Third Party DVR with Eastlink
Hi everyone.
I'm really hoping someone can help me out.
In December I purchased 2 DVRs from eBay, with the intention of replacing my rental and gifting one to my father-in-law, who is very deserving of it. They were both the Motolola DCT 6416 III.
The seller on eBay has a 100% rating, with over 400 sales, and stands behind his product. I'm not sure what process he uses for picking these units up, but he gets them from a variety of sources including when Rogers or another big outfit buys up a smaller provider... the one I'm working with now used to be with Aurora Cable before Rogers bought them out and had some excess equipment.
I plugged the first one in, and it dutifully ran through the firmware download and then sat there and stared at me with a "0" on it. I called Eastlink to get them to activate it and they ran through the data collection routine and said that we were good to go, and that they could now "see" the machine on my account. They then attempted to send an "init" string to get it up and running.
No dice. The machine would not accept that bit of communication, despite having properly downloaded the firmware. I called them numerous times, and they were actually decent enough to send a tech out to my place, not once by twice. Nobody could get it to work.
The seller and I talked it through, and he told me he has had numerous issues getting third party machines to work with Eastlink.
I plugged the second unit in, and Presto... it downloaded the firmware, cycled its power, and worked like a charm. I gave it away for Christmas, as planned.
So strike one.
I finally sent that unit back, and received a second unit back... the seller assured me it was from the same source as the first one and should work.
Nope. Same exact problem. I even moved the unit right over to the home cable source, avoiding any connections, and did the download there. The tech guy on the phone stated that the machine was not receiving the init signal.
I'm baffled. The seller said he only has problems with Eastlink, and that he's soon going to stop selling units to people using Eastlink.
Help.
I'm all ears...
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
Dave