Not if they were trying to make a single room unit, which is what they were doing. Same thing with the 311k.
What difference would it make if it was active? I know alot of customers who would take a single room DVR, pair it up with a UHF Remote control and use the modulator to send the signal through the entire house, as the modulated output is susposed to have a 10DB Gain over the standard channel 3 output.
All they are doing is writing software to call a 522 a 512 and basically eliminating it from running in Dual Mode, and I believe allowing it to operate on a single tuner. Why disable the output, if its not broken?
That would be as bad as what Directv was doing several years ago shipping Dual LNB's and super gluing a metal cap over one of the outputs and selling them as single LNB's. That actually made sense as the system specs called for a single LNB to be included and it was cheaper for the manufacture to make all Dual LNB's than to run 2 seperate productions. There was a value selling a Dual LNB system over a single LNB System several years ago.
But in the case of the 512, vs the 522 there is no point to go with a 522 just for the RF modulator. It would be like taking an 811 and disabling the DVI Output and the component video output because the receiver can't pick up HD anymore because its QPSK.