Just today I received the following email from a confused Comcast user. Since I don’t have Comcast I didn’t feel right answering the question. Can somebody else who does have Comcast help KC out?
Dear Tivo Guru,
I have enjoyed Tivo2 for several years. I recently purchased an HD monitor, and I decided to upgrade my Comcast box to an HD capable box. The lady at the local Comcast office told me that not only does the existing Comcast HD box not have a serial port as does my current old cable box, but it will not receive IR blasts from a Tivo as well for channel changing. Is this correct or is it bad information?
I call bologne on this one. There’s no way that a Comcast box could be smart enough to differentiate the difference between a TiVo’s “Channel 1-4-0″ code and a Universal Remote’s “Channel 1-4-0″ code…
I’ve used TiVos with my comcast boxes (both HD & standard) for two years now and have never had a problem. This sounds like a case of eager salesperson.
Sounds like BS to me. AFAIK they don’t have cable boxes that use RF remotes. Any if it uses IR it is almost certain that TiVo can control it with IR.
Not having serial is likely – only the DCT2k series of boxes works with serial, and those aren’t HD.
Thank you both for the helpful posts. I ended up bringing the Comcast HD box home to give it a try. It is true that the new box does not have the serial interface which my previous box had. However the IR blaster supplied by Tivo works well after you follow Tivo’s step-by-step setup. I was misinformed by the Comcast rep.