http://www.motorola.com/business/US-EN/DCH6416_US-EN.do?vgnextoid=8f2449857f517110VgnVCM1000008406b0 0aRCRD

My family has one of these left over after switching cable companies, so does anyone know what I could do with it, other than just take out the hard drive? I was wondering if I could hookup the computer to it to watch tv, and also stream it through www.orb.com to my appartment, free tv. I'm not sure but it does have usb ports and an ethernet port along with the 160gig harddrive, so it seems more like a pc to me. Usb ports for keyboard and mouse, HDMI cable for tv. Only thing missing would be the processor, ha.

Any ideas?

Since RDP locked your thread, I've started a new one with a reply in it. Not trying to be a pain here RDP, but I'm not a huge fan of your moderation techniques here...

Cable boxes are quite specialised machines with very little you can do to them without changing the firmware - I did a quick google-hunt with no luck on this front. Some have a service menu where you can change some settings though., but nothing normally incredibly useful.

Have you tried putting things in the USB port and seeing what happens? Memory sticks, keyboards, mice, etc. Hook it up to a network and see what you can see from other computers.

I don't want to step on any toes here but I found this -

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_use_a_Motorola_DVR

Very interesting - thanks for that. ;)

I plugged the Ethernet network port into the router that the new receiver is connected to, hooked it up to the tv, and when i would switch channels or pressed guide it would say this feature or this channel will be available shortly, so i let it stay on for about half an hour, in which time nothing had changed. But the same thing happens when I don't plug in the Ethernet cable, and the way this motorola box was hooked up before was through a (UHF/VHF) TV Antenna cable.

I haven't tried any of the ports because I dont think any peripherals would be recognized. But i did notice that it has a SATA cable input, where I'm thinking about attaching a hard drive, which the box could maybe boot from? Not sure

From reading SWATFAG's link I'm thinking the software is the problem, seeing as how it was from a different provider, therefore not compatible with the new signal. I guess if that were the case i would be able to plug in a memory stick with the needed software on it to install into the motorola.

I've merged the threads.

It's retarded to have one thread carrying on from another locked one.

-deus-

Thanks deus.



It's retarded to have one thread carrying on from another locked one.
Exactly what I was thinking...

So a new idea, if i were to hook my computer to the motorola through a usb cable, would I be able to access the motorola's hard drive? or be able to get any signal from it to my computer? I would try this, but I have no regular usb cables

as far as I know that box is worthless without a subscription to something like cable tv, and even they they wont let you use your box.