What you see above is a truly old receiver. If I recall correctly, I took that picture back in 2008, of the then-new HR23 DVR. DIRECTV hardware made in the 2000s has proved incredibly reliable, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of you out there have this very DVR in your home theater today.
But let’s say you get new hardware for one reason or another. Can you just take the access card from the old receiver and put it in the new one? The short answer is that you can’t. Before I unpack that, I need to explain why this is even something to think about.
Unfortunately a DVR isn’t forever.
Honestly these things are incredibly reliable. I know people who are still using DVRs from 2006 and they still work, slowly. But the point is they still work. But that’s rare. I tend to think that 5-7 years is a good life for a DVR and it seems DIRECTV does too. They don’t ask for old equipment back after the lease is up, unless they still manufacture it. That locks out older DVRs. Those should be responsibly recycled.
You can’t move recordings from receiver to receiver with DIRECTV.
Some other providers let you do this, but DIRECTV doesn’t. If you were to attempt to move the hard drive from one DVR to another, the recordings wouldn’t play. They’re all encrypted to play only on the receiver they were made on.
You can’t move recordings off your DVR’s hard drive.
Well, at least not legally. I’m not saying you couldn’t cobble together some weird black hat thing to capture the output of the hard drive as you play a recording, but unless you have that high level of skill, you’re not going to be able to get something off the DVR’s hard drive, at least not in high definition. Be aware that a lot of boxes that advertise HDMI capture will not work with DIRECTV unless you do something that isn’t strictly legal.
So… here’s what that all adds up to.
Let’s say your kid was on the local news in 2013. You recorded it and you’ve been keeping in on your DVR, since there’s basically no way to get it off there. You’re worried about the DVR dying. Maybe it already has. You’re terrified that you’re going to lose this little bit of family history and so you start asking, “how can I save this recording so I can still play it?”
That leads you to questions like, “Can you use an old access card in a new DIRECTV receiver?” which is the title of the article. You might be asking this because you think this will let you watch that recording on the new DVR, if you pull the hard drive out and put it in the new DVR. Before I get to answering the question though, there are still some things you ought to know.
You can’t just swap the access card by yourself.
If you take an access card from one receiver to another, it’s generally not going to work. In rare cases it will work for a very short time, but it stops working within a day generally. The experts at Solid Signal can do this sort of swap for you in some cases, but it’s generally better to simply put in a new access card.
If you’re moving to the Genie 2, it gets even hard to do this sort of thing. In fact, it’s downright impossible. The Genie 2 uses an access card that’s the size of a SIM (like older phones had.) The credit-card-sized access card from older devices simply won’t work, period.
The good news is that every DIRECTV product should come with an access card when it is shipped to you. Just use the one provided and you’ll be fine.
So why would people want to swap out an access card (or some other part of the DVR?)
Let’s go back to that example of wanting to save something from an older DVR. You might think that if you take the access card from the old device and put it in the new device, you might see your old saved recordings. This isn’t true. On DIRECTV Satellite, recordings are stored on the hard drive.
So let’s say you decide to swap not only the access card but the hard drive. Not only is it against DIRECTV rules to open up your new DVR, it might not even be worth it. Every DVR is designed around a specific model hard drive and the hard drive you pull out of the old one might not even fit. I’ve seen before where some DVRs use standard size hard drives where others use “slim” ones. Only the Genie 2 uses a 2.5″ laptop sized hard drive but even so, it could be impossible to get that drive to fit.
More importantly…
It’s not going to get you what you want. Even if you use the access card from your old DVR and the hard drive from your old DVR, you still won’t be able to watch those old recordings because the two DVRs have different receiver IDs. In order to play something off a hard drive, you need the right receiver ID as well as the right access card.
Is there any option for getting recordings off an old DVR?
Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of legal alternatives. As I said you can output from the RCA connectors in most cases and that gives you something. Solid Signal sells a video grabber that will let you pull a very clean standard definition feed from your DVR. It works really well. You can see if the content is available online to buy. If it’s a news story from a local station, contact them to see if you can get a copy of it.
Another option, and sometimes it’s your last-ditch effort, is just to point your phone at the TV. Believe it or not this works fairly well. It’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing.
If you are thinking of upgrading your DVR, you might want to check first with the fine folks at Solid Signal. They can help you with any available upgrades and any incentives you might not have known about. The number, as always, is 888-233-7563. Call during East Coast business hours and you’ll get a trained expert who can help with this sort of thing. If it’s after hours, fill out the form below. We’ll get right back to you!
