Comcast and Tivo – Meet Todd Vernon

I am in the process of moving from Denver to Boulder, and through that process called Comcast, with whom I have been a customer for years (and a big customer, paying for phone, internet and cable – all the friggin channels cable, well except the Spanish channels, because, seriously, they are in Spanish), to move my service to my new house.

Everything was very smooth. In fact, I got disconnect and reconnect dates that were closer together than I would have if I did it online. (next day to disconnect and the day after to reconnect – online was a 3 and 5 day minimum).

I bought a TiVo series 3 a year ago or so, and never hooked it up with cable cards. I figured, since I was moving and having a technician out to my house, I would have them install a couple of cable cards as well. The nice man on the other end of the phone informed me that Comcast had discontinued cable card support about four months ago. Rather than fighting with the gentleman, I let it go, and decided to email Todd Vernon, who has spent a lot of time with Comcast, TiVos and Cable Cards.

My email to Todd:

From: Micah Baldwin
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 6:11 PM
To: Todd Vernon
Subject: Comcast discontinued Cable Cards?

They just told me that they are not delivering any more cable cards because they don?t work with TiVos correctly.

Todd’s email back:

From: Todd Vernon
To: Micah Baldwin
Sent: Tue Jan 22 21:31:04 2008
Subject: RE: Comcast discontinued Cable Cards?

http://falseprecision.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/comcast-turns-o.html

-t

“Oh lord,” I thought to myself, “I just wanted to know if I needed to ask for something special.”

Over the course of the evening, I began receive emails from Todd. The first was a forward from a nice lady at TiVo indicating her willingness to help out.

Todd,
THANK YOU for the heads-up.
I’m going to put our people on it!

Thanks again!
shanan

I figured that would be the end of it, but having been a TiVo customer since 1999-ish, I was glad to see the response. (Side note, TiVo’s main office is is Alviso, CA, which is near San Jose. It is also on the way between my parents house and my grandparents house, and Stanford University, where my mom and dad worked. Every time we pass that building, my mom says “Hi! TiVo!” and waves. Me? I shake my head in shame.)

But, no, this snowball was picking up steam:

A nice rep from Comcast wrote to Todd:

Mr. Vernon,

I am reaching out to our leadership staff in Colorado to have them review the interactions that Mr. Baldwin had regarding obtaining cable cards for his Tivo. We have not discontinued cable cards. In fact we have been working with the consumer electronics industry to create new products and a new method of allow devices to have 2 way connects so they can receive guide data and On Demand/PPV. The technology is called Tru2Way. We will also be offering a Tivo DVR based on our own Motorola DVR box. We have begun rolling this out in the Boston area. More information regarding these enhancements is available on our website:

http://www.comcast.com/ces/

I will ask our team in Colorado to reach out to Mr. Baldwin so he can obtain his cable cards.

Frankly, when I first saw this was from Comcast, I was mildly surprised. But once I read it, I was extremely disappointed. Here is the issue: I was told that the cable cards were discontinued, and were unavailable. Here is Comcast’s response? “We are sooo awesome dude, because at CES we said we are going to have these super cool cable cards that one day, bro, you will be able to use 2way. Like old skool pagers, man. We call the bitchin’ technology Tru2Way! We are so web 2.0, because we dropped the ‘e’! Dope shit, right? Oh, and by the way, bro, fuck the stupid cable cards and the $800 TiVo you bought, cuz we are all bro’d up with TiVo and putting their wack software on our rad Motorola boxes. But since you threw down, I’m going to hook up your boy. Righteous!”

I dont care at all what is going to be released. I, mean, I do, but Tru2Way has been discussed for almost a year, and TiVo and Comcast for more than two. The kicker? TiVo on Motorola is being testing in BOSTON only. So, Im supposed to cheer for Comcast for releasing something that I will be able to use in the future, yet I am moving in a couple of days and just want to use technology that I purchased and a service I pay for monthly?

Frankly, if there was a better alternative, I probably would use it. But, Comcast does internet, phone and cable right, and I am happy to shell out $200-$300 a month for the use of their services. Just, please, dont treat me like I am an asshole and an idiot, and just tell me the truth when I try and deal with your service centers.

How hard is that?