetence just mounts up. *He* doesn't even know the difference between the gov't digital initiative and the bullshit Comcast is pulling, and keeps telling us how stations are already going away, all of which has nothing to do with cable TV.
Fucks around more, and finally comes to the conclusion that a splitter will solve all the problems. He thus splits the cable from our wall, sending one half of it to the Tivo and the other half to the cable box. Moments later, he shows us that the Tivo gloriously shows stations again.
As he's writing up the order, I look at his setup behind the TV and discover that his brilliant plan involves splitting the cable and then doing fucking nothing with the cable box signal. That's right, he runs the cable to the cable box and just leaves it there. There's no bleeding output!! It's like the Cable Box Fucking California. Such a lovely place.
Now, I'm thinking, maybe I don't understand how this digital cable box works. Despite my looking at the diagrams and seeing it always feeding out to VCRs and stuff, maybe all it really needs to do is sit at the end of the cable and tell our cable provider that we're OK Joes or something.
So I ask him, how does this work?
And he can't tell me a thing.
And Kimberly asks, So we're going to be able to see the digital channels (when they appear) on our Tivo fine? Yes, yes, he assures us. Even though the bloody cable box doesn't have any output.
I finally decide we're not getting anywhere, and we're just holding the poor guy hostage to his own incompetence, and his wife is calling, asking where he is. So I shrug my shoulders and say OK, and he heads out, and I'm still pretty damned sure that he didn't do shit except hook up a cable box that's drawing power and doing no one any good.
(Because, understand, we can't actually test out a digital channel, because Comcast is getting ready to pull out half of our service, but hasn't yet.)
That's Comcast's mighty service.
So I've looked up some info, and it looks like one of the problems is that a TiVo actually needs to control the cable box, because that's where you pick your channel and such. Terrific, just what I wanted, fucking Comcast, another layer of crap. In any case, the Tivo does that with either an IR Blaster or a serial cable. Not one person suggested this, not the guy I talked to on the phone who'd just set up a Tivo with digital cable for his grandparents (seriously, he said that, and now I have to guess he was either lying or set it up wrong, because I carefully quizzed him if we should be doing anything else), not the original person who sent out the (first) digital receiver and assured us that it had full instructions for a Tivo setup, and definitely not Mr. I've Never Seen a Tivo before Installation Guy.
It also looks like the reported problem with the earlier box might be that it doesn't have a serial port, but can be run by IR Blaster.
The other issue seems to be that we should be using the colored wires to connect from the digital cable box to the Tivo, rather than coax.
So I need to pull the bikes out of the closet tomorrow to get to where I (think) any remaining Tivo wires are stored, and we can see if one or both cable boxes work given the setup I outlined.
But now my annoyance at Comcast has becoming a blazing hatred as they've put us to considerable trouble while not solving the problem caused by their money grab.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 02:55 pm (UTC)Also, HD. And two tuners.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-07 06:54 pm (UTC)