Hi My explorer 8300 hd stb went dead 2 days ago and I replaced it yesterday with a new one. I have a 42" hd Plasma and the stb is hooked up to it through hdmi and optical to a digital panasonic receiver. Anyways After it was done booting the channel came on. The basic channels were fine but when I went to the premium channels and the hd channels I get a message saying "Not Authorized" and to call this number.I had this problem about a month before and went through the same steps, nothing worked. The cable guy came down and put a new access card it in and the problem was fixed. Today I called cablevision and we tried different methods but just like previous nothing worked. I made an appointment to have someone come down to fix this problem again. I then was going to try trial and error by unhooking the hdmi and optical and hooking up an component cable from the explorer 8300 hd to the tv. After I did this and powered it back on, Guess what? no more message and I was watching tv on the premium and hd channels. I then unhooked the component and hooked back up the hdmi and optical, and no message anymore. I would like to know if this is a common problem and what caused this to happen (hdcp?) I'm concerned that this problem might come back. Anyone?
update: Today I turned my Panasonic 42px50u on but the cable box was non responsive . The power button did nothing so I unplugged it waited, then put the plug back in. It said boot then after it went off I turned it on and the blue startup screen came on. after that the guide screen came on but it froze on that screen. the channels never came on so I couldn't watch tv ......... I unplugged the cable box another 3 times with similar results. THe box became unresponsive. Once It got as far as the blue screen but froze on it. This whole time its hooked up using hdmi to the tv and optical to a receiver. I decided to try hooking back up the component cable. So I removed the cable from dvd player and put it in the explorer 8300 hd. I unplugged the power again from the stb and plugged it back in. It booted..... the channel finally came on but after about a minute it rebooted by itself and then it became non responsive again. I unplugged it one more time. Finally the channel came on and stayed on. All of the channels seemed to have worked fine including the hd ones. I then powered down the cable box and switched back the hdmi cable. So far it seems ok but I doubt that it's going to stay this way. I'd prefer to keep the explorer 8300 hd hooked up to hdmi and not component. THe cable guy's going to becoming over tomorrow and I'll explain the situation to him and hopefully he'll be knowledgeable enough to be able to have an answer to what's causing the problems. Is there anybody who has a similar problem? I'd very much appreciate any comments, suggestions or helpful information.