Ancient RCA DSS Receiver and DirecTV

[Foxbat]

Even though the first DBS system I installed was my Dad's DSS, I don't have a lot of experience with the current DirecTV, so please be kind with me here...

My father passed away last year, and his house and vacation cottage both had DirecTV. When his house sold, we pulled out the RCA DirecTV receiver (a smaller unit than the RCA DSS receiver at the cottage) but left the triple LNB dish on the roof. I called DirecTV to explain the situation and cancelled the home DirecTV account, which was separate from the vacation account. We ended up cancelling the vacation account later in the year. The vacation house account had been active for 12 years as Dad had me install the DSS system in June of 1996.

Fast-forward to this year, and my family wanted to reactivate the DirecTV for the vacation house. Evidently, my niece's husband (who does DirecTV installs for a living) ended up on the phone for over an hour because both of the receivers (the original RCA DSS unit from 1996) and the newer RCA receiver from this century are no longer able to be activated by mere mortals. As a result, the "vacation home" is now considered a "business" as commercial accounts are the only accounts that can activate the older receivers. So, this account's monthly bill is over $100!!!

I must say at this point that I'm going by what my niece's husband has told me, so I though I would check on SatelliteGuys to make sure this is all on the up-and-up. If this is true, we would definately want to cancel the commercial account and get new receivers, but since this is basically a summer place, it doesn't make sense to get saddled with a minimum programming commitment.

Also, I also have to wonder: if DirecTV had a plan to eliminate old receivers and put new receivers in their cusotmers' hands, why wasn't my father offered a deal to swap out his equipment? He usually came to me with all of his AV and computer needs, and I don't recall him ever mentioning that DirecTV had sent him anything about this.

 

[SamCdbs]

My first receivers were of that vintage. Contrasted to today's receivers, they were slow, so slow that the guide was almost useless. Also they only received SD and in fact the first receivers were unable to recognize a triple LNB dish.

I continued to operate these boxes until I saw ads for upgrades to newer boxes at an esentually nominal charge ($50 IIRC) in a magazine.

In fact I moved my mother to a place closer to me and that was right before they brought in locals (which require a 3LNB dish) here and the "movers connection" crew installed a triple dish, but never offered to upgrade the boxes.

I think if you had never cancelled the account, they would have been happy to continue to support the boxes you have in place for ever.

 

[PMKS]

I still have 2 older RCA IRD's active on my account; an RCA DRD503RBC and an RCA DRD222RD. They are in my kid's rooms.

DirecTV offered to replace both of them a while back for $20, but somehow I like owning my equipment so I declined, they both work good enough for my kids to watch cartoons.

Both are faster than the RCA 1st Gen IRD's I used to have back in the early 90's when I first got DirecTV.

I remember paying $899 for a plastic 18" single LNB dish and one RCA IRD with double RCA outputs , those were the days. My install was done by a guy who installed the BIG C-band dishes, mine was his first DirecTV install.

 

[Foxbat]

I'm not sure how much Dad paid for his receiver, but he had to get it through the rural electric co-op because of the remote location. It is a single LNB dish install pointing to 101?W. Since Dad had the triple LNB dish at the house, I figured that the new receiver would have worked better on the account, but evidently that wasn't an option(?)

Am I to take it that DirecTV won't let you buy receivers now, that everything is leased? If that was the offer, maybe that's why Dad passed on it.