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Disconnected
Submitted by reeses on Sat, 2006-08-12 15:44. | tv
My cable box started acting more and more unstable over the past few weeks -- it would freeze and kick me out of pre-recorded programs with some regularity. Finally, last week, it stopped working entirely as a DVR. I could watch live television, but I could not record or store any other programming.
In a calculated absurdity, Comcast does not do field replacements of faulty units. I had to take my cable box to the local "Payment Center", which is conveniently located at least, for a replacement.
Unfortunately, the Saturday afternoon line was a little over half an hour long, although that's better than waiting around for a cable guy to show up.
I swapped my DCT-6412 Phase III for a DCT3412 Phase I box, did some other shopping, and came home. I hooked it up and turned on the TV.
"One Moment Please"
OK, I had been told in the past that it could take up to an hour for a digital cable box to be recognized by the network and provisioned for my account. So I waited, because there isn't anything good on TV anyway.
A little over an hour later, I called Comcast support, and spoke immediately (this in itself is amazing and wonderful) with a pleasant person who was helping me diagnose the issue. First, she sent a message to the cable box to give it the channel manifest. Then she sent a "full reset" message to the box.
Nothing had an effect, which led to the dark, hollow feeling in my stomach.
"Umm, just a second."
"What is it?"
"You're on the phone with an idiot. I forgot to connect the cable. I plugged in the power and HDMI cables, but never actually connected the signal cable."
"Ah, that happens. Don't worry about it."
At least I was the one who pointed it out, but it's funny how actually talking through the problem, no matter what the problem is, leads to figuring out the problem on one's own. It could be a programming problem, a car problem, or any logical problem; the process of explaining our problem to someone else inevitably uncovers our stupidity.
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