Newbie question time: Moving from one old DVR to another old DVR

[Colmino]

My beloved $99 Philips DSR7000, which I bought something like five years ago, has finally decided to call it quits. "Welcome. Powering up..." I've never performed any sort of mod on it. None of the standard fixes work. It's dead.

As luck would have it, my parents (who used to use DirecTV until they moved to a new house and the fellow subcontracted by DirecTV flatly refused, twice, to install their system) handed all their old DirecTV hardware over to me, and it's been collecting dust for a year. So I had an opportunity, just now, to try one of the units out.

I went about it in the wrong way. So I'm here to determine what the correct way is. All I did was take my current access card out, put it in the "new" unit, and turn that on. It did occur to me that the cards may be married, somehow, to the hardware, but at the same time, I really couldn't see how anyone was expected to buy a new box at Best Buy and get things to work. Outside of an unappealing call to DirecTV, that is, which I personally would like to think wouldn't be mandated.

But I guess that's the info I'm after.

[grover517]

My beloved $99 Philips DSR7000, which I bought something like five years ago, has finally decided to call it quits. "Welcome. Powering up..." I've never performed any sort of mod on it. None of the standard fixes work. It's dead.

As luck would have it, my parents (who used to use DirecTV until they moved to a new house and the fellow subcontracted by DirecTV flatly refused, twice, to install their system) handed all their old DirecTV hardware over to me, and it's been collecting dust for a year. So I had an opportunity, just now, to try one of the units out.

I went about it in the wrong way. So I'm here to determine what the correct way is. All I did was take my current access card out, put it in the "new" unit, and turn that on. It did occur to me that the cards may be married, somehow, to the hardware, but at the same time, I really couldn't see how anyone was expected to buy a new box at Best Buy and get things to work. Outside of an unappealing call to DirecTV, that is, which I personally would like to think wouldn't be mandated.

But I guess that's the info I'm after.

You will have to call D* to have them activate the receiver. Most likely, they are going to charge you 20.00 to have them send you a new access card.

You are correct in the assumption that the access card is tied to the physical hardware by serial number and usually they will not reactivate a former card, especially if it is being moved from one receiver to another.

[66stang351]

My beloved $99 Philips DSR7000, which I bought something like five years ago, has finally decided to call it quits. "Welcome. Powering up..." I've never performed any sort of mod on it. None of the standard fixes work. It's dead.

As luck would have it, my parents (who used to use DirecTV until they moved to a new house and the fellow subcontracted by DirecTV flatly refused, twice, to install their system) handed all their old DirecTV hardware over to me, and it's been collecting dust for a year. So I had an opportunity, just now, to try one of the units out.

I went about it in the wrong way. So I'm here to determine what the correct way is. All I did was take my current access card out, put it in the "new" unit, and turn that on. It did occur to me that the cards may be married, somehow, to the hardware, but at the same time, I really couldn't see how anyone was expected to buy a new box at Best Buy and get things to work. Outside of an unappealing call to DirecTV, that is, which I personally would like to think wouldn't be mandated.

But I guess that's the info I'm after.
Only way to get the new "old" receiver activated is to call DIRECTV. Their policy is to send a new access card out and not reuse old ones. However, they may activate it with its original access card if the CSR isn't paying attention.

[doctrsnoop]

Cards are "married" to their receivers. Call and ask if you can simply have it activated. I am 1 for 1 in activating somebody else's old unit and card. YMMV