As many of you know, I had a cable card installed in my Sony HDTV. That card has given me very good service for the past 4 years, but, in the past year or so, I have periodically lost signal to many stations we watch. To get those stations back, I have to call Comcast and ask them to “reboot” my cable card. Luckily, nine time out of ten, I get someone at Comcast who helps fix the problem immediately. Great service from Comcast.
The last time this happened (Dec 1, 2008), I asked one particularly knowledgeable person (Eric in the Livermore, CA call center) what I could do to avoid these “reboots”. He told me I could get a cable box for free. Hmmmm, I know the cable box cost extra four years ago, and, a few months ago, I went to the Comcast office in Tracy, CA and again they told me I would have to pay (starving blogger remember), so I kept the card.
I went to the Comcast office again (with Eric’s name in hand) and asked again. To my great surprise, I ended up bringing home a FREE cable box (Motorola) to hook up (and the promise I would bring in the cable card the next day when I knew everything worked ok).
Hooking up the cable box, I ran into some problems. The most glaring problem was lack of HDTV service, with an additional audio issue on the non HD channels. Interesting. After struggling a bit (mostly to make sure I was not doing something stupid), I called Comcast and was told that they rebooted the box and to wait 15 minutes for it to take effect. I waited…and waited…no change. So I called again and the next person looked at my cable box and said “You do not have an HD Box”. Ah….that explains some of it. I put my cable card back in and he reset it so I could watch TV until I get a new box.
Back to Comcast in Tracy, CA to get an HD capable box.