Once upon a time Ron Koms shaped the electrons to say...
> Until I noticed my premium channels (HBO Showtime) did not work. when I put
> one of those channels on, the TiVo went to the cable card screen. Stating
> that I need to call Comcast for this to work...
> ALL, my other channels worked fine, HD and SD...

I don't think any pairing info is stored on the drive, so this may be
coincidence, but it does sound like the cards we not paired correctly.

> After hours of him giving numbers, still nothing, so he yanked out the cards
> to start fresh, now I have almost NOTHING working, maybe 5 or 10
> channels....

So they definitely screwed up the pairing.

> Anyone know WHY this is a big problem?

Sounds like you got bad support, it shouldn't be hard at all.

> It is a Series 3 and from what I read the M-card will work, but I will need
> 2 of them, is this true?
>
> The tech said the M-cards configure SOoo much easier...

The tech is high, pairing is identical for S-Cards and M-Cards. But
yes, you can use two S-Cards or two M-Cards. M-Cards fall back to to
acting like S-Cards in host devices without multistream support - like
the S3. So the end result is the same.

-MZ
--
megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me.
http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171