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Good riddance to Comcast & Xfinity

For many, many years we have been customers of Comcast. We had their consumer cable TV service, which was rebranded Xfinity. We also had Comcast Business Class internet access. We had both services a very long time.

At the time we installed them we were quite happy with both services. As a Tivo household we were compelled to have cable TV service. We adored Tivo. That effectively bound us to Xfinity.

Back in the day (2008-ish) Comcast’s DOCSIS-powered cable internet outperformed the only alternative, which was DSL. It was not without its quirks. We were compelled to switch to business class service because consumer service was badly degraded at certain times of the day. Basically, it slowed to a crawl when the kids got out of school.

In the early days, we’d occasionally hear from some salesperson who claimed to be our new account rep. They came and went. Every time they offered us faster service, it was for way more money. Occasionally they’d have some deal, but the special offer always evaporated if I wanted to use my own cable modem and router. Or if I didn’t want a bundle that included their voice service.

Eventually, they stopped calling on us. We’ve not been bound to a contract since 2012. We’ve just been grandfathered in on a legacy “Deluxe 60/10” service that cost around $100/mo.

Tivo is the glue

We’ve been a Tivo household since 2001. We currently have a Tivo Roamio Pro with 6 tuners. It’s on the main TV in the house. Other TVs are connected to Tivo Mini’s and a Tivo Mini LUX. A total of four TVs can access any content.

Tivo is still the superlative DVR. Nothing else comes even close. Some cable and satellite providers licensed Tivo tech for their own use. Their own DVRs are absolutely lame in comparison. The fact that they could not match Tivo in 25 years is, I think, testament to the fact that they just didn’t care about the user experience.

Our cable TV bill was over $200/mo. If it were not for our investment in, and admiration of Tivo, we would have long ago dumped Comcast.

Tivo is Gone

On Sunday, December 1 our Tivo reported “No channels authorized. Contact your cable provider. Error V58.”

This has happened before. For whatever reason, on occasion, the Comcast issued CableCARD the Tivo uses to decrypt the TV channels needs to be reset or re-paired. Normally, I power cycle the Tivo and all is well. Not this time.


PCMCIA ModemSidebar: CableCARDs are in the form factor once called “PCMCIA” or PC-Card. That’s Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. This is a credit-card sized thing that slides into a slot. Before such niceties as modems were built into laptops, this is how you added one. Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces were initially implemented as a PCMCIA cards.


So, I get on the phone with Comcast tech support. I spend an hour or two working through the diagnostic script they have. The agent tells me, “You need a new CableCARD.” I should go collect one from a nearby store.

I take the CableCARD to the nearest store. They tell me that they have no CableCARDs. They were instructed to send them all back to HQ back in October. They can’t help me, but they offer to make a call to their support team to see what can be done.

They get what is plainly an overseas call center on the phone. That agent starts to ask me about the status that would be indicated on the Tivo’s CableCARD menu! As if I can go through that menu while I’m in their store!! On a call placed by their local CSR. Idiots!!!

Returning home, to a wife who wanted her cable TV back, I again tried for seek a solution from their telephone support operation. Again, to no effect.

This whole situation plays out like the keystone cops. Xfinity support, whether in-store on on the phone, are like a live experiment seeking to determine if a million monkeys at a million typewriters will eventually output the collected works of William Shakespeare. They’re low-paid workers who are mostly there to absorb the abuse hurled by customers who are are (quite often) justifiably enraged at what is understandably one of the most hated consumer companies in the US.

The Cable Card Backstory

Some online research reveals the real problem. Comcast has, with FCC permission, withdrawn support for the legacy CableCARD. They stopped distributing replacements in Q3-2024. Today, if a cable card customer has a problem, they can only send various signals to try and cajole the CableCARD into working. If you have a failed CableCARD, you’re just shit-out-of-luck. They will offer to migrate you to their (pathetic) X1 DVR.

cablecard-scientific-atlanta-cisco

It gets worse. It seems that on December 1st all the customers holding cable cards made by Scientific/Atlanta-Cisco suffered the same problem. That appears to be 25-30% of Tivo users in the US.

These old S/A CableCARDs can no longer receive firmware updates. They just don’t have enough memory to receive newer firmware. So, on December 1 they failed because of an inability to maintain their internal clock. No clock, no way to decrypt the channels. Dead-in-the-water. It’s a Y2K-like situation. It was predicted.

There’s a rumor that Xfinity experienced tens-of-thousands of support tickets as a result. It kept those million monkeys very busy. On hold wait times running to several hours.

A few of the more senior monkeys eventually came to understand the nature of the shitstorm that had beset them. But I’m not aware of any deliverable solutions.

Cord Cutting

Cable providers across the US have been experiencing a significant amount of client loss due to the trend known as “cord cutting.” Cable TV is expensive. The providers are terrible companies. That makes space for alternatives to emerge. That can be old-school TV antenna for local channels. And streaming services for other channels.

One thing was very clear. If we cannot keep Tivo, we were not going to keep shoveling money to Comcast/Xfinity. I’m willing to bet that others who just lost their Tivo service have similar feelings.

YouTube TV

I polled a few friends and neighbors for what they used. We’re Apple-averse. So, it appeared that YouTube TV would be a good replacement for the cable TV. With no contract it was easy enough to start a trial subscription, which immediately restored the channels that Stella was missing.

We have a couple of Tivo Stream 4K Android TV sticks. These can run the YouTube TV app, so that was fast and easy to setup.

Tivo Stream 4k

After only a short while I noted that YouTube TV delivered markedly better image quality than Comcast, even for local TV channels. A quick check of our router stats revealed that it uses much higher data rates than I might expect. So much so that our modest 50/10 mbps cable internet occasionally struggled.

AT&T Fiber

I’ve never liked AT&T, but the urge to get away from Comcast was so great that I had AT&T Fiber installed. I selected the 500/500 mbps service at around $80/mo. That’s roughly 10x the performance of the old service for less money.

The installation was done next day. It was fast and simple. The tech was friendly and seemed knowledgeable. A salesman later paid me a visit to try and upsell us into their mobile service. No, thank you.

Cancelling Accounts & Surveys

Needless to say, my interactions with Comcast throughout this process were both pointless and unsatisfactory. I don’t believe in screaming at lowly client service staffers, so I was not difficult or rude. However, I was displeased. And that was surely known.

Then I called Comcast Business Class to close our account. The agent taking my call was located in the US. He remarked that he had never seen an account like ours. We were grandfathered in at a low level of performance. He tried to make the case that Comcast was a great provider, with lots of options I should consider. His argument was disingenuous. It simply did not reflect my lived experience with the company. And I let him have it with both barrels.

Surely our experience is not unique. Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

My next call was to cancel our Xfinity service. The Customer Retention Rep who handled my request was way more sensible. He immediately understood that the handling of the Tivo situation was an insurmountable obstacle. Upon reflection, given cord cutting, they probably handle more requests for account closure than the ISP part of the business.

After these various interactions, they send us survey requests. Comcast and Xfinity both sought our opinion on their engagement. They feign a great deal of concern about customer service. I think it merits letters to the FCC and FTC.

About Tivo

Of course, Tivo is itself a part of the problem. They have been rudderless for years. Suffering an identity crisis. Not at all sure of what business they’re in. Just absolutely certain that they don’t want to be in the DVR hardware business.

The Tivo Stream 4K is a passable Android TV offering. The fact that they did not make it possible to playback programs from a local Tivo DVR was a huge missed opportunity. There’s zero integration of legacy Tivo and Tivo Stream 4k, even though there was a third part tool for exporting Tivo recordings to be viewed offline on a PC.

My guess is the just don’t have the dev team to make that happen. They wanted to launch something cheap, quickly. A generic Android TV stick was the answer. But what was the question? No-one can remember.

Now they’re launching a smart TV OS that extends what they’ve learned from Tivo Stream 4k. But without any major TV market players uptake that’s a pointless exercise. All the big names already have solutions in place. No reason to pay Tivo.

Close

It sucks to give up Tivo, but in the end our hand was forced. Onward.

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