… is not to be found at Cox. My long awaited TiVo HD arrived last Friday and I quickly scheduled an appointment to have them come out to install the CableCARD necessary to get their encrypted HD channels. I was pleasantly surprised that they were extremely accommodating and friendly on the phone and they promised to send a technician out Saturday evening. Sure enough, the tech came out and installed the CableCARDs — two as they decided to give me two SingleStream cards instead of one MultiStream card… a bit odd but it seemed to work just fine.

My good fortune lasted until I tried to watch ESPNHD the next day. For some reason, only one of my tuners could capture HD video from the non-broadcast channels. Ah! The well-known issues of CableCARDs that I had hoped to avoid had decided to haunt me as well. I called Cox and they tried to diagnose over the phone, gave up, and promised to send another technician out Monday evening. I assumed he was coming out to “fix” the problem but I suppose I was a bit optimistic. The tech came out, confirmed I had a faulty CableCARD (um, yeah, I knew that — thanks!) and promised to send yes, another tech out to fix it. He couldn’t do anything because he didn’t have any CableCARDs.   Why a technician would schedule an appointment to come fix a CableCARD issue without a spare CableCARD is beyond me.

The tech promised another tech would come out from 7-9 Wednesday.  In addition, I got a call from Cox telling me they had to send a technician out for field line testing or some such, as mandated by the FCC.  Whatever.  That appointment was scheduled from 5-7 on Wednesday.  Needless to say, nothing happened until 8:50pm on Wednesday.  Finally, my technician arrived and I was relieved to know my CableCARD issue would soon be resolved.  However, it was not to be;  the tech that showed up was NOT the CableCARD tech, he was the field line test guy — running just a wee bit late.  At this point, I can honestly say I was not very surprised when the night passed without any CableCARD guy showing up.   

For what its worth, the phone service has been extremely helpful.  Once you get past the useless automated menus and speak to a representative, they’ve been pretty gracious and apologetic.  As nice as they have been, I simply wish I didn’t have to deal with them quite so often.  My fourth (and hopefully final) appointment is set for tomorrow.