A couple nights ago I turn on the TV to see a red screen with white text telling me that now, Verizon is transmitting 100% DIGITAL CHANNELS!!! WHEEEE!!!
Delightful. Now, where is the picture? The message is on every channel up to about 50; above that I get a picture. I fiddle with the remote for a while then call Verizon. I request (from the creepy automated voice) that I want tech support. Thus begins a useless, 15-minute exercise where the voice prompts me to try a number of helpful suggestions, none of which are applicable and don’t fix the problem. Finally I’m directed to a real live person, who informs me that the only reason I should be having the problem is if I have a Series-2 Tivo unit. I have to contact Tivo to learn how to have the unit look for a digital signal on those channels, rather than an analog signal.
So I call Tivo. They must be swamped with similar calls because I’m on hold for 20 minutes. The woman comes on and talks me through the whole set-up process, which she assures me will take care of it. Half way through she says she’s hanging up, but if I have problems, call back. The setup finishes, and it didn’t fix the problem. So I call back, and this time I’m on hold for 30 minutes.
The next woman has me try the setup again, plus 3 or 4 other things which eventually work. The problem is, as she helpfully explained, now that the signal is all digital, my 2 tuner Tivo is no better than a 1 tuner unit.
The Tivo plugging setup requires me to install a signal splitter on the cable coming out of the wall, with one line from the splitter going to the cable box (digital channels) and the other going to the Tivo box (analog channels). When I want to watch one channel and record another, or record two separate channels, Tivo can handle it because one tuner handles the analog, the other handles the digital.
Now that it’s all digital, Tivo can’t process two digital signals at once, so I don’t get the benefit of the 2nd tuner. Which I paid for.
Evidently Comcast addressed this issue with its own all-digital signal, and somehow processes the formerly analog signals so the dual tuners still work as they did before.
Fucking Verizon.
