I have a basic Comcast digital starter cable package.
Now, my brother has the same Comcast cable package at his house 5 miles away. I took one of my brother's working DC50x boxes from his house and connected it to my TVs. It worked fine. I did not have to activate it or re-activate it. The picture immediately appeared and the remote works fine.
My questions are this: What exactly does a DC50x do? Without it, when I run a scan for channels, my TV says the channels are "scrambled". The TV finds many channels and sets them into the menu. But there is no picture when you tune to the channels. So it seems the DC50x must decode or decrypt the signal. Is that accurate?
Secondly, I have an old Samsung cable box with a QAM tuner. The Samsung used to work but now when channel scanning, the Samsung will "recognize" the channels but says "scrambled". So again, the DC50x must decode the signal. It is not just downgrading the signal but it also must decoding it so the TV can process it. Correct?
Now, these DC50x boxes are for sale on eBay. Does anyone know for sure if you try to activate a purchased box whether it will work? Comcast has a website to activate these devices directly over the internet. Does anyone know if you have to put in the serial number of the DC50x? I suspect if you do have to put in a serial number and it was purchased on eBay (or more appropriately, not given to me directly by Comcast), the Comcast system would say (in a nutshell), "We are not activating that device, it is unauthorized." I would like someone to answer this question who really tried it as opposed to someone who just says, "They won't do it." Please respond if you have actually tried it; not if you have only heard that it won't work.
Finally, getting back to my brother's box, it seems the DC50X is not particular to a specific location or signal. Again, my brother's activated DC50X works at my house. It does not "recognize" my cable signal as different from his. So, if a DC50x box was purchased on eBay, it seems to reason that if the DC50x was ALREADY ACTIVATED by the seller, installing it in my home would not be a problem. It may be a problem later if it became deactivated due to something like an extended power outage. Thoughts?
Any comments are appreciated. Also if this has been dealt with in another thread, please direct me to that. Thx and Regards.
↧