Hi, maybe you folks can help me understand something.
I've got an old General Instruments 450i receiver, actually rebranded as "Digital Innovations", but it's a 450i, that looks exactly like one on currently being sold Fleabay except for the branding. I was going to include a link but I guess that's not allowed, but the seller of that receiver is asking 80 bucks for it, which to me seems outrageous.
I originally bought the receiver used over a decade ago, and at one point it was unplugged for at least a couple of years, but lately I've used it solely as a dish mover for a C-band dish, and only power it up long enough to move the dish and then unplug it. Thinking of getting a Vbox to move the dish & if that happens, the one last justification I have for keeping this receiver would be gone.
I'm pretty sure that at one time you could use it to subscribe to a certain kind of encrypted analog signals, maybe Digicipher, but I only used it to watch unencrypted analog channels. IIRC it contains some kind of card that does the decryption if you have purchased a subscription, but I also seem to recall reading that there is a battery on that card and if that battery goes completely dead, the card becomes worthless, and I can't believe the battery would not be dead after all this time.
What I don't get is, now that most of the signals are digital, how can anybody can even unload these on eBay? I imagine it would cost at least $25 to ship this thing, after all it is from the days when satellite receivers were quite heavy, so I'm thinking it would be much less hassle to just scrap it, but I don't want to do that if it actually has some value. Other than the battery thing, as far as I know there is nothing wrong with it - it worked great as long as there were still analog signals to watch - but I just can't figure out how on earth people are selling these things on eBay. Who in their right mind would buy one? Is there some hidden value in these receivers that I am not appreciating?
I'm at a loss to understand how someone could possibly justify asking that kind of money for a receiver that ancient, that could only receive analog signals. What am I missing here?
I'm not trying to sell my receiver right now, I'm only trying to figure out if it might actually have any value, and if it does, why???
I've got an old General Instruments 450i receiver, actually rebranded as "Digital Innovations", but it's a 450i, that looks exactly like one on currently being sold Fleabay except for the branding. I was going to include a link but I guess that's not allowed, but the seller of that receiver is asking 80 bucks for it, which to me seems outrageous.
I originally bought the receiver used over a decade ago, and at one point it was unplugged for at least a couple of years, but lately I've used it solely as a dish mover for a C-band dish, and only power it up long enough to move the dish and then unplug it. Thinking of getting a Vbox to move the dish & if that happens, the one last justification I have for keeping this receiver would be gone.
I'm pretty sure that at one time you could use it to subscribe to a certain kind of encrypted analog signals, maybe Digicipher, but I only used it to watch unencrypted analog channels. IIRC it contains some kind of card that does the decryption if you have purchased a subscription, but I also seem to recall reading that there is a battery on that card and if that battery goes completely dead, the card becomes worthless, and I can't believe the battery would not be dead after all this time.
What I don't get is, now that most of the signals are digital, how can anybody can even unload these on eBay? I imagine it would cost at least $25 to ship this thing, after all it is from the days when satellite receivers were quite heavy, so I'm thinking it would be much less hassle to just scrap it, but I don't want to do that if it actually has some value. Other than the battery thing, as far as I know there is nothing wrong with it - it worked great as long as there were still analog signals to watch - but I just can't figure out how on earth people are selling these things on eBay. Who in their right mind would buy one? Is there some hidden value in these receivers that I am not appreciating?
I'm at a loss to understand how someone could possibly justify asking that kind of money for a receiver that ancient, that could only receive analog signals. What am I missing here?
I'm not trying to sell my receiver right now, I'm only trying to figure out if it might actually have any value, and if it does, why???
