If your cable provider is Verizon, you might enjoy this personal CableCARD activation story.
Verizon makes obtaining a CableCARD pretty easy, compared to some of the stories that we've heard about the other cable providers. You can either order one off the Web site or phone customer service and order it that way. When we did it, the card showed up a couple of days later.
The instructions say to just pop the cable card into your STB or DVR and follow the activation steps on the printed sheet that they send you. You have two options. Call the activation hotline or use the activation Web page.
We opted to try the Web site. You need to obtain the Host ID and Data strings from your STB or DVR, or in our case, your PCIe or USB device. We got this information from our adapter card's Web UI and filled it in on the Web site.
Within two minutes, the CableCARD was paired and activated. The activation message had been received, etc., etc. Within 10 minutes, the channel map had shown up. Things were looking good. But, there was no decryption. Only the unencrypted channels were available.
Parenthetically, the people at the adapter card's Tech Support were absolutely no help. They tried to tell us that it was a DRM issue and that only Windoze would work. Apparently, they, like the rest of the world, see the word Linux and can only respond with the W word. The fact that the problem had nothing to do with the OS, in any way, shape or form, was irrelevent. So, bear this in mind when you think about contacting your hardware vendor first. You'll probably be wasting your time. More likely than not, you're on your own in that respect.
Fortunately, the guys who wrote the firmware for the card we were using included some pretty good logging capabilities so we were able to figure out what was really going on. Reading the logs also lead us to find the vendor's position on Linux more than a little bit comical since, unless we miss our guess, the adapter card runs a version of Linux itself. Not sure the guys in Tech Support see that irony, though.
But, we digress. While it is true that Verizon is no longer the Wild West (as of July 31, 2012 their CableCARDs will no longer work with any device, without pairing), and the premium content channels are no longer sent with no CCI set, there is still a lot of content which is available on Linux, without DRM. Typically, depending on your subscription plan, this includes all of the standard cable channels like USA, TBS and A&E, in both SD and HD. So, the fact that there were no encrypted channels available implied that something else was wrong, not DRM.
Thinking that the Web site might not have set the card up the same way that the activation hotline would (there was precedence on the Internet to this effect), we called the phone number.
After taking the initial steps and waiting 20 minutes, we called back (since there was no STB/DVR setup menu that we could use to complete activation). At this point, we got the IVR menu loop: "We see that you have partially completed activation. Go to your STB/DVR and follow the instructions. Call back if you experience problems. Press 8 to rehear these instructions; 9 to end this call; or just hang up."
Since Verizon is doing voice recognition, at this point we spoke the word "operator" (not one of the listed options, by the way). The system said it would transfer us to an agent. We spent 25 or 30 minutes on hold (reading Brucie's blog and listening to the same 32 bars of mindless hold music in an endless loop), waiting for the agent.
When we got the Tech Support person on the line, they had no idea what to do. They asked us where the cable card was installed, and, when we said it was a computer, they asked us if it could connect to the Internet. Eventually, after explaining things a few times (Verizon, by the way, does not care what your cable card is plugged into but you sort of have to get them to accept the fact that it ain't a STB/DVR), we convinced them to do a grandslam hit/cold hit/DAC Init hit/master reset (or whatever it is called). The tech had to have two conversations with the supe befoe they got him the right proceedure to do the reset. The reset worked right away.
Total time for the call about 1 hour.
Incidentally, the problem apparently was caused by the fact that we ordered the CableCARD before July 31, 2012 and it shipped with the wrong rights enabled. By doing the reset, it reloaded the card with the correct rights. Had we ordered the card now, it might have worked right away.
The moral of this story is that, even if your CableCARD says it is paired and activated, it may not work properly. If that's the case, convincing your cable provider to reset it may get things moving along smartly.