Cancelled Service, want to keep Hopper

[KAB]

Just make sure you cancel after disconnecting coax and any other cat5, phone line.

If you are not connected, they will not cancel you.

 

[camo]

If you are not connected, they will not cancel you.

They have no choice on owned equipment. I went 3 years watching movies and series on owned receiver with cancelled service. I had tons of military channel and old series like Cops recorded and would watch almost nightly.
Now Directv receivers are different in several ways, they are all leased and even if you unsubscribe and they don't want it back you only have couple months. What activates the receiver lock is when menu doesn't update.

 

[Claude Greiner]

They also disabled the OTA tuner functions also without a subscription.

What I was told was that they didn't want customers in a non pay disconnect watching tv

 

[Claude Greiner]

And the other issue was customers not wanting to turn in DVR's until they finished watching the content.

I had one lady who cancelled dish, switched to Directv. I got charged back $300 for her DVR and wouldn't give it back to me for over a month while she watched all her recordings.

 

[dishrich]

If you are not connected, they will not cancel you.

Have NO clue where you came up with this from...see below, but I can assure you I've shut off many clients receivers that were NO longer connected to anything.

As far as disconnecting the coax cable before you cancel. That will work but it will still deactivate after about 30 days.

The way they authorize the smart cards is that the DVR and OTA functions are written to the smart card like a subscription to HBO.

Every programming subscription service has an expiration date associated with it. Every month the provider will send a refresh command to the box and extend out the expiration date for the programming.

Claude this NOT always true; I still have (2) HR20's that I shut off YEARS ago, as well as E* 501 & 721 DVR's. ALL of them continue to play their DVR'd recordings just fine, thank you.

 

[navychop]

To summarize, current receivers, Hoppers and many VIPs, will stop working if:

A certain varying time period has passed without a satellite connection re authorizing the unit.

If a hit from Dish says to die.

Or possibly other poison pills take effect.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Have NO clue where you came up with this from...see below, but I can assure you I've shut off many clients receivers that were NO longer connected to anything.



Claude this NOT always true; I still have (2) HR20's that I shut off YEARS ago, as well as E* 501 & 721 DVR's. ALL of them continue to play their DVR'd recordings just fine, thank you.

Yea years ago.

I don't know about Directv but Dish started doing this way after the 501 and 721 became obsolete.

You can't do that with anything on dish activated today.

 

[DishSubLA]

even when not connected, it eventually will stop working, as the authorization is not permanent
time frame varies

Yeah, the key is sent along the stream at various periods to keep the boxes "authorized." If the box does not receive the key, the STB eventually displays (sometimes after the "this can take up to 5 minutes message) an "unauthorized" message and a message to call Dish. Sometimes if you wait long enough, the the next instance of the key is received properly and the STB will magically come to life.

 

[DishSubLA]

You are VERY lucky.

Unless he disconnected it before canceling service, and DVR playback might function for a very long time, but I would think that even DVR playback would eventually be locked after some time. It's not like a TiVo box that even after cancelation will playback DVR recordings indefinately and still tune to OTA and allow Live viewing, but no EPG or any trick play and I thnk limited to manual recording, but without EPG metadata, that is pretty useless to see which recording is which.

 

[mdram]

are you sure about that?
I am watching a show that was recorded 2/21/16 on my H2 that was on an account deactivated almost a year ago.

I still have (2) HR20's that I shut off YEARS ago, as well as E* 501 & 721 DVR's. ALL of them continue to play their DVR'd recordings just fine, thank you.

all reports i have seen from dish or directv, other than these, are that the unit stops functioning anyplace from 5 min to a couple of weeks after the account is cancelled.

not saying its not possible, just way out of the norm.

 

[camo]

Shut the H3 off in January and still going strong. Can get to not only internal HD but external HD and all recorded programs. My 211K with 2 GB EHD never went off 3+ years. I need to emphasize this is owned equipment not leased.

 

[jeffmikey]

If anyone is still interested... I disconnected my generation 1 Hopper 6 hours after I made the cancellation request. Since I was a 5+ year customer, I'm assuming they "queued" my request for a time incase I had second thoughts. I didn't receive the notification from them via email until 3 business days later.

I was able to reassemble the Hopper on my work bench standalone, i.e. no coax or internet connections and connect it to my monitor. After it booted, it searched for satellite signal for 30 seconds or so, then threw up the generic complete signal loss window, check connections, etc. ...in the meantime you can watch recordings from your DVR.

So I was able to connect my analog to DV bridge (Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge, FW400) with an older iMac running iMovie 2009 and rip the recordings in real time. A little over a week now and the DVR isn't locked yet.

Whew!

 

[navychop]

Good luck!

 

[Yespage]

Good luck, though if you are using the RCA yellow, this effort may have limited benefits (though I don't know if component is available on the Hopper 1).

 

[jeffmikey]

Yes, using the analog RCA out methods, I'm limited to 4:3 (720x540) output. I'm not sure if 720x540 is an accepted, universal resolution. It seems to render like 640x480 once loaded onto my Plex Server. It's totally acceptable for most of the content I'm after on this DVR as this matches up with the original 4:3 content. Looks good on most iPads (4:3)