Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

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re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

PiranhaTodd — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:17:21 GMT

I can confirm that there was only 1 Order ID associated with my Purchase ID. I also used my employer's EPP. In the original email I got from Dell titled "Dell Order Has Been Acknowledged", after submitting the order, I did see the "Single ATITV Wonder™Digital Cable Tuner with Remote" listed in the Order Details section. However, there was no part number listed next to this item. Later emails, such as when the system shipped, did not include a detailed list of components.

When I got the system, with no tuner, I called Dell, and no one would even believe me that I ordered the tuner until I forwarded the "Dell Order Has Been Acknowledged" to them (3 different Dell support people).

Then of course, no one could actually order it for me because it must be ordered with a complete system. <sigh>

All I can say is, I got screwed, and Dell did not fix the problem. I guess I'm unlucky, or you guys are lucky.

The Sony tuner shipped, so it should be here in a couple days.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Marcel — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:31:32 GMT

PiranhaTodd,

Not sure what to tell you. Sorry about your experience. When I placed my order, I got a Purchase ID and two Order IDs. The two orders were linked to the purchase ID. I was able to pull this up online and it was showing me the expected shipping dates for both orders.

I didn't order through the regular Dell channels, though. My employer participates in Dell's Employee Purchasing Program (EPP). So far everybody who has posted about tuners said they got them shipped separately. Some have said they come directly from ATI.

When you pull up your order, are the tuners listed on the parts list?

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

PiranhaTodd — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:41:12 GMT

Marcel, I hope you are right. Again, I didn't see any mention of two orders. If I get a tuner from Dell, it will hardly have been "free", considering the time and stress involved. Any way you look at this, it is simply bad business practice for Dell, and they need to address it -- either in notifying customers of the status of multiple orders, or in training their customer service reps to help customers in such matters.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

PiranhaTodd — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:39:56 GMT

Thanks for the reply, Chris. I should also say that I really appreciate your blog and posts regarding Media Center, and specifically CableCard.

Regarding DCTs shipping independently...

Really? I see no such notes in my order information. I do realize that the Dell site says something like "may delay your order", but wouldn't you think that everyone else in the support organization could look that up and tell me that "it's on its way"? And if so, give me some clue as to when it might arrive? As it is, I have no confidence in Dell (and I have previously been a loyal customer for years). Hopefully my new tuner from Sony will work. If not, I'm sending this brick back to Dell. If the Sony tuner works, great. Dell has still lost a customer. And if Dell ships a tuner also, then I'll have 2 tuners -- and Dell has still lost a customer. No one should ever have to endure speaking with a dozen support people over the course of a week in order to get what they paid for - and still not get what they paid for.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Marcel — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 06:11:34 GMT

PiranhaTodd: You might be getting a free tuner. Like chrisl says, the tuners are shipped from a different place. My tuners arrived over a week after my system and via DHL as opposed to Fedex. If you look at your order, you should actually see two orders. One for the system and one for the tuner(s).

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

chrisl — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:24:06 GMT

Joann: Assuming you ordered your XPS 420 from Dell's consumer website you can buy a Digital Cable Tuner from somewhere like SonyStyle.com. If you just want local broadcast channels you can pick up a OTA ATSC tuner from just about anywhere. Just make sure it works with Windows Media Center.

PiranhaTodd: DCTs are shipped independently of the PCs. That should be noted somewhere in your order information. If you ordered one, you most likely have it on the way.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

PiranhaTodd — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:20:45 GMT

Well, at least you guys got your tuners. My XPS 420 arrived 7 days ago without the digital cable tuner. I've spoken to probably a dozen different support people (seriously), and stil no love. They said they can't order it as a separate part and that it must be ordered with a Dell system. No !@#$? I finally got them to credit me $335 so I could order one from Sony (which I did).

I did confirm that I have the BIOS update, and this system reports "The PC BIOS is OCUR compliant", so I think I'm good there. Just need the tuner.

I wonder if Dell will end up sending me the tuner afterall. The irony.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Joann — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:13:36 GMT

I purchased my 420 w/o a tv tuner card, and have read somewhere that I won't be able to view HD programming as a result. If I buy a digital tv tuner off the shelf from Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. will I still not be able to view HD programming?

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

derhag — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:50:23 GMT

yup, that was it. my account defaulted to the small biz site... scared me, i am seriously considering this as an alternative to my old xp media center and external tuners. HD would be a huge plus. Any other gotcha's i should watch out for??

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Marcel — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:19:38 GMT

They are still there. Make sure you go to Home & Home Office. Their Business department doesn't have a license to sell the tuners.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

chrisl — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:39:58 GMT

I'm still seeing CableCARD as a standard option on the XPS 420. Where are you seeing that it is gone??

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

derhag — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:04:07 GMT

Looks like Dell pulled the cablecard tuners from their web site... anyone have more info on if/when this will come back or if it's FATAL??

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Marcel — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:47:28 GMT

Wow, I was getting all worried reading about all these issues. I've had my XPS 420 with 8800GT for about a week. My ATI tuners are due to arrive this week.

I did some more research and a fix for this issue has apparently been found. On a bunch of XPS in particular with the 8800GT the BIOS was incorrectly programmed. The OCUR flag didn't get set. Download an run the following utility to see if your BIOS has the OCUR flag correctly enabled.

www.dougknox.com/.../index.htm

Looks like I lucked out with mine. If this utility doesn't report your BIOS is OCUR compliant you won't be able to watch any content. Here's what it should say:

This utility checks the PC's BIOS for OCUR support/compliance

The correct OCUR signature (DWORD-WORD-WORD-BYTE is: {B46F133D-235F-4634-9F03

-B1C01C54785B}

Or, as a byte stream (memory dump) it is: 3D 13 6F B4 5F 23 34 46 9F 03 B1 C0 1C

54 78 5B

OSFR table present ... table size is: 124 bytes

Number of OSFR objects found: 1

Object GUID: {B46F133D-235F-4634-9F03-B1C01C54785B}

OCUR object found at table index 0

Manufacturer Name: DELL INC

Model Name: XPS420_OCUR

Microsoft Reference Name:

Skipping remaining objects

The PC BIOS is OCUR compliant

END

If your BIOS is not compliant, you have three options to get it fixed. See the following link (Message 151)

www.dellcommunity.com/.../message

AustinDeadhead is the man who can assist you with the fix.

I'm optimistic that my setup is gonna work out once I get my tuners this week and get Comcast out here to get my CableCARDs installed.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Mike — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:44:19 GMT

Seems I suffer from nearly all of the above, so here's some info on my experience:

1) I'm missing the remote. I'll try the link above.

2) At first, my system said it wasn't digital cable compatible. I tried entering the digital cable code from the Windows tag on the computer per the instructions above. This solved that problem. Note there are two codes on the tag. You want the one to the right side of the tag. After that media center should recognize your computer as digital ready.

3) After that, my system works fine with the tuner, minus a cable card. The tech arrives from the cable company Tuesday with that. We'll see how it goes. Should be as simple as using media center to install and enable the card.

For the record, I have a XPS420, 4GB, 8800GT, 24" Dell and Acer HDCP compliant monitors, Blu-ray, and single ATI external digital cable tuner with Vista.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Jon Davis — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:37:10 GMT

This is quite an expensive piece of hardware just to upgrade significantly from a rented digital receiver. That said, I've been wanting CableCard for like ever.

BOCR and Switched Digital scared the snot out of me because I just ordered the XPS before I discovered these two things. It's extremely nice to know that Dell doesn't anticipate a PC upgrade for BOCR. But I'll have to call COX to see if Switched Digital is going to screw me over. I hope I don't have to cancel my XPS order.

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

Shane — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:38:07 GMT

I just purchased the 420 with Dual CableCard Tuners. I have a question that I haven't been able to find the answer to yet. Can I install an internal ATSC/NTSC Tuner and receive OTA HD channels in addition to the cablecard decoded content? Will Vista MC recognize all of these channels combined in a single guide? Also, I will probably keep one HD STB from Charter for On-Demand access, can I run this through the 420 as well?

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

dennis — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:14:08 GMT

i talked with this guy chris on the dell community - he is a dell rep - he told me the same thing - the 2400pro are being replaced by the xt and the 8800 is a mystery - i have spoken with others with nvidia 8600 and they are up and running - this is completely nutty - so i just went out to best buy for the hell of it and picked up a ati 2600 xt - i will see if this works with a fresh image because any time you change something the setup needs to download security items specific to your system - if this doesnt work the issue is more widespread than the 8800 - this completely sux

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

roddog — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:03:36 GMT

I have the 8800GT as well, I have yet to get this thing to even find an initial signal! One would think Dell would have tested these things. When looking at forums one sees that the same problems have been happening since launch...this is stupid. I thought I wasn't being an early adopter at this stage. I would have thought after the Anand Tech review Dell/ATI/Microsoft would have this ironed out. The ATI documentation is sparse. Dell tech or customer service hasn't the slightest clue about these OCUR tuners. Hell, I had to explain it to my tech and he had to go read about it...very reassuring! When he is brickwalled (right after Vista MC won't show up on his live connect screen) he is calling others...to no avail. Then I get transferred from him to Dell on Call "because they deal with 3rd party stuff" and they tell me they are a pay service, only deal with virus and malware, and have never heard of the OCUR tuner. They give me the number to ATI! This is truly upsetting and I am going from only owning Dell's since the 16 mhz 386 days to never owning one again...and starting a blog about it! And don't get me started on DHL's delivery of Dell products!

re: Dell XPS 420 CableCARD Q&A

QuienesSuPa — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 03:27:40 GMT

That's interesting. I've got the 8800 GT or GTS card too. I missed the dell call tonight! But at least they called this time. I'll ask about the 'sit tight' thing. I have till the 15 to return this thing in their extended holiday return schedule. I'll sit tight for 2 more days! LOL