Cox Cable and HD Receivers

I just wanted to pass along some tips to avoid frusteration if you have Cox Cable and decide to get a HD receiver from them.

I went to the local Cox office and signed up for the HD gateway and to lease the HD receiver. I came home, with receiver in-hand and hooked it up to my tv via a HDMI cable. Seemed to work great. To disable the anti-theft feature and activate certain services, I called the activation number. This in-turn sent a signal to my box and reset it. It worked no more!

So I called tech support who stepped me through some things, but then ended up scheduling me an appointment with a onsite technician to resolve the problem. But hey, I have a new toy and want it to work now. So I went back to the office and exchanged the receiver. Same thing.

I went back a third time and got another one, willing to try it once more. With everything hooked up I called the activation number. Nothing happend. So I called tech support to make sure everything was okay on their end. He said that they missed putting in the HD codes. That's why the HD signal was being disabled when they activated it. So he put in the codes and tried to send the signal. Nothing. Figuring that I may actually have a bad box, he asked me to wait for the technician.

The technician shows up, makes a call to register the serial number, redoes some of the connections on the cables, and bam! it works!

So if you ever run into issues while hooking up your HD receiver to Cox, check these things with them over the phone before going bezerk:

1. Be sure they have entered your HD codes into their configuration for the the device.
2. Be sure that they have the proper serial number registered for you.
3. Be sure that you have good ends on your cables and that you have a proper signal strength coming into your house.

I hope this helps someone save almost a week a frusteration.