What to do with old FIOS DVR? Can I hack it into an OTA DVR?

B

Burticus

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Nov 7, 2005
Messages
5,099
We gave up on Frontier (Verizon) FIOS TV service a while back, and when I asked what to do with the DVR they said "e-waste it". I just today pulled it out of the AV stack and was just wondering if there was any real way to turn it into an OTA HD DVR or some other useful device.... it basically is a computer with a tuner and a hard drive. Google wasn't much help, and I hate to just throw it in the trash.

Can anything useful be done with these things? Motorola qip 7216.

If not, anyone want it for cost of shipping?
 
If you can't find any concrete way to re-use the whole device, that drive is a standard SATA drive. Depending on the size it can be re-used. But as Tivo does, it may have a proprietary format. So if you pull it out, and then want to put it back in after you've used it for something else, it may not work.
 
That has lots of proprietary stuff on it. As a whole you will not find a use for it, but you may be able to re use the sata drive in it as OfaceSIG said, if there is not encryption.
 
Thanks. Yeah I know it's a sata drive but considering how old it is, probably not very big or worth the effort.
 
I don't really know how FIOS tv worked, but most likely the tuner in that thing either can't or won't tune OTA channels. If FIOS is IPTV, well OTA isn't. If FIOS is some fiber -> coax modulator thing and the FIOS box is pretty close to a cable box? OTA uses a different channel mapping, and usually a different channel encoding, and even if the tuner is capable, the software probably won't. Some of the Satellite TV boxes can augment satellite with an OTA antenna for locals, but I really don't think FIOS would have ever done that, unless they were running cobranded satellite tv rather than TV over Fiber? (I know ATT did that sometimes)
 
toast0 said:
I don't really know how FIOS tv worked, but most likely the tuner in that thing either can't or won't tune OTA channels. If FIOS is IPTV, well OTA isn't. If FIOS is some fiber -> coax modulator thing and the FIOS box is pretty close to a cable box? OTA uses a different channel mapping, and usually a different channel encoding, and even if the tuner is capable, the software probably won't. Some of the Satellite TV boxes can augment satellite with an OTA antenna for locals, but I really don't think FIOS would have ever done that, unless they were running cobranded satellite tv rather than TV over Fiber? (I know ATT did that sometimes)
Click to expand...
It's coax. For shits and grins I plugged an antenna into it but nope. Without that Fios signal nada. Which is stupid, bc the same coax the box used would transmit basic cable to my other TVs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top