Speaking of satellite converter boxes.....

DTV can do an instant binary edit/write to the card, but not without a
phone line connected. IIRC.

Up to the death of HU cards and the early P5 card a Satellite had no
beariing on an "audit".

--
Oren

"The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!"

Posted by Meat Plow on October 13, 2007, 11:22 pm

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:10:53 -0700, Oren wrote:

> wrote:

>>>I have a friend that is splitting his subscription 3 ways.

>>>

>>> Direct TV is furnishing him the full package. It runs around 110$ a

>>> month last time we talked about it. Plus he pays $5x3 for the extra

>>> boxes.

>>>

>>> He has 2 of the boxes in his house and one at his parents house and

>>> one at his wife's parents house. 3 families split 125 and get

>>> everything.

>>>

>>This is old news to satellite providers. Satellite TV companies do

>>unannounced phone audits of customers with multiple boxes; if you don't

>>respond to the audit they shut down your service; if you can't provide data

>>on all of your boxes they can (will!) stop service to the suspect units --

>>and you'll never get them back onto the same base plan again.

>>Sounds like a good way to start up intra-family squabbles.

> DTV can do an instant binary edit/write to the card, but not without a

> phone line connected. IIRC.

They can download anything they want into your DTV rx via the sat link. I
haven't had mine hooked up to a phone in years. The DTV version of Tivo
gets all updates from the sat. Back when a friend was pirating DTV his
cards to the hit without a landline hooked up.

Posted by Mark Lloyd on October 13, 2007, 11:23 pm

wrote:

>>I have a friend that is splitting his subscription 3 ways.

>> Direct TV is furnishing him the full package. It runs around 110$ a

>> month last time we talked about it. Plus he pays $5x3 for the extra

>> boxes.

>> He has 2 of the boxes in his house and one at his parents house and

>> one at his wife's parents house. 3 families split 125 and get

>> everything.

>This is old news to satellite providers. Satellite TV companies do

>unannounced phone audits of customers with multiple boxes; if you don't

>respond to the audit they shut down your service; if you can't provide data

>on all of your boxes they can (will!) stop service to the suspect units --

>and you'll never get them back onto the same base plan again.

I've had 2 receivers for at least 4 years. They were never connected
to a phoneline during that time, and have had no problems.

>Sounds like a good way to start up intra-family squabbles.

--
73 days until the winter solstice celebration

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligable. Early
in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Posted by Jeff Dieterle on October 14, 2007, 11:07 am

I've had DTV for 10 years and never hooked up to phone line after the first
year. Nearby lighting strikes roasted the modem in the receiver so I never
bothered to connect the phone line after that. Never been phone audited and
order ppv through their web sight.
What is the phone audit all about anyway, are you saying you get a call from
DTV wanting s/n's from your receivers?

> wrote:

>>>I have a friend that is splitting his subscription 3 ways.

>>>

>>> Direct TV is furnishing him the full package. It runs around 110$ a

>>> month last time we talked about it. Plus he pays $5x3 for the extra

>>> boxes.

>>>

>>> He has 2 of the boxes in his house and one at his parents house and

>>> one at his wife's parents house. 3 families split 125 and get

>>> everything.

>>>

>>This is old news to satellite providers. Satellite TV companies do

>>unannounced phone audits of customers with multiple boxes; if you don't

>>respond to the audit they shut down your service; if you can't provide

>>data

>>on all of your boxes they can (will!) stop service to the suspect units --

>>and you'll never get them back onto the same base plan again.

> I've had 2 receivers for at least 4 years. They were never connected

> to a phoneline during that time, and have had no problems.

>>Sounds like a good way to start up intra-family squabbles.

> --

> 73 days until the winter solstice celebration

> Mark Lloyd

> http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

> "I have found Christian dogma unintelligable. Early

> in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

> -- Benjamin Franklin

Posted by JimR on October 16, 2007, 10:20 pm

[snip]

> What is the phone audit all about anyway, are you saying you get a call

> from DTV wanting s/n's from your receivers?

Yes -- we have four receivers (Living Room, 2 Bedrooms, hobby room), and
about two months after installation we got a call auditing our use of the
receivers, asking for a couple of code numbers out of the software for each
receiver. This required going to each room, turning on the system and
getting setup info on the screen. Being careful and not sure who was
actually calling, I wouldn't answer their questions and asked for their
phone number. Then I called Dish TV (my provider) but their customer
service wasn't aware of what was happening (so I didn't return the auditer's
phone call). Two days later my satellite service was shut off, even though
I was paid up. I called CS again, they transferred me to the audit company,
and we went through our system receiver by receiver. They told me at the
time that they would shut down any receivers that couldn't be audited and
would start charging a monthly fee to have them reinstated. Within an hour
of the end of the audit satellite service was restored.

The audit was not particularly friendly (I won't go into details, but they
appeared to be starting from the position that I was cheating on them by
having receivers spread out in several houses.) There have been a few times
when I have seriously considered terminating the Dish TV service, and this
was one of those time. If I hadn't had a lot of my money already tied up by
purchasing the Dish receivers, I probably would have moved to Direct TV at
that time. I did make a formal complaint to Dish TV Customer Service about
this procedure, and it hasn't happened to me since.

It may be that if you only have two receivers you're a less visible
target -- certainly someone with four receivers is in the top few % of their
business and anyone trying to get away with having receivers in multiple
houses is likely to have four or more receivers, so we were an obvious
target --

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