I bought a Samsung SIR-T160 on Ebay. I have no intent of getting DirecTV. I want to use it to tune in OTA HD and regular NTSC over cable because I have a projector so I need a tuner to even watch regular TV. I cannot get through the setup without an access card. What do I need if I'm never going to use DirecTV or did I totally screw up on my purchase? There are P4 and P5 access cards on ebay as well (some say "only tunes in the demo channel"). I've been told that I can go and set my "dish type" to none, but I'm getting an error that there is no access card. Will one of these cards get me through setup to tell it that I have no dish or not?
Another used gear question
- Thread starter imahawki
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For what you want you will have to subscribe to Directv. The access card has to be MARRIED to the receiver serial number. The only way I know that you can get the card married to the receiver is to subscribe to programming, for new customers the minimum is a 1 year commitment. Opcion Extra at $26.99 is the lowest priced package to meet that commitment it has 50 English channels. If that was a new receiver it would come with a card and out of the box it could tune ATSC and NTSC but you probably would have had to committ to a 1 year subscription when you bought it. A Samsung SIR-T151 would be better for your need it is a standalone OTA tuner. 
If you can get a clean card to put into it, you could temporarily add your receiver to a "friend's" D* account, which WILL marry the new card to your receiver, then cancel it the next day. BUT, it will also cause your friend to have to re-up a 1 year contract to TC, but you CAN still remove the extra receiver from the account the next day.
Give Directv a call they might have a better suggestion but I would guess you want to put the receiver up for sale and look for an ATSC tuner only.imahawki said:
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