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I have been blessed by the dumpster gods in my apartment complex. A month or 3 ago I found 4 yes 4 DirectTV DVR's in the trash! One is a DirectTV+ Model R15. The other 3 are Direct TV Tivos Phillips Model DSR708. The R15 and the One of the Tivos also had thier power cords and remotes. The other two Tivos don't have either. They all seem to work as I can play movies but I don't have nor can I afford satellite service. All 4 have thier smart cards. I would like to sell them if I can and I would like to know where I could get replacement remotes and what they might have cost brand new?
Try to sell them on eBay. In Tulsa, I don't think you'll have much of a market. I think DirectTV will support them but I know Cox won't. I own a Motorola 6416 DVR that's exactly the same as the one I rent from Cox, but they refuse to enable it for me. They say theirs is different internally, but I don't think that is so. I think all they have to do is enter its serial number into their system, same as all the other Motorola 8416 DVR's they use. I wonder how they can get away with this, because in the computer world, this kind of thing is considered an illegal tying arrangement and has been ruled against in several precedent cases, like Amdahl v IBM, Digidyne v Data General and USA v Microsoft. Seems to me that maybe the only reason they are able to get away with it is the rental ownership costs are small enough nobody is going to start a lawsuit for the kind of money involved. But then again, seems to me this would be some kind of class action thing. Who knows, maybe it will be some time.
I use to have DirectTV and I hated it which is why these are probably in the trash. How come you don't want to keep them? I know when I had DirectTV the service was always dropping and freezing up and it never recorded all the program. You would have to set the DVR for 5-10 minutes after the program end time in order to get all your program.
I know that cell phones are locked for sure. Could there possibly be a circuit inside that works in a similar way, and that somehow makes it need a certain input?