Do i need to program tv?

My sister just moved into the basement and is trying to get the cable to work on her tv. we have comcast and i use to have a tv with cable in the basement and it worked fine. Do we need to program the tv? The comcast people are coming to check it out on sunday but i think my sister will go crazy with out cable. We tried auto programming but none of the channels worked. we tried different wires and also channel 3,4,vid1,vid2 etc.