TWC finally has my Tuning Adapter - My TiVo Celebrates

I got a letter today from Time Warner Cable, which gives a phone number that I should call within 60 days of receiving the letter. I guess if you forget and don’t call in the allotted time, your shit out of luck.

So I call and talk to someone who will remain nameless. He tells me the people who handle SDV tuning adapters are out to lunch:) and will call me back. I give him my number and they actually called me back 3 hours later. They said I was pretty high on the list of people getting this device sooner than later, and said they would call me within 2 days to set up a time to pick one up.

For those that don’t know what this tuning adapter is, I wrote about it back in February. The problem with my TiVo is that it uses CableCards that are not compatible with the new Switched Digital Video (“SDV”) which is something that TWC is turning to so they can cram more bandwidth down the pipe.

There are dozens of HD channels that they have switched over, so I’m unable to tune them in until I plug in this new tuning adapter.

Update on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:16PM by Jon Arnason

After a couple of visits by TWC technicians, my TA seems to be behaving itself.  It could be that the first one had a bad USB port on it, which kept telling my TiVo that a tuning adapter was just installed.  This would happen during show viewings, and that was getting quite bothersome.  So far so good today.

SDV - Will it impact you?

For those of you that don’t have a Tivo DVR, this might not be an issue. But for others(like me), it’s driving me bonkers. My cable company Time Warner has started implementing this thing called SDV, or Switched Digital Video. With satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV promising so many channels in HD, the cable industry says they need to increase its capacity and “Switched Digital Video” allows them to add more channels without expanding their systems. However, once your cable provider enables SDV, any channel that is “switched” will be blacked out to consumers using a CableCARD in their HDTVs.

This is from the Tivo website:

Switched Digital Video (SDV) is a new technology that allows cable providers to expand the programming you receive by sending certain channels to customer homes only when the channels are requested. If you have a TiVo HD, TiVo HD XL or Series 3 HD DVR with CableCARDs, you could see a blank screen on a number of channels if your cable provider makes the transition to SDV. The good news is that TiVo has worked with your cable provider to develop a solution at no cost to you.

This is what you need to do:

1. Watch for communications about the transition to SDV from your cable company.
2. Call your cable provider to get a FREE Tuning Adapter.
3. Install the adapter by plugging it into your cable line and the USB port on your TiVo DVR, or have a cable company technician install it.
4. Continue to enjoy your TV and TiVo DVR in the same way you always have.

TiVo does not distribute Tuning Adapters – only your cable provider can do that – but with the most current software update, your HD TiVo DVR is fully compatible and ready to display SDV channels as soon as a Tuning Adapter is installed.

Of course my local provider does not have these tuning adapters yet, and has not even announced when they will have them available. So I’m paying for many channels that I don’t receive, which is driving me frickin bonkers. Are you one of these people? I’m going to be switching to DirecTV if this is not fixed very soon.