I woke up bright and early today eagerly awaiting the Fios installers. I counted down the days to my install date, but I don’t see how anyone could forget an appointment. I received no less than 3 phone calls and an email confirming todays date and time. You would have thought Santa was coming in July the way I was patrolling the front door. “Damn, it’s 8:30, and the appointment is at 8.” As I’m wondering how much time should be allotted before I call Verizon, Curtis shows up at my door.
“Where’s the rest of your team Curtis?” I ask as I peer around him to the van parked out front.
“It’s just me”, he says.
“But I thought all Fios installs were done with two people?”
“No, I’m a one mean team. Don’t worry, I’ve been doing installs since we started provisioning Fiber.”
(I guess I don’t have a choice)
“Did you bring the cablecards? I’m supposed to be getting four cablecards”. I’m not much for small talk.
“Yeah yeah, I got the cablecards, are we doing a Tivo install?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry I’ve got all the documentation printed out and ready for you”, I assure him. My idea of documentation was the CableCard FAQ from TivoCommunity.
Despite my enthusiasm for a successful install, Curtis looks down and shakes his head.
“Tivo? … Tivo??”
“Actually, three Tivo’s. I have one series 2 and two HD boxes which will take 2 cards each”
He remains skeptical and admits he hasn’t configured one of those in a while, but assures me he won’t leave until everything is working.
Fair enough…
I give Curtis a tour of the current installation, a Series 3 in the bedroom, TivoHD in the basement and a Series 2 in the Den. I show him the wiring “closet” and explain that I “kind of” have a lot of computers (checking my router showed 15 devices that are pulling IP’s). I explain that I’d like to keep my current network topology, which is comprised primarily of 2 access points, an 802.11n running the show and an 802.11b/g running in gateway mode. Fortunately for me, Curtis is a techie and is nodding along while admiring my random collection of Transformers posed around the basement. I can see we’re going to get along fine.
We make our way to the backyard to see how he’s going to get the fiber to the house. He take a few minutes surveying the neighbors backyards and says he needs to bring the cable over from a house or two away. He’s worried about poison ivy. “How did you know we have a poison ivy problem?” was not what he wanted to hear. I assured him that our backyard is sprayed regularly and he should be fine. “It’s not your yard I’m worried about” and we both glance over at my neighbors unkempt backyard. “Good luck man, I’ll be inside!”
An hour or so passes and Curtis is already patching the Fiber into the house. I asked how he fared on the neighbor’s lawn. He seems to have escaped unscathed and explains that he had to dodge many landmines of dog poop. “Oh, I should have warned you about that!” I then whip out my camera and before I start taking pictures, I explain that I’m going to be documenting the install progress. His eyes light up. “Are you going to post it to a website? Which one?” “Well, I might mention it on TivoCommunity but really it’s just for my blog.” Curtis interrupts; “Let me just say one thing, give me a chance here and I’ll make this look perfect.”
I can tell Curtis takes pride in his work. He is also unhappy with the job Cablevision has done on my house after I show him the current coax wiring. Wires are cutting across barren walls for no reason and other cables are retracing each other. He struggles to find understanding in their cable runs. “I have no idea what they were doing here, but we’re going to fix it, don’t worry”. I wasn’t.
Curtis then started formulating a plan of attack. He tells me we’re going to do an indoor box. It’s much better to keep it indoors and out of mother natures way. I had seen some pics of interior installs but I didn’t think I was a candidate for one; most of what I had seen were outside. The spot was perfect; right opposite the cable drop, next to an outlet on a plain wall. It was practically begging for some kind of box as the other walls already had circuit breakers and alarm panels…. but I digress.
I left Curtis for a while as he pulled the cable into the house and placed the box on the wall. I didn’t stick around to watch too much of this, but I can tell you that when he was done, there were more lights lit than when he started. And that’s a good thing. It wasn’t long before Curtis tells me the phones are working and to test them out. I couldn’t believe my old Optimum Voice phone number was ported over that quickly and easily. The phones were working and sounded fine. He also assured me the alarm was configured to assume control of the line as required. Things are humming along. Curtis denies my repeated offers for lunch. He say’s it will only slow him down…
Internet is up and running before 1pm. He says I may need to rebind my devices. Nope, my D-Link already saw the new modem/router and seemed very content, despite being bumped down the chain as it was no longer facing the internet. I verified my networks and everything was intact. I do have some logical cleanup to do and convert my NAT router into a bridge device, but that’s a job best saved for the weekend. Obviously the first thing I do is a speed test. I should mention that the previous night I was able to pull 27MB/4MB (down/up) on Optimum (with Boost). Curtis can see I’m disappointed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m only getting 20mb downstream”
“What are you paying for?”
“Good point.”
Verizon is “fast enough” but Optimum felt faster (because it was). I can see an upgrade to the 30MB plan in my future… Curtis recommends the 20/20 plan, but I don’t think I’d take full advantage of it. It’s nice to know that Verizon provides an option like that though.
On to video… Curtis also came armed with the DCT700. This is a small digital box with no frills. It’s missing an OSD and has no VOD option. It has no clock on the front and won’t even show what channel it’s on. It’s exactly what I need for my Series 2. It’s also only $4 a month. I re-run the Series 2 setup guide and quickly reminded why I love TiVo. The program guides are updated and the box is being controlled via IR within no time. Not only that, but I was able to confirm that all my season passes won’t miss a beat. That’s right, even though the shows have moved stations; Tivo just “found” them again and was recording my son’s shows the rest of the afternoon. God bless Tivo.
And now the part we’ve been dreading, the cable card configuration. Curtis wants to blaze forward by installing ALL 4 cards and then provision them simultaneously to save time. I feel somewhat uneasy about this approach, but I’m not sure why. Then I remember reading this line in the FAQ “Do not let the installer do multiple cards at a time”. “Umm, Curtis, I think we should do one card at a time.” He agrees.
The cablecards are unveiled like a plate of fresh pastries. Except these pastries are made of metal and you shouldn’t eat them. From here on out, I must warn you. If you’re coming from AVSForums or TiVoCommunity, be advised that I’ve ignored every warning and even the FAQ from here on out.
The Series 3 is still using Cablevisions guide date. OK, let’s remove the cablecards and just put yours in. We navigate around the cablecard menus and finally find the numbers we “think we need”. Curtis starts taking notes. He hooks up his laptop and enters the first launch sequence. Within a few minutes we have picture! All channels seem to be working. “Not so fast” I tell him. I remember reading that the Conditional Access screen should say “Subscribed”. It’s says “unknown”.
Curtis says “Lets give it some time and work on the other Tivo”. Keep in mind I’ve just broken cardinal rule #1.
The basement TivoHD is new. “New”; as in I just opened the box. “Give me a sec, let me activate this thing”. Tivo.com doesn’t let me activate due to a “billing error”. Great, perfect timing. I call TiVo, a human answers on 1 ring to customer service. Incredible. I explain the problem and he offers to activate me over the phone. Problem solved, I wish all companies worked this way.
Being that this is a new Tivo, it hasn’t received any service updates and has been sitting boxed for a few months in my house. A few steps into the guided setup it suggests we configure the cablecards. OK, off we go. We follow the same procedure as before and essentially arrive at the same result. Picture is there but still no “Subscribed” tag in the Conditional Access menu. Curtis sends the activation signal again. Nope, no good. Test channels again. They work. Then the moment I was waiting for… “Subscribed” appeared in the menu! At this point, we think we’ve figured out the pattern.
1. Insert Card
2. Add to system (I don’t know what happens here, but it involved a laptop and a field technician)
3. Test some channels
4. Provision
5. Test some channels (Wait 30 seconds or so)
6. Confirm SUBSCRIBED
We repeated this dance 4 times and not all went as smoothly. Curtis had “fat fingered” one digit resulting in an error that scared us so much we rebooted the Tivo Series3. And what do you know, I had a pending service update. The Tivo now updated its software right in the middle of our cablecard installation. “Oh crap, the menu looks different, I think Tivo just revved the software”. Both our faces turned white. We’re now batting .500 with only one card in each TiVo showing subscribed.
Eventually, all cards were showing subscribed. All Tivo’s had the Fios guide data and it was only 4pm. Curtis is satisfied and seems happy since he recieved some on-the-fly TiVo training for his future installs. After we clean up, Curtis tells me more stories about Cablevision and Verizon. It’s getting pretty ugly, petty stuff now. He points out how he properly terminated and grounded the cablevision line to my house. “If I didn’t do that, they could fine us for damaging their equipment.”
Since it’s early enough, I planned on bringing my Cablevision equipment back to the walk-in center for an in-person cancellation. “Make sure you tell them to remove their line from your house, make them do some extra work”. Thanks for the advice Curtis, and a great overall installation experience.
Later that evening…. My smile quickly fades when I visited the “post-install” setup website, but that’s a story for another day…