Alert for ComCast & TiVo Subscribers I originally started out as an AT&T cable customer while living in Waltham, MA as they provided high speed internet, digital phone and digital cable television services. For Christmas one year my wife bought me TiVo so I could finally stop missing my favorite TV shows. We actually had to get an AT&T branded version of TiVo because we were digital cable subscribers, which meant that we had digital cable decoder boxes instead of regular cable boxes. The only hokey part about the setup was the fact that I couldn't use the serial port on the digital cable box to change channels - instead I had to use InfraRed (IR) emitters that pulsed channel changing signals similar to a TV's remote control. I've had mediocre success with IR channel changing, so I was thrilled to find out that about 8 months ago that Comcast (the company that bought out MediOne that bought out AT&T broadband) enabled the serial ports on the digital cable decoder boxes. I went to the online TiVo setup menus and found the channel changing options section, and switched the setting from IR to Comcast digital cable. Since then I have never gotten partial channel changes that I was used to from the IR emitters - 100% accurate channel changing every time.
Fast forward to last week, when I moved to Maryland where Comcast is the digital cable provider. I hooked up my TiVo box to an idential digital cable box that I had in MA via the serial cable, only to find that it didn't work. Well, after 2 hours of calling/being on hold with Comcast, I finally get a technical person on the line and they indicated that Comcast no longer supported channel changing via the serial port. When I asked why, the person believed it was because Comcast was going to be coming out with it's own DVR services. After doing some searching, I found other people who were experiencing the same behavior I was. Well, this certainly sucks because I am once again using the IR emitters, I've already taped the wrong channel 2 times, and I'm sure that there will be more times to follow.
3:12:02 PM 
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