It is well-publicized that a deactivated or never-activated Voom receiver will not display OTA HD. What is rarely mentioned is that unless the Voom receiver's firmware has been updated recently, it cannot scan for channels and hence is locked into whichever local broadcast channels were active in the metropolitan area where it was last actively used.

I did not know this. I bought a Voom receiver on eBay for a rather low price. The seller specifically advertised that the receiver can display OTA HD, and it does--but only on the channels that happen to overlap between my and his metropolitan areas!

As far as I can find out on the Internet, no one is even looking into a way to update the firmware on those receivers that were never updated via satellite.

Caveat emptor.

I remember reading somewhere (and if I can remember I will tell you), that there are people actually working on trying to figure out how to manipulate these recievers. Being that you can pick these suckers up for so cheap now and days, whomever these people are who tend to alter the firmware on recievers can probably pick up a lot of these for cheap and then once they find a way to fix the firmware can sell them off for a nice profit...

Assuming they can do it...

Igmayka.

I saw some of your posts at another forum when I was trying to remember where I had seen mention of Firmware upgrades:


And the suggestion at that forum of going to this site:

[Link: winnfreenet.com]


That is too bad that you are not getting anywhere as these would have been nice starter units for people.

-Don B

This site may be worth a look also:

http://www.ultatryon.com/