Ah, bugger. Well, a paperweight it is then.
Shame it can't be modded or anything — seems a waste putting it in a box in the cellar. At least I can build a PC-based PVR with the money I'll saving by ditching Bell.
Thanks for the reply,
k.
Hope it's not too late for "theboyk" to help you. By the way, I assume your last name is BOYKO --- have a friend with the same.
Hope you haven't gotten rid of your 9242.
I have a Bell 9242 Receiver, and can confirm from my experience over the last few days of cancelling my Bell subscription that the 9242 still works as a PVR for OTA and you can still fast forward, pause, rewind live tv and use PIP.
I believe all you need is to maintain a satellite feed (I.e. keep the coax cables plugged into the back of the 9242 and leave your dish up) A subscription is NOT necessary. I repeat, a subscription is NOT necessary.
However, be warned:
1. The ATSC (OTA) tuner in the 9242 is only a single tuner, meaning you can only record one channel at a time (and watch that same channel), unlike the magnificent dual tuner experience for the satelite feed (where you could record 2 channels simultaneously and even watch a 3rd recorded program). An improvement / work around, in my opinion is to split your OTA signal with an appropriate splitter (can be had for >$10), pipe one feed into the 9242 and the 2nd into the ATSC tuner of any HDTV and voila - watch one program on your TV while recording another on the 9242. Furthermore, most TVs ATSC tuners allow you to pick up analog signals (although you may not care as the quality of digital is so much better)
2. The EPG in the 9242 does not obtain any information (no program name, no information, etc). The only thing you get is the channel numbers and non-descript text such as "digital info" or something like that (too lazy to go see exactly what it says at the moment) that goes on for infinity (i.e. there are no discrete blocks of 1 hour or 2 hour times for the shows.
3. You still can record shows, but only use it with a timer set, so you need to know when the show are being broadcast and where they are. You can find such information on the internet by doing a quick google.
Personally, I explored putting together a low cost computer as PVR and it pretty hard to do what I want to do without shelling out $600 (including HST) --- (i.e. desktop computer, HDMI output, wireless keyboard and mouse, dual tuner card like the Hauppage 2250 or the HDHomerun --the only two I've found that are worth considering) and I read all the issues on forums and seems more trouble than its worth. The 9242 has a quick startup and is virtually wife - kids proof
