Picked up two DirecTV satellite boxes

[radiotvnut]

A friend noticed a pile of stuff at an apartment complex dumpster and found two direcTV satellite boxes and two Motorola Comcast digital cable boxes.

Both of the direcTV boxes are from 2010 and have the cards still in them. One is an HD box and has a single coax input for the satellite dish and various other non-RF outputs.

The other one is a standard box with an "antenna in" jack, a satellite in jack, and an output to TV jack. My question is does this box likely contain a built-in DTV tuner or is the antenna input jack simply a pass-thru?

I connected both Comcast boxes to my cable, just to see what would happen. One of them changes channels; but, I can't get a picture on any channel (probably needs to be activated by the cable company). The other one stays on channel 0 and won't move.

I figure these boxes were left behind in an apartment that someone moved out of and were thrown away when the apartment was cleaned up.

Do these boxes have any resell value or would I be better off scrapping them for what parts I can get out of them?

[lnx64]

I think they are rented and supposed to have been returned to the cable provider. There "might" be a reward for those.

I say might, because I've found and returned 3 Bright House cable boxes, and one of them I got a credit to my cable account as a reward.

[radiotvnut]

Those cable boxes clearly have a warning label on them saying that they are property of Comcast and that any lost, stolen, or damaged boxes will result in $315 charged to the customer's account. Heck, they probably wish the customer would lose or damage them because you know that Comcast didn't pay nearly that much for those boxes. They probably have less than $50 tied up in each box.

[CoogarXR]

I know whenever we get them in at the recycler we have to scrap them. My boss told me we aren't allowed to sell them. I don't know why. I know they usually have decent IDE hard drives in them if they are the DVR-style boxes. Pull the drive sell that

[radiotvnut]

I don't think these boxes have hard drives in them. They are the standard big black Motorola trouble-prone boxes that Comcast has been issuing for the last several years. I would return them; but, I don't want the cable company to ask a bunch of questions.

[lnx64]

If they ask questions, pull the "Murica!" card.

[W3XWT]

I have yet to see a cable box that wasn’t a red-haired stepchild of illegitimate parentage. And, that includes the one which I designed for a long-ago former employer to meet a franchise requirement and was manufactured by “Cableproductos de Chihuahua S.A. de C.V.” In my home, I’ve had various boxes by “Jerry’s Kids” (the most insipid of which was one which had 12 pushbuttons which reminded me of the keys on a toddler’s piano, a three-position bat-handled switch on one side and a roller-adjust “fine-tuning” knob… the second one my girlfriend of the era and I had in our apartment added a descrambler to get Showtime and took almost a minute to re-generate the sync!), “Scientists Whose Varsity Delights Now Contain Crisco” who made the least offensive box (but was the most sensitive to high levels… ), and the boxes made first by a radio corporation which no longer made radios but also made STV boxes of a variety of types with the biggest and hottest-running wall warts I’ve ever seen (This company also created many jobs for repair technicians..) –their boxes came in a variety of flavors including something designed to have the video IF off of a suitably-equipped VCR looped-thru it, using the VCR tuner and programming. Unfortunately, the audio was “unprocessed” and there was a noticeable loss of lip-sync especially on something encoded! Also, it didn’t work with either a dual-cable system, with a system using channel mapping or HRC bringing additional thrills.

Ahhh… the old days of cable boxes. Where the parts went in before the name went on!

[Jeffhs]

I have Time Warner cable service (no box). However, I do know that TW charges a very hefty fee to the subscriber's account if they install a cable box and said box is damaged, destroyed (accidentally or otherwise, including damage by lightning strikes) or lost. I don't know what the penalty is, but my best guess is $300 or more for the large Motorola digital boxes (non-HD). I have absolutely no clue as to what the fee for damage, loss or destruction of a Time Warner HD cable box would be, but if I had to guess, I'd say at least $315 or even more. I don't know, either, if there is a reward for return of cable boxes left behind when subscribers move out of apartments or homes; the subscriber agreement one signs when initially starting cable service with Time Warner (and very likely, almost certainly, other cable companies as well) states in no uncertain terms that the company will charge, again, at least $315 to the subscriber's account if the cable box is lost, destroyed or damaged.

Why they don't allow some latitude for cable boxes struck by lightning, however, is beyond me; after all, subscribers have no control over when or if thunderstorms will occur. However, if I remember correctly a clause in my own subscriber agreement when I had digital cable some years ago, the cable company did warn subscribers to disconnect the incoming cable line from the digital cable box and from the AC outlet during electrical storms. Failure to heed this warning could result in a lightning strike on the incoming cable line that connects to the input terminal of the box. If the cable company can prove negligence on the part of the subscriber, said subscriber will again be charged the market value of the cable box plus any damage to the cable system itself. The same thing can happen if an amateur radio operator hooks up his 150-watt station to the cable, thinking he can use the system as a super antenna; as soon as he sends out one signal, the cable system, plus any televisions hooked up to the system at the time, will be heavily damaged immediately. The cable company can sue the amateur for damages to the system and to the subscribers' televisions, which can and likely will add up in the thousands of dollars -- depending entirely on how much damage was done to the cable system and how many TVs were damaged or destroyed. I'll never forget reading years ago in an old TV repair book this sage warning: "Don't connect your (amateur) transmitter to your cable line unless you are in the TV repair business or want to hear your neighbors talking about the night lightning struck."

BTW, if you "pick up" abandoned cable or satellite boxes from vacant apartments (even if you find said boxes in dumpsters), be sure to return them to the cable operator at once, or as soon as humanly possible. Even if they were abandoned by subscribers for any reason and left behind, they are still the property of the cable or satellite company, as has been mentioned. These cable companies probably have very, very good lawyers, so the chances of getting away with failing to return an abandoned box are slim to none. There is no point in keeping a company-owned cable box with the intention of using it to get free cable anyway, as all digital cable boxes must be activated by the cable operator before use. The odds are in the cable operator's favor that these boxes will not work at all (even for local channels) until they are activated, so don't try to use one that was left behind.

[radiotvnut]

Back in the late '80's, someone we knew climbed the pole in the middle of the night and connected his TV to the outside cable line. To top it off, he somehow managed to get his hands on a cable box/descrambler and he was getting everything that was on cable for free. He was laughing about it when he first did it; but, he wasn't laughing when the cable company finally caught up with him.

Today, it's a lot harder to steal the cable, since the boxes required to view the channels must be activated by the cable company.

I also remember the traps that they'd install in the line to keep the viewer from watching certain channels or certain bands of channels. Many people would simply bypass the trap and that was all it took to get the additional channels.

I've also heard of people wrapping a piece of aluminum foil around the cable wire in order to receive certain premium channels.

[Chip Chester]

An EE friend of mine in college was rich enough to have Warner Qube in his apartment. (Late '70s.) The lure of the black box was too much, and he attempted to open it up to look around. The box was held together with a single fastener, top-to-bottom, right in the center. Looked like a rivet... but close inspection revealed it was very slightly oval, and responded to application of vicegrips to loosen. After he got it unthreaded, he pulled it out from the top. "Click". Oops. No workee anymore, either. I was invited to the activities at that time. Close inspection revealed about four layers of circuit boards stacked up on stand-offs, and buried down around layer 3 was a sliding tamper switch, that was released when the bolt was removed. But, when released, it completely cleared the hole down thru the boards. So, you couldn't tell it was there when looking from above. Had to do some digging, then 'cock' it, re-assemble, and when the bolt hit the bottom of the hole, that enabled the switch so that the next bolt removal would trigger it again. Pretty clever. I advised my friend not to play around with the box anymore. Since Qube was an interactive response system, they probably could monitor our progress on reassembly.

Chip