One moment please this channel should be available shortly

Hi, Comast TV users.

I guess that some peoples suffer from this message on your TV display, which always annoys, disgusts, and irritates you when you watch this. I am writing this for these people and want to help you. I can understand how you feel about this and that you want to say "what the hell is this" and want to fix this soon. It is because I have suffered this situation three times within one year and half. Every time, a problem was same in my situation. Let me tell you my situation.

1. My Comcast Services

Cable TV and internet

2. Situation 

I could not see any image and any voice but only the message like "One moment please, this channel should be available shortly". However, the cable box could download time and TV programs well. So this bothered me because that it made me feel that box was not broken. Regarding internet, internet is working well. TV signal and internet signal share same coax cable but they are using different frequency, so at this time I guessed that signal power of TV was weak, and I thought that I just needed a low noise power amplifier before the cable TV box.

3. Symptom

In early stage, I sometimes could see TV and sometime could not see TV. Gradually, situation was getting worse, and finally I could see only the message all the time. It took a few weeks in my cases every time.

4. Comcast call center. (link)

What I did was to call service center. A call center phone number is listed in the above link. I have called several times, but last time was very strict for identification process. I had to tell an operator many things, although it was not so strict previously. After the identification, I told the operator my situation, and the operator advised me to confirm connection of cables. Additionally, the operator controlled my cable box remotely and tried to turn off the box in order to make sure that the box responded properly. After all, the box could respond but the box could not be turned off according to the operator. Finally the operator came to a conclusion that a technician needed to visit me to see what`s wrong. And a technician was supposed to come to my apartment at 10am on the following day. 

(*) This is my matter but I felt again that it is still difficult to do communication in English throughout phone. Regarding face to face communication, it is ok now.

5. A technician came

A technician was supposed to come 10 am, but a technician came one hour later. I was not surprised at this because I was already used to this country culture. I told myself that this is not Japan and I could not expect high quality service. Before he came, he called me to make sure that cable TV was only problem and internet worked well. When he came, he had new TV box with him. It sounded like that he realized that TV box would be problem. At first, what he tried to do wast to make sure whether signal level was fine or not. While he was doing this, I asked him what problem would be, and he said to me that it would be box before he completed signal check, which turned out to be fine later. After he replaced old one by new one, TV came back and started to work properly again. It took about ten minuted. After all, this was the problem of box. It was just broken, just broken.

6. What I felt

Before I called to the call center, I asked many peoples in the office if they have ever experienced same situation. But everyone has never experienced this kind of situation before. I wanted to say "Why do only I suffer from this ?". 

7. Another solution other than calling to call centers

When I asked a question to my colleagues, someone told me that this kind of situation happens to many peoples because my colleague saw many people take broken boxes to local services center of Comcast ,and receive new one, and get activation done there. This will help when your box is broken.

I am going to do this when I see same situation again.

I will be glad if this helps someone who suffer from same situation.

(*) Unfortunately, the same thing happened a few month later, and I tried to take it to a local service center like what I described in "7".
I wrote about the detail of it at the link below.

http://my-life-in-second-stage.blogspot.com/2012/10/one-moment-please-this-channel-should.html