How does TiVo hook up with digital cable?

How do i hook up my tivo series2 with a digital comcast cable box?

• Answer:

  I have recently switch from cable to digital cable with my Tivo Series2. I can tell you that if you love your Tivo and it has become the only way you prefer to watch TV you will hate the switch over to digital cable. (Well, maybe you will have a different experience) First you will have to hook up the cable coming into your house to the input/ant. jack of the new cable box. At this point you will take a second coaxial and attach it to the output/tv jack of the cable box and screw it onto the input/ant. jack of the Tivo. Lastly, you hook a third coaxial from the output/tv jack of the Tivo to the input of your television. In short... digital signal -> input cable box output cable box -> input of Tivo output of Tivo -> input of TV Next thing you need to do is go to your Tivo settings menu and select a different cable provider. You will need to do this to make sure Tivo downloads the proper guides. Tivo will guide you through the setup of the new then it will take about 10-20 minutes for it to download all the new information. Once you are done with that and if everything goes well you Tivo will ask if you see a picture on your TV. If you do than you have better luck than most. If you tell Tivo that you dont see a picture it will just tell you to check your connections then ask again. In order to get my picture to show up I had to lie and tell Tivo that I did see a picture as soon as I did that the picture became visible. This may not work for everyone but it did for me. Now for the worst part and the part. The part that made me cancel my digital and go back to regular analog service. Hold on to your seat your about to enter a bad experience (or at least it was for me).... You must use a cable box if you have digital service and because of this Tivo will only display the tv station the cable box is on. So in order for you to be able to use your Tivo remote to change channels and allow Tivo to record programs you have to use the IR or Serial cable that came with your Tivo. The IR cable is about a 1 - 1/2 foot thin cable that has a microphone style jack on one end and to little IR emitters on the other end. You need to hook that up to the back of the Tivo and then place the IR emitters (little clear looking bulbs) in front of the IR receiver of the cable box. The concept is that when you change channels through your Tivo using the Tivo remote it will send out the appropriate IR codes for your cable box through the IR cable which in turn changes the channel on the cable box...thus showing the correct channel. At some point after the channel line change Tivo will ask you if you are using a IR cable and you will answer accordingly. Next, Tivo will go through a series of questions regarding your cable box. Tivo will give you a list of cable box manufacturers which you select. Then it will ask how you would normally change the channel on your cable box if you wanted to watch say channel 5. Would you enter "005", "05", or just "5". Then it will ask if you have to hit ENTER to process the request. This is so Tivo will know what numbers to "virtually" press for you to change the cable box. After this Tivo will go through a series of tests to make sure your channels are changing when it Tivo enters channel numbers. Tivo will guide you through this process and it is actually pretty easy and clever. Tivo will say something like "I am about to change to channel 26"...you watch to see what happens. Then you will tell Tivo what happened like "Yes, it changed to 26" or "It didnt do anything". This is where Tivo pin-points which methods it uses worked and which ones did not. Here is the problem and how you can fix and I got around it.... During these channel changing tests Tivo is basically adjusting the time delay between sending out codes or virtual key presses, so Tivo can be as fast as possible. During my tests Tivo never missed changing the channel, if it said it was about to change to channel 25, it changed so I answer the questions appropriately. After all of this I was ready to watch my new digital service. The problem....Tivo would screw up when trying to change when changing the channels, if I went from channel 161 to channel 12 you could watch the channel indicator on the cable box and see that the cable box missed getting one of the numbers. The result Tivo might of typed in 012 but the cable box got 02 basically missing the middle digit. This caused my cable box to just stay on channel 161. Though Tivo thought is was on channel 12, a total cluster <insert here>.... This really starts to anger you when Tivo decides to record one of your season passes but instead recorded a show on some other channel. This makes the Tivo a total piece of crap. The fix...I re-ran the setup of the IR cable by going to Settings-> Channels -> Channel Changing. My cable box has a little light that flashes when it receives singles from the remote (ie. IR cable). As you go through the IR setup you will notice the light flashes faster between between digits and other times it is a little slower. So what I did was lie to my Tivo once again. When the little lights would flash on my cable box a little faster I would tell Tivo nothing happen when it would ask me if the channel changed. It might of changed but I would lie anyway. This basically was telling Tivo that faster pulses dont work so lets use a slow pulse method. When all was said and done Tivo would send out codes like 0...1...2 (little delay between each digit)...after that Tivo never missed a channel. Bottom line, this new digital cable service may Tivo worthless and actually made watch television a horrible and frustrating experience.... This just the issues I had, you might be just fine......good luck!!