# Second hand VM tivos



## laurence (Jun 17, 2007)

Hi,
I've noticed there are quite a few VM tivos for sale. Aside from the fact that there probably shouldn't be, is it actually possible to do anything with them?
Presumably, you'd have to pay virgin to have a TiVo subscription, so they'd provide one anyway. The only other reason I can think of would be to have a second one. But, presumably that would have to have an active subscription too.
Does anyone know?


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## Mimizuku no Lew (Jan 3, 2011)

[email protected] said:


> Hi,
> I've noticed there are quite a few VM tivos for sale. Aside from the fact that there probably shouldn't be, is it actually possible to do anything with them?
> Presumably, you'd have to pay virgin to have a TiVo subscription, so they'd provide one anyway. The only other reason I can think of would be to have a second one. But, presumably that would have to have an active subscription too.
> Does anyone know?


You could use them to prop a door open, but that's about it. VM won't activate a box that you've bought.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Maybe rip the hard drives out - 1Tb drives are still going for a premium right now - £80 last I looked, so if you can get a Tivo for 30 quid and salvage it it's a saving.

There's the whole 'receiving stolen goods thing' though...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Tony Hoyle said:


> Maybe rip the hard drives out - 1Tb drives are still going for a premium right now - £80 last I looked, so if you can get a Tivo for 30 quid and salvage it it's a saving.
> 
> There's the whole 'receiving stolen goods thing' though...


Of course anyone selling you a stolen Virgin S4 would never do so if the drive wasn't good, and it would never occur to them to remove the drive and sell it by itself if it were good. Right?

EDIT:

apparently I forgot the sarcasm tag


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

The average person selling VM Tivos doesn't even realize they're useless when sold on and some don't even realize they're the property of VM (although many do and sell them anyway), so checking whether drives work and taking them out is a bit beyond them - if they were savvy enough to do that they'd just sell the drive.

Not much value in the rest of the bits.. the PSU maybe, but you wouldn't get a lot for it.


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## deshepherd (Nov 30, 2000)

unitron said:


> Of course anyone selling you a stolen Virgin S4 would never do so if the drive wasn't good, and it would never occur to them to remove the drive and sell it by itself if it were good. Right?


The point is the VM TiVo remains the property of VM so we're not talking about TiVos that have been removed from houses by burglars and then sold ... someone who's signed up for TiVo service and decides to attempt to sell their box doesn't own it so anyone buying it is receiving "stolen goods".


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