Posted on 02/03/2013 12:36:56 PM PST by 50sDad
I was given three surplus Direct TV boxes by an ex-customer of Direct TV, a friend of mine. Would like to post them as free on local Craigslist. Do they contain any of his info, or are the of any use to another current Direct TV customer?
Don’t they belong to Direct TV?
Don’t know...these people have MONEY...or the boxes could be so old they aren’t something DTV wants back. No idea.
DirecTV provides new ones to their customers and the sophistication of the system prevents you from being able to unlock them. Their only use would be to enhance the artificial reef. Of course with all the recent unfortunate boating accidents in which firearms have been lost the artificial reef hardly needs further enhancement.
His P0rn collection will be revealed.
They don’t belong to DTV. They are purchased by the consumer. The problem is that there is no way in hell DTV will issue a new (active) access card for an old receiver, when they can just refuse and sell a new receiver instead.
As the other poster pointed out, they are basically garbage. I threw mine in the dumpster.
Receivers could be owned or leased. Call (800)531-5000 and have them run the RID numbers to verify.
Could have been leased but are an older model they no longer want back.
If they are really old Hughes Panasonic etc, if they’re so old that they don’t have RID numbers they can’t be activated on another account. If they have RID they’ll need a new access card ($20 fee)
Some old receivers are desirable if they have data ports. These are needed by some RV satellite systems and are no longer available.
I’ve had Direct TV at many different addresses for many, many years until just recently. Each box is numbered and each number belongs to a name of the subscriber’s residence where they were installed. Whenever you moved before they always picked up old boxes and gave you new ones along with a new numbered plastic activation card. Now you have to send them back or you will eventually get a bill.
If you’re into collecting things that are no longer usable, I have a garage full of stuff that I would be happy to send you.
Forgot to address your question about information. The access card for the receiver just stores information about what services the customer subscribes to. Nothing personal and nothing that would be available to another customer is stored.
They won’t likely have any personal info on them other than possibly some programming data, but I doubt that most users would be able to access anything, especially since they need to be rebooted to acquire a signal once they have updated cards. It’s the cards that are allowed to decode specific programming and they don’t really control anything - the other way around. The programming is allotted to the various cards. Might be of nominal value to someone, but might be better off just trashing them. Some of the older boxes had serious heat problems.
LOL...boat anchors, gotcha. Will process at the next Ecycle event.
Maybe he cops will do a Satellite Receiver buyback at some point. Might be a good way for folks to get some easy extra money for nothing.
Unless you have a DVR in the bunch they’re worthless .. the drive can be reused in a computer system if you want..
You can sell them. I paid $20 on eBay for 2 DirecTV receivers to use in ice houses. Then activated them on my account. This was about a year ago. I don’t think any things changed, they should still be able to be activated on a different account.
They’re not garbage. You can sell them, someone else can activate them on a new account.
they can be reused as long as they where owned and not leased.
If you want to recycle and not bother with the likes of CL’ers (and honestly.. I’d just pitch um)
Best Buy takes e-waste for free. Even CRT tv/monitors. (they do limit you to 4 per day on some items)
I install DirecTV. They are worthless.
ok. back in the day you could reuse um.
Then option two. Haul to Best Buy and let them deal with um.
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