Comcast Turns Off TiVo = Anti-Competitive Business Practices

Ah oh… This is something I have been keeping an eye on since I talked to a Comcast support rep a few months back and she told me Comcast was discontinuing support of ALL cable cards.

It appears that Comcast has launched their full on Anti-competitive maneuver against consumers and their first victim is TiVo.

My friend Micah is currently moving so he called Comcast today to install his High Def Tivo.. They refused stating that Cable Cards don't work right with Tivo.

Being the owner of three TiVo's and watching a fair number of service calls over the past two years for "lots of reasons", I can say with great clarity that 1) cable cards work fine, and 2) if there is a management problem it's in their OSS software not the "cable card standard" designed by cable labs and used by all the other networks.

Folks, this is really bad news for consumers. This is Comcast flipping the bird to what consumers want. Today it's TiVo and tomorrow it will be your TV – next your cablemodem. Comcast is not happy delivering service they want to control what TV's and devices you buy.

If anyone else has got this response send me an email… tvernon<at>gmail<dot>com

Comments

[Grateshow]

I spent about six months back and forth with comcast and the cable cards on my latest Series 3. The problem turned out to be a simple piece of data from the cable cards. I believe it was the cards unit addresses which Comcast had thought insignificant at first.

[Ari Newman]

WTF!?! I just bought two TivoHDs a few moths ago and have been using them with Comcast w/o issue. Yes, the initial setup took a tad longer than a regular cable box but that was due to the field techs not knowing how to set them up, and the OSS s/w Todd mentions. The boxes have been working great and having the HD tuner integrated with Tivo is awesome. The Comcast HD-DVR is a P.O.S and a nightmare to use. I've heard rumors that supposedly Tivo and Comcast are working on an integrated box together but that was simply going to be based on the new bi-directional CableCard standard so On-Demand would work.
DirectTV has more HD channels and much better HD quality from what I've seen, so I'll be super pissed about my investment in the boxes but won't think twice about jumping over if Comcast goes this far...

[Tyler]

This is a crock, I can't stand Comcast.

While I'm sure there is probably something more than pure anti-competitive motivation here, it is still unacceptable.

-T

[Ross Carlson]

Todd this is amazingly scary. Like DRM this is one of those things that so few consumers really understand. Comcast of course takes full advantage of that fact know that while this will anger you and I that it really won't affect their broad customer base. Hell even I use their crappy box to save money on the hardware. It is ridiculous that at this point that Comcast is unwilling to use the standard that the industry as a whole has adopted because the want to force their own control. A scary day for consumers of digital services for sure.