mikeflynn
Exactly what Tivo told me this morning, but the ditzy rep to whom I spoke assured me that there were no serial ports on cable boxes, and, if there was one, it would never have worked.
About six hours later I got a call from a tech named Lindsay who said he’d looked at reports coming in overnight and realized that apparently the attempt to resolve another issue with some cable boxes in West Seattle and south required turning off serial ports. He said they had been turned on. I asked him to hold while I confirmed, and we rebooted the cable box and the Tivo. Just when it looked like things were completely rebooted, the cable box turned itself off and on again, and I asked whether perhaps that might just then be the signal to reactivate the serial boxes going through. He said no, but when I still couldn’t change channels, he doublechecked with his tech team, and, sure enough, his request from some time earlier had not been met and the serial port activation had not been made. He finally got them to do it, and at that point it was mere SECONDS before we could operate the way we wanted.
Summary of the experience: Tivo tech support, good (though not 24 hours); they even at first suspected their equipment, whereas Comcast reps are clearly trained to deny any possibility it could be Comcast equipment. First Comcast tech support: awful, probably not on this continent. Second Comcast tech support: bad, and worse, pigheadedly ignorant. Lindsay: Great. May have saved Comcast my account. I may just cancel the premium setup I have.
Upshot… yes, this problem was not limited to me.