After third STB reboot in as many days and my kids saying "oh no.." I decided to once more ring TCL and complain..

This time I was told they "had made some changes in CHCH to separate the Cable Modems from the Cable TV".  They are monitoring it's effects and will do the change in Wgtn some time in the next two weeks.  (have I heard that one before!).

From that I take it that they are finally VLAN'ing between the two decoders.  I also noticed that my STB is no longer any more reliable when the Cable Modem turned on or off (as previously if I disconnected the STB from the STB Cable Modem the box was a lot more stable).

The other thing I noticed is without the STB Cable Modem connected I still get the full EPG coming down within ~5 mins and not just the current and next program.  So things must be changing.

After sniffing the wire for ~1 hour all I got was 99.9% ARP traffic from every man and their dog, plus DHCP requests / updates for my STB / Other STB's & Cable Modems.  So why does the STB need the Cable Modem at all??? PPV? Code Updates (that didn't do anything on the wire that I could see).

I asked the tech if I could be contacted when the VLAN change goes through so then I will know if it has worked or not... He said there wasn't a notification process but would see what he could do...

I recommend everyone ring up TCL and ask them when it's going to get fixed, and get TCL to e-mail you when it is done.