Hi there:

I have a friend who signed up with Bell ExpressVu in 2000.

He was told at the time that he was allowed up to 8 ACTIVE receivers per account.

This was a pretty important point at the time because his house was being renovated and it would eventually need a receiver in at LEAST 8 rooms.

Until recently he has only employed 2 receivers.

Now that the house is finished being renovated we had 8 room's setup with TV's.
We had a customer installer do the wiring so that all rooms could receiver Bell (Some rooms were even setup for dual-tuner inputs, so 8 rooms with 11 total Bell coaxial outlets were setup).

Now when we called Bell to activate the 6 additional receivers they said 6 TOTAL ACTIVE RECEIVERS was the limit we could put on per account.

I told the rep what my friend was told in 2000 about the 8 receiver limit to no avail.

My friend bought 6 additional receivers (for 8 total) and upgraded his programming to like $140 a month. He even plans on ordering a TON of HD-PPV's, but is now extremely dissatisfied about being told he has to open up a SECOND account and pay double his current cable bill in order to support 2 additional receivers. (for 8 total).

Any suggestions on how to get around the 6 (Active) receiver limit?

Thanks.

There is no way around it... It is Bell's policy!

Back in time, when Express Vu started they let some client have 7-8 receivers. When they decided they didn't want their clients to have more than 6 receivers the privileges was "grandfathered" to certain clients that had 7-8 receivers and were threathening to leave. This represent a very thinny % of Bell's clients. For those who didn't complain new rule applies

The only solution I see for your friend is to re-sale the receiver he bought and getting dual tuner, which is good for 2 TV's, but is still considered as ONE receiver for Bell's records. Possibility of 12 rooms hooked on BellTV on oe account.

Also note that since he has more than 3 receivers (which are propably not all hooked up to a telephone line) and espcially that he has that expensive programmin package, he is more likely to get called by the MRVP (also called SAT team) to "verify" his receivers. MRVP is there to verify that client are not account sharing. If your friend ignore their calls or refuse to do the "verification" they will end up cutting his service on some of his receivers, until he makes the "verification"

I used Videotron in the past and I think they are also limiting the numbers of receiver per account...

If you write to the Bell Executive office, they may allow you to have more than six active receivers. They did for me as noted in my profile. An installer had to come out to install the 9200 that was the last to be added to my account and he could see that it was obvious I had all units in use and was not account sharing.

I have 6 receivers but 9 Tuners on my account right now, that might be a way to do it as well. Just go for a Dual Tuner HD PVR (9242/9200) and add it in place of 2 regular receivers.

Only problem is Bell doesn't sell/rent dual tuner/two TV output receivers any more (althought one retailer was still selling 9242s as recently as last month). If you can get them, as noted above it means you can have up to 12 TVs connected and displaying different channels (although only 6 will be HD - TV2 output on dual tuners is SD only).

If you want 8 HD feeds, then you can feed two HD tvs off of a single HD receiver by connecting (for e.g.) one TV with the component out and one with the HDMI out. Both TVs connected this way will have to watch the same channel, but unless you're going to have all 8 TVs on at the same time with every one tuned to a different HD channel, this would solve the problem.

I know a retailer with 2 Pallets of 9200's, so the Dual Tuner HD PVR's are still around. And at $160, I think for a new Customer, its not a bad deal.

Regardless, the limit is 6 receivers unless as noted by Dosborne, you contact the executive office.

Since the question has been answered here and in many other threads, I am closing to avoid any confusion. If the six receiver policy changes then we will be sure to post a new thread!