Before I throw anything I out I remove all screws, nuts, washers, fans, switches, motors, fuses, power cables, and rubber feet, and it does come in handy. I fixed an oil pump on a scooter with nuts from a burned out hotplate... HHD are constantly down-cycled until they end up ad emergency signalling mirrors and the HDD screws are very useful if you do a lot of laptop repairs. I find such recycling very satisfying.
Good job. I like to take the drives and such from them too. We also changed providers and ended up with several of them. Free parts are always a good thing!
Those cable boxes always have very decent power supplies. That's the second thing after the HDD I always scrap from those, especially if it is a separate module like in your case. It's usually 100-150W with 12V, 5V and 3.3V, nice socket with pass-through and EMI filter if lucky. Cisco boxes are my favorite, most I've seen with 500GB HD and also 4 GB RAM. And I'm sending you a security bit set, it's a shame not to have one.
Some of these boxes you have to use an ATA utility and do an ATA format before any system will recognize it. I have been hit and miss with that. Sometimes the machine will see the drive and allow you to create partitions and format it, but others actually "lock" the drive with an ATA lock and it executes no commands until unlocked. only an ATA format gets around that, which used to be the old school LLF format signal. HP does this with their goofy wide format printers.
Those batteries keep the XC chip alive which house your Seed and Category keys for the DCII system. Once that battery is out of the circuit, goodbye keys. The seed keys ar eneeded to decrypt the category keys, and then ultimately the program keys. The XC chip is a proprietary IC which contains a 6805 or maybe even a 68HC11 compatible ALU. the DCII system was recently hacked by a fellow Canadian, but because of the MPEG2 phaseout, it makes it irrelevant as the newer systems require CableCARDs that are multistream which is a different technology. They also ditched the battery in favor of a much newer secure microcontroller such as the SLE88 and newer. The cool thing about the early DCII systems like that one, there are no expire dates or tiers. Just category keys for channel block program key decryption. As long as you had the current category keys, you can decrypt the entire system with only a handful of keys. So if you modified the receiver firmware to "turn itself back on" after being disconnected, it would continue to get whatever it was subscribed to indefinitely until they rotated the category keys since your seed keys arnt active in the system.
I have a question for you - when Verizon setup our TV cable service it included one year of HBO. But after one year I called and tried to cancel HBO. But it never went away and I had it for the last 10 years for free. I wonder if the installation tech somehow enabled HBO permanently on my DVR?
There is a stack of old cable boxes at my local thrift store... I'll peek through the vent slots and see if any have drives inside! Thanks for the idea!
Don't try this in America! Even if your cable box is completely obsolete and at the end of its service life, the cable company will charge you many hundreds of dollars in non-returned equipment fees if you don't return it. They get to write off the depreciated value of their equipment on their corporate taxes, but will charge you full original value if they don't get it back. It doesn't matter that the box is destined to go to the landfill.
Looks like that second box has got some Firewire connections on the back? Wonder what those are for. Because usually for TVs it's HDMI or analogue RCA type connections.
Michael Turner expansion that probably never got used but is on the boxes because it’s cheaper to make Them all the same and just disable in firmware accordingly for each provider I have cable boxes with Ethernet ports, but don’t do anything.....
6:43 those security screws were used on the Super NES, Nintendo 64, and Gamecube game consoles. Due to the popularity of modding these consoles the bits to open them are widely available for cheap. They would have been better off with a security torx, tri wing, or a spanner head.
They will have hours on them, but no worse than your computer drive. They only spin when recording / playing and watching TV. I have a old Bell HD pvr that can no longer be subbed but it is the model (9200) that has the ATSC tuner in it and I use it for off air use. I have had that unit since 2003 and it still works fine, and that box is never turned off. Those DVR hard drives last a long, long time. Much longer than computer drives because theya re not seeking all over the place. They play huge files one after another. About the only thing that will stop them is when the bearings fail. 2 bucks for a hard drive is a good deal in my books. I use them to store my source files for my youtube videos, and archive copies after I have uploaded and no longer want them on the PC. Just drop them in a hard drive dock and go.
What might one need to do to repurpose an obsolete Shaw PVR to record video without the service? Not cable TV or anything, just recording video in general
Can't be done. The reason is encryption. The stream that is sent to the cable box is encrypted and is only decrypted as it is sent to the tv. This is why once you cancel your service the programs you had recorded are no longer playable. For that matter if you change the name on the account the existing recordings are not playable. I run into this all the time at work. Account changes from one party to the spouce because they can sign up as a new customer and get new customer pricing. They roll a truck usually to make sure the order goes through because many times something breaks. Order drops and old account is canceled and new account starts. The first thing they bitch about is their recordings that they had saved and not being able to play them. Sorry their gone. They might still be on the hard drive but all they can do is delete them. Decrypt keys have changed and no way to get them back.
Are these drives really the "better" models? Set top boxes are usually designed to be thrown into a giant shredder after a year or two ;) E-waste companies that I've seen get them even brand new when cable operator introduces a new model and use excavators to deal with them.
this is a good idea for recycling some parts. I have several 160GB HD drives they are slower but more reliable IMO. I do think they usually want their old units back but F%^'em lol edit - Seen a 320GB but it was toast from lightening and a couple 500GB but they were IDE connections?! i thought was weird for a 2012-13 model. but they work on my retro PCs. Ive even save a couple tops n bottoms that were thick flat metal or heavy acrylic/plastic for projects down the road. i am not a pack rat ! lol
I know at work we want our old units back. These are from the competition so I don't care. Neighbour gave them to me to recycle and that is exactly what I did. Reuse the hard drive and fan, recycle the rest.
ya my friends are always enabling me with their old equipment. Ive seen some DSS boxes that used stainless steal on the bottom chassis. those are always nice to find.!
Well you can also take that power supply. I wonder if that stuff can be reused without a hard drivers for media play purposes something like for playing a mp3's from the usb or playing mpeg videos. Also take that sata cable :)
Test the unit first. I had a DVR unit I wanted to repurpose the PSU + hard drive from, turns out the PSU wasn't able to power larger capacity drives at all, and the hard drive was on it's last legs.
Good because you arnt getting them. Incidentally when powered down drives are good for minimum 40g impact. The amount of impact I put on them perhaps .1g. I could drop these drives 4 feet and they would be fine if they were not spinning.
Wouldn't it be a DVR? I had one but sent it back, they charged extra for those a month. I have old satellite receivers , but they don't have hard drives.
Yes this was a DVR. The cable company changed from MPG2 to MPG4 encoding so all the old boxes were rendered obsolete and people were told to recycle them.
I got a Verizon FiOS HD DVR from a yard sale for $3 and it had a 1TB drive in it. when I get them I look for Hard Drive and parts like Capacitor some of them use Nichicon, Rubycon, Panasonic caps, and I will grab if I can some ports also, and even if in good condition the Fans.
Not just the HDD and Cooling fan, but also, whenever I see the power supply that is not just useless, but I can salvage these components from power supply because, I may never know when I need this. =)
Never say no to a freebie hard drive - especially if it works and/or has no bad sectors. Formatting a cable box HDD to suit a Windows OS is easy. There are a lot of ways to do this - one of them is with a CD-Rom partitioning/formatting program (e.g. D-Ban, or PartitionWizard). Once the drive is wiped and formatted for PC, it's ready to use.
Hey free storage has to be good, they are often not a fast drive but for storage who cares :-D I have kept the psu's from bigger units, a parts pcb. Also old pc power supplys to raid for bits.
Speaking of the Cable Box, the Directv satellite box what I got them is from the junk yard and it's no longer capable of producing the video because they upgraded to a new HD video by AT&T, and when I opened the case, and all behold, I got a 1 TB HDD (ha ha ha), it's a Seagate Video ST1000VM002 1 TB HDD and format to exFat partition to the HDD and make it slot of space for me to store some video!
....we need to send you a set of "Security Bits" to use instead of a side cutter...hehehehe..... The cable boxes in the UK also use 160Gb HD but not the Tivo box stores everything on the server no HD inside..... The Tivo box made cheap as possible.
After all your years of working on electronic "stuff", why don't you have a full set of 1/4" hex bits and all the security Torx/etc ones. I bought my first set back in like 1995. They are so cheap on eBay/Amazon/etc.
I have torx security bits just not this type. When I worked full time on electronics I had more special tools. I only managed to steal s few like the little blue Walkman screwdriver when I left.
Shows what you know about hard drives. They are only really delicate when they are spinning. When they are turned off the heads are parked and lifted away from the platter, thus they can handle quite a bump and they work fine. I have dropped bare drives off the desk and they generally survive quite nicely unless it lands on the edge connector and breaks it.
@@12voltvids I know a lot of laptops use an accelerometer sensor so that if it detects is being dropped it will park the hard drive for this exact reason!!
I have 2 , 500 GB is enough , I prefer less GB as they are more robust . Using them with windows Vista , having 5 back ups here , just swop hard drives if one fails. 500 GB ? good for storage , too big for a main windows drive as I do not store any vids or music on main drive so you can imagine how light this PC is with less on it . I also use old laptop hard drives on this thing I am on right now , they rev faster . I only use PC for internet browsing , not for music player obversely , better off using Hi Fi for that . You can imagine how much free space I have on this thing . These old little XP drivers are the BEST for reliability . so there lol
You know even Harbor Freight carries a cheap set of security bits......I mean if your gonna go through the trouble of making a youtube video, at least have the proper tools needed for the project...... i'm just saying
It took me 2 minutes to open this. Don't see enough stuff with security bits to bother. Sure the local auto parts store carries them as well, but I really don't have a need. I have a set of torx security bits as those are the more common ones.
yup.. another junk collector.. i thought he was going to do something useful with the boxes.... He doesn't have a set of security drivers? I thought everyone that worked on things has a set.. Well now I am able to take HDD's out of cable boxes..
Why would I need a set of security bits? I don't service or hack these things I have had perhaps 5 or 6 given to me that I pulled the hard drive and then sent the rest of it to the recycle bin. I don't collect junk. I collect antique radios and small CRT tv / monitors. Most of the vintage audio stuff I work on are clients pieces, and when I get given vintage equipment I overhaul and sell.
You are trashing a lot of good parts, power supply in them are awesome for projects, mother board has useful components as well like voltage regulators ext. ??
Before I throw anything I out I remove all screws, nuts, washers, fans, switches, motors, fuses, power cables, and rubber feet, and it does come in handy. I fixed an oil pump on a scooter with nuts from a burned out hotplate... HHD are constantly down-cycled until they end up ad emergency signalling mirrors and the HDD screws are very useful if you do a lot of laptop repairs. I find such recycling very satisfying.
Good job. I like to take the drives and such from them too. We also changed providers and ended up with several of them. Free parts are always a good thing!
Those cable boxes always have very decent power supplies. That's the second thing after the HDD I always scrap from those, especially if it is a separate module like in your case. It's usually 100-150W with 12V, 5V and 3.3V, nice socket with pass-through and EMI filter if lucky. Cisco boxes are my favorite, most I've seen with 500GB HD and also 4 GB RAM.
And I'm sending you a security bit set, it's a shame not to have one.
I'll grab the psu before I scrap the rest.
Those security bits are also called game bits
My cable distribution here in Tennessee (Charter) still uses these very same boxes to this day.
Same in Ecuador
I always keep the heat sinks. They come in real handy when building something.
I would have grabbed the SATA cables too.
Got tons of those.
Some of these boxes you have to use an ATA utility and do an ATA format before any system will recognize it. I have been hit and miss with that. Sometimes the machine will see the drive and allow you to create partitions and format it, but others actually "lock" the drive with an ATA lock and it executes no commands until unlocked. only an ATA format gets around that, which used to be the old school LLF format signal. HP does this with their goofy wide format printers.
I took a 500 gb hard drive out of a skyhd box "satalite" about 3 years ago and put it in my pc running Windows 7 and it is still working fine.
Trick here, those inside out torx screws can be undone using "pin drive" bits which have 2 square pins.
Those batteries keep the XC chip alive which house your Seed and Category keys for the DCII system. Once that battery is out of the circuit, goodbye keys. The seed keys ar eneeded to decrypt the category keys, and then ultimately the program keys. The XC chip is a proprietary IC which contains a 6805 or maybe even a 68HC11 compatible ALU. the DCII system was recently hacked by a fellow Canadian, but because of the MPEG2 phaseout, it makes it irrelevant as the newer systems require CableCARDs that are multistream which is a different technology. They also ditched the battery in favor of a much newer secure microcontroller such as the SLE88 and newer. The cool thing about the early DCII systems like that one, there are no expire dates or tiers. Just category keys for channel block program key decryption. As long as you had the current category keys, you can decrypt the entire system with only a handful of keys. So if you modified the receiver firmware to "turn itself back on" after being disconnected, it would continue to get whatever it was subscribed to indefinitely until they rotated the category keys since your seed keys arnt active in the system.
I have a question for you - when Verizon setup our TV cable service it included one year of HBO. But after one year I called and tried to cancel HBO. But it never went away and I had it for the last 10 years for free. I wonder if the installation tech somehow enabled HBO permanently on my DVR?
Nice, I have been thinking of a NAS for a while, a good place to source them from!
you could probably run linux on these
Its SOC. The OS isnt on the hardrive
There is a stack of old cable boxes at my local thrift store... I'll peek through the vent slots and see if any have drives inside! Thanks for the idea!
Don't try this in America! Even if your cable box is completely obsolete and at the end of its service life, the cable company will charge you many hundreds of dollars in non-returned equipment fees if you don't return it. They get to write off the depreciated value of their equipment on their corporate taxes, but will charge you full original value if they don't get it back. It doesn't matter that the box is destined to go to the landfill.
Looks like that second box has got some Firewire connections on the back? Wonder what those are for. Because usually for TVs it's HDMI or analogue RCA type connections.
Michael Turner expansion that probably never got used but is on the boxes because it’s cheaper to make Them all the same and just disable in firmware accordingly for each provider I have cable boxes with Ethernet ports, but don’t do anything.....
Right, our boxes for example have USB ports. Only good for charging your phone on, because they are disabled by firmware.
Nice score, you can't beat free.
6:43 those security screws were used on the Super NES, Nintendo 64, and Gamecube game consoles.
Due to the popularity of modding these consoles the bits to open them are widely available for cheap. They would have been better off with a security torx, tri wing, or a spanner head.
Because those security screws are made of steel, they might blunt your side cutters, since those were only ever meant to cut soft metal.
Well I was not cutting them, I was just using them to turn it the first turn so I could grab it with pliers.
@@12voltvids Even so, if there is any sort of pressure, it affects the metal.
They are garbage cutters anyway. I found them in the parking lot at work a few years ago.
Is there any other uses for these old boxes? For instance what can it do besides a modern smart TV digital tuner?
Nope that's why I pull the hard drive and recycle the rest.
Never thought to look for old cable boxes at the thrift store, eh the drives probably have high amounts of hours on them anyways....
They will have hours on them, but no worse than your computer drive. They only spin when recording / playing and watching TV. I have a old Bell HD pvr that can no longer be subbed but it is the model (9200) that has the ATSC tuner in it and I use it for off air use. I have had that unit since 2003 and it still works fine, and that box is never turned off. Those DVR hard drives last a long, long time. Much longer than computer drives because theya re not seeking all over the place. They play huge files one after another. About the only thing that will stop them is when the bearings fail.
2 bucks for a hard drive is a good deal in my books. I use them to store my source files for my youtube videos, and archive copies after I have uploaded and no longer want them on the PC. Just drop them in a hard drive dock and go.
I've had trouble formatting some 500 32gb Comcast and at&t drives...
Did you try using Linux to help you with that?
@@BloodAsp I'm not a Linux fan...
He just did a video on how to format these in windows 7, but I also suggest looking up GParted, It supports all brands and formats.
What might one need to do to repurpose an obsolete Shaw PVR to record video without the service? Not cable TV or anything, just recording video in general
Can't be done.
The reason is encryption. The stream that is sent to the cable box is encrypted and is only decrypted as it is sent to the tv. This is why once you cancel your service the programs you had recorded are no longer playable. For that matter if you change the name on the account the existing recordings are not playable. I run into this all the time at work. Account changes from one party to the spouce because they can sign up as a new customer and get new customer pricing. They roll a truck usually to make sure the order goes through because many times something breaks. Order drops and old account is canceled and new account starts. The first thing they bitch about is their recordings that they had saved and not being able to play them. Sorry their gone. They might still be on the hard drive but all they can do is delete them. Decrypt keys have changed and no way to get them back.
Are these drives really the "better" models? Set top boxes are usually designed to be thrown into a giant shredder after a year or two ;) E-waste companies that I've seen get them even brand new when cable operator introduces a new model and use excavators to deal with them.
this is a good idea for recycling some parts. I have several 160GB HD drives they are slower but more reliable IMO. I do think they usually want their old units back but F%^'em lol
edit - Seen a 320GB but it was toast from lightening and a couple 500GB but they were IDE connections?! i thought was weird for a 2012-13 model. but they work on my retro PCs. Ive even save a couple tops n bottoms that were thick flat metal or heavy acrylic/plastic for projects down the road. i am not a pack rat ! lol
I know at work we want our old units back. These are from the competition so I don't care. Neighbour gave them to me to recycle and that is exactly what I did. Reuse the hard drive and fan, recycle the rest.
ya my friends are always enabling me with their old equipment. Ive seen some DSS boxes that used stainless steal on the bottom chassis. those are always nice to find.!
Well you can also take that power supply. I wonder if that stuff can be reused without a hard drivers for media play purposes something like for playing a mp3's from the usb or playing mpeg videos. Also take that sata cable :)
Test the unit first.
I had a DVR unit I wanted to repurpose the PSU + hard drive from, turns out the PSU wasn't able to power larger capacity drives at all, and the hard drive was on it's last legs.
@@station240 You can always check S.M.A.R.T. on a hard drive to see are they healthy.
You must have worked on the crappy Bell satellite receiver box.i have a couple pvr's i need to change the diodes. will you be doing any vid's on those
I have not worked on satellite receivers nor do I have any interest in doing so.
I wouldn't want drives from this guy the way he handle those, damn.
Good because you arnt getting them. Incidentally when powered down drives are good for minimum 40g impact. The amount of impact I put on them perhaps .1g. I could drop these drives 4 feet and they would be fine if they were not spinning.
Wouldn't it be a DVR? I had one but sent it back, they charged extra for those a month. I have old satellite receivers , but they don't have hard drives.
Yes this was a DVR. The cable company changed from MPG2 to MPG4 encoding so all the old boxes were rendered obsolete and people were told to recycle them.
I got a Verizon FiOS HD DVR from a yard sale for $3 and it had a 1TB drive in it. when I get them I look for Hard Drive and parts like Capacitor some of them use Nichicon, Rubycon, Panasonic caps, and I will grab if I can some ports also, and even if in good condition the Fans.
is it possible to activate a used set top box after you replaced the cable card?
Could you possibly been harder throwing those drives around?
Not just the HDD and Cooling fan, but also, whenever I see the power supply that is not just useless, but I can salvage these components from power supply because, I may never know when I need this. =)
the last three cable boxes i picked up from value village all had 1TB drives
Yes I picked up a few for 3.00 each and they had 1tb drives in them.
Never say no to a freebie hard drive - especially if it works and/or has no bad sectors. Formatting a cable box HDD to suit a Windows OS is easy. There are a lot of ways to do this - one of them is with a CD-Rom partitioning/formatting program (e.g. D-Ban, or PartitionWizard). Once the drive is wiped and formatted for PC, it's ready to use.
I will keep a power supply too.
Can I use them w/o the service contract to watch OTA?
No
@@12voltvids I figured, Got power supply, SATA HD out of it and some screws. Thanks
My hard drive was a 3.5 inch 500 gig hard drive so not bad
Dave, make sure to check the drives with crystaldisk
That program caused me many problems.
Hey free storage has to be good, they are often not a fast drive but for storage who cares :-D
I have kept the psu's from bigger units, a parts pcb.
Also old pc power supplys to raid for bits.
I know someone on youtube who cuts these cable boxes up and mounts laptop motherboards inside of them and uses them as HTPC boxes
Some cable boxs can connect to a xbox one
What if they have no hard drives or fans?
Well the hard drive. Power supply and fan is about the only thing that is useful for me. If they are not a pvr type then they have no value.
@@12voltvids I hardly ever see the Pvt ones here. You scored and I take the PSU.
Save the SATA cables, also.
Check princess auto for the security bits, they should have them. If not try ebay... They'll be a couple bucks for a big 50 piece set or something.
Speaking of the Cable Box, the Directv satellite box what I got them is from the junk yard and it's no longer capable of producing the video because they upgraded to a new HD video by AT&T, and when I opened the case, and all behold, I got a 1 TB HDD (ha ha ha), it's a Seagate Video ST1000VM002 1 TB HDD and format to exFat partition to the HDD and make it slot of space for me to store some video!
Those security screws are a pain. On stuff i dont care about i just drill them out
....we need to send you a set of "Security Bits" to use instead of a side cutter...hehehehe..... The cable boxes in the UK also use 160Gb HD but not the Tivo box stores everything on the server no HD inside..... The Tivo box made cheap as possible.
After all your years of working on electronic "stuff", why don't you have a full set of 1/4" hex bits and all the security Torx/etc ones. I bought my first set back in like 1995. They are so cheap on eBay/Amazon/etc.
I have torx security bits just not this type. When I worked full time on electronics I had more special tools. I only managed to steal s few like the little blue Walkman screwdriver when I left.
Just opened one I was about to ewaste and OMG, 500GB drive. I can use that.
last box i scrapped i took the hdd, psu battery,, the rest of it was bad, shorted, leaky etc so it was dropped off at the recycler place
I collect old set top boxes.
Keep slamming them on the table like that and you won't have scored nice hard drives for long. Lol
Shows what you know about hard drives. They are only really delicate when they are spinning. When they are turned off the heads are parked and lifted away from the platter, thus they can handle quite a bump and they work fine. I have dropped bare drives off the desk and they generally survive quite nicely unless it lands on the edge connector and breaks it.
@@12voltvids I know a lot of laptops use an accelerometer sensor so that if it detects is being dropped it will park the hard drive for this exact reason!!
Precicely.
The long screw driver, a man thing, right ?
No, it just happens to the the correct size. This is a JIS head, not a philips.
Put an android smart TV or Raspberry Pi with retro games in there
I like to see what kind of videos they recorded what they liked
Content will be encrypted and in a non standard format. Will do a video showing these drives formatted with win7 tonight.
I have 2 , 500 GB is enough , I prefer less GB as they are more robust .
Using them with windows Vista , having 5 back ups here , just swop hard drives if one fails.
500 GB ? good for storage , too big for a main windows drive as I do not store any vids or music on main drive so you can imagine how light this PC is with less on it .
I also use old laptop hard drives on this thing I am on right now , they rev faster .
I only use PC for internet browsing , not for music player obversely , better off using Hi Fi for that .
You can imagine how much free space I have on this thing .
These old little XP drivers are the BEST for reliability . so there lol
You know even Harbor Freight carries a cheap set of security bits......I mean if your gonna go through the trouble of making a youtube video, at least have the proper tools needed for the project...... i'm just saying
It took me 2 minutes to open this. Don't see enough stuff with security bits to bother. Sure the local auto parts store carries them as well, but I really don't have a need. I have a set of torx security bits as those are the more common ones.
Eu place 🇺🇸🇹🇩💖💖📡🎧🐼
There's lots of smaller useful components inside of it as well including the case of it could be used for something interesting or useful
Western Digital? Aka toilets. Sattuh drives.
yup.. another junk collector.. i thought he was going to do something useful with the boxes.... He doesn't have a set of security drivers? I thought everyone that worked on things has a set.. Well now I am able to take HDD's out of cable boxes..
Why would I need a set of security bits? I don't service or hack these things I have had perhaps 5 or 6 given to me that I pulled the hard drive and then sent the rest of it to the recycle bin. I don't collect junk. I collect antique radios and small CRT tv / monitors. Most of the vintage audio stuff I work on are clients pieces, and when I get given vintage equipment I overhaul and sell.
You are trashing a lot of good parts, power supply in them are awesome for projects, mother board has useful components as well like voltage regulators ext. ??