InfiniTV4 PCIe -"Unable to get channel map" ?

[adam1991]

Recently I noticed a bunch of recordings not happening, and yesterday it was pretty bad. My investigation showed that my tuner card AND cableCARD are working--I was able to tune SD and local HD channels, but no cable-only HD and higher package channels.

Poking around in the InfiniTV diagnostics, I found that it didn't have a channel map. Couldn't get one. It knew about 410 channels, but channel map said 0 channels. Then like a dummy I hit the button to blow away the channel map, and now I can't tune a thing.

All other diagnostics show proper authorization.

I have a ticket in to Ceton, but I thought I'd take the time to ask here if anyone has ever seen this before.

I have a special contact inside the cable company, a guy who knows much more about cableCARDs than any of the phone people; he's looked at my account and verified that nothing is out of the ordinary.

The cable guy is coming tomorrow to check it out and maybe swap cards (yikes, I hate the idea), but until then I have no TV anywhere in the house. Ironically enough, also coming tomorrow is a guy to put an antenna up so that I can look into dumping pay TV...

[Paw Paw]

I had a similar issue with Comcast and finally had to get a replacement CableCard from them. Sometimes it is just easier for them to "start fresh" with another card. In theory they should be able to correct the problem but theory does not always work in the real world

[adam1991]

yeah, I understand the "start fresh" thing.

Unfortunately, I know for cold hard experience that 9 out of the 10 cards he brings are likely to be bad. The field is their QA department.

But, Ceton said to start fresh, too, given what they found in diagnostics. So...

[JohnW248]

yeah, I understand the "start fresh" thing.

Unfortunately, I know for cold hard experience that 9 out of the 10 cards he brings are likely to be bad. The field is their QA department.

But, Ceton said to start fresh, too, given what they found in diagnostics. So...

Do you have OOB lock? That's the frequency they use to ship the authorization AND the channel map out to cableCARDS (SDV works a little differently). But if you have a problem with OOB lock you won't get a channel map and you'll also lose the conditional access and just get clear channels


Your tech should be able to determine if its cable related or the cableCARD. The good news is if they replace the card you'll have to go through pairing again BUT you won't have to run TV set-up over again since that's locked to the tuner and if you keep that in place you should get it resolved easily.

BTW in the future it would help to know if your on a Cisco or a Moto system and then we can tell you what cableCARD Tabs to look at to pin down the problem.

[STC]

Have you been tugging your cable feed around with the impending aerial install tomorrow?

[adam1991]

hehehe No, the cable feed remains untouched. For now.

Sorry, it's a Cisco/SA card without SDV. Ceton says the diagnostics say no OOB lock, which helps tremendously--now I know where to tell the guy to focus. I'll be happy to try a new card, but if that doesn't work, at least we know what frequency for him to focus on as he evaluates the infrastructure.

[Paw Paw]

hehehe No, the cable feed remains untouched. For now.

Sorry, it's a Cisco/SA card without SDV. Ceton says the diagnostics say no OOB lock, which helps tremendously--now I know where to tell the guy to focus. I'll be happy to try a new card, but if that doesn't work, at least we know what frequency for him to focus on as he evaluates the infrastructure.

I Believe Cisco/SA uses 72.5 Mhz fro OOB

[bmiklosey]

Adam, I am having the same issue as you. Is this Comcast? I had a technician out on Sunday and he installed a PKM801 Cisco card. It paired up perfectly (OOB lock and CP auth). While we got my hardware in a known good state we still could not get all my channels. He left, promising follow up but I never heard back from Comcast.
So I did the same thing as you, but my execution was based on Ceton's direction, and that was to clear the channel map. Now I have nothing.
So I pulled the fire alarm yesterday so to speak, and called a friend of mine that is in upper management at Comcast. That has gotten me referred to a department called NASR (north American service and repair). I've yet to hear back from them but they promised a call back by Saturday.
I'd be curious to learn when your issues began. Mine started March 9, so I'm beyond the frustration point.
Please report back if you unearth anything and I'll do the same.

[adam1991]

hehehe No, the cable feed remains untouched. For now.

Sorry, it's a Cisco/SA card without SDV. Ceton says the diagnostics say no OOB lock, which helps tremendously--now I know where to tell the guy to focus. I'll be happy to try a new card, but if that doesn't work, at least we know what frequency for him to focus on as he evaluates the infrastructure.

I Believe Cisco/SA uses 72.5 Mhz fro OOB

According to my inside guy:

The channel map comes to the cable card via the BFS QAM channel, which is EIA 104, or 705MHz in your area.

[adam1991]

Adam, I am having the same issue as you. Is this Comcast? I had a technician out on Sunday and he installed a PKM801 Cisco card. It paired up perfectly (OOB lock and CP auth). While we got my hardware in a known good state we still could not get all my channels. He left, promising follow up but I never heard back from Comcast.
So I did the same thing as you, but my execution was based on Ceton's direction, and that was to clear the channel map. Now I have nothing.
So I pulled the fire alarm yesterday so to speak, and called a friend of mine that is in upper management at Comcast. That has gotten me referred to a department called NASR (north American service and repair). I've yet to hear back from them but they promised a call back by Saturday.
I'd be curious to learn when your issues began. Mine started March 9, so I'm beyond the frustration point.
Please report back if you unearth anything and I'll do the same.

I'm not with Comcast, no.

My issue started earlier this week; that's when I noticed pop-ups about failed recordings. But I didn't pay much attention until yesterday, when I came home after a long day away and found dozens of pop-ups that I had to dismiss. That's when I dove into it.

Tech comes tomorrow. The focus will be new card, and/or validating the signal at the OOB frequency. This from my inside guy at my cable company (stumbled upon him awhile back at DSL Reports, he's golden for this kind of thing).

[JohnW248]

The Cisco OOB signal can be on several different frequencies, here its 74.5mH and it also carries the channel map for cableCARDs. SDV channel maps are on a different frequency and picked up by a different modem in the tuning adapter. If you don't have OOB lock then your card isn't authorized and can't decode so that is the first thing and something they can check with a spectrum scanner.

Let us know your progress. There are lots of ways for the various cards and systems to work which is why its important to know your cable company and head end cisco/moto and if you have sdv. Hopefully they'll find a problem with the inbound signal and fix it.

[adam1991]

And, the cable guy is here and we're in the middle of things. It's been two hours now.

We started with a new cableCARD, as everyone seemed to agree that's probably the issue. The new one went in, started downloading new firmware, and all went well. After awhile diagnostics showed channel maps!

But then we realized, no validation. ???? And that's where we are. It won't validate. He's checked the infrastructure in the house, and all is well. He's now checking signals at the pole. He's been on the phone with a bunch of seemingly knowledgeable people, but nothing so far. He wants to eliminate cabling and signal problems before we go further.

Beyond that, the only plan we have right now is....drum roll, please....another card. Unfortunately he had only the one with him. This may come down to me chasing after cards until I find one that works--at least for right now. The main office isn't far away, but it's a pain to get to. The thought of going back and forth, one card at a time until I find one that works, sounds painful. Plus, without a tech I'm stuck with trying to get the standard CSRs to validate my card, every time.

I think I'm going to also capture diagnostics and send them back to Ceton, to make sure it's not a tuner card problem.

[mdavej]

Host ID and Data string have to be correct for validation to work. Make sure he didn't make a mistake with those.

[adam1991]

Absolutely, we triple and quadruple checked those with the various people on the phone.

He just left to meet another tech to get a fresh card. We'll go through this again in an hour or so.

[adam1991]

He's back. This time he has an actual newer Cisco card, not an older SA card. It didn't require new firmware, or at least it didn't call for new firmware from the system.

He's on hold now to get a validation sent.

[adam1991]

still no validation, and channel map is back to 0.

Rebooting.

[JohnW248]

Before you (or your tech) try to validate the card, first check the DAVIC (from the web gui for the tuner click on cableCARD and then in the links in the middle of the page click on Cisco CableCARD DAVIC Info
It should look something like this:

Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Network Interface-DAVIC

Host Type: One-Way
FDC Status
Frequency: 74500 kHz
Data Rate: 1.544 Mbps
RS Corr Err: 0
RS Uncorr Err: 0
Status: Locked

They may use a different frequency and data rate may be different but if the status doesn't say LOCKED you won't be able to get the card validated or download a channel map.

[adam1991]

Funny you should say that. It's "not locked", and has been that way all afternoon. I pointed it out to him, and he had ample opportunity to tell his people that. I do believe he did.

A supervisor tech is coming tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, I'm setting up my six OTA tuners as we speak. This may be a moot point, depending on my mood this evening.

[adam1991]

OK, another cable guy is here. We're trying yet another card.

InfiniTV diagnostic tool shows inserted and paired, and shows "channel list received," (?) but no OOB lock and no auth/validation. Channel auth test says "channel number 219 is clear. Please enter a premium or hd chanel number to test entitlement." Problem is, 219 is an HD channel. It's saying this about ALL channels.

[STC]

Do they have a cableCARD STB handy to test with on your drop