Ok, so here's an update. I called Charter Cable today and really just got the run around. All numbers dialed send you to the 800 number and customer service, who of course this is a bit beyond their ability to help. The disappointment isn't so much that they can't help, but they can't give me a local number to call and talk to a tech, and all they seem to do is send an email to someone "in my area" who will call me back. We did this last week and haven't gotten anywhere. They keep wanting to send a tech out to my house to check out the adapter, even though they did that and changed cable cards to no avail. So now I wait for a phone call.
So I get on the phone with Tivo. I explain the situation, and the guy did seem to understand the issue. We then spent over an hour on the phone checking various things on the box, some of his answers made me think he was mostly just reading a diagnostic list and didn't really know what he was asking about. Examples of this include "what's the signal strength". I tell him 100. "Oh, that's a little high, it should be in the 80's". Uhh, ok, too much signal is causing me to get no signal ? He didn't have an answer. Next was the SNR of 37db. Oh, that's a little high too he reports. SNR is Signal to Noise Ratio. Oh, again I have too much signal. Darn cable company. So after an hour of me reminding him that I can change all tuners to any channel and have no issues other than this odd behavior after it's been idle for hours, he informs me there's problems with the tuning adapters. Brilliant, that's what I told him an hour earlier, but I respect that he has to check everything else out to be sure. I just get frustrated when I have to go through all the same steps with each person I talk to, we checked most of the same issues with Charter over the last month referring to cable card pairing, signal strength, etc. So in the end he tells me that the Scientific Atlanta tuning adapter (STA 1520) has "known issues" and there's nothing they can do about that. I ask if the Motorola boxes have the same issue, he indicates no. Great, perhaps I can get Charter to break out the Motorola for me, if they even carry them, I'd be surprised, but I'll call again tomorrow to see. I did ask him to send me a bit more info on WHY the SA adapter "has issues" so I can better support my request for a different tuning adapter, and all I got was a link in an email http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/307 which while useful, says nothing about the STA1520 or any specific issues. So I'm kinda stuck between Charter and Tivo pointing fingers at each other, and I'm starting to shop for satellite or FIOS. Glen
