What should I do with "retired" HR10's??

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Hi, due to severe line-of-sight problems caused by new construction in my neighborhood, I've finally been physically "boxed out" from seeing the southern horizon and hence satellite reception. So I cringed and switched to a new Tivo Series III and Cox Cable. Took a 3-hour phone call to cancel DirecTV where I nearly had an embolism from arguing that I in fact did NOT have any contract obligations or penalties to pay since I had owned all of my Tivos and other receivers for years!!! Turns out during a troubleshooting call back in April that resulted in a new card being sent, the tech/CSR "inadvertently" - yea, sure.... - activated it as a new, leased receiver. Finally convinced them to just check their own billing records. Voila! An apology and no termination fees.

So basically I now have 2 HR10-250s, both upgraded to 100+ hrs HD, that are effectively boat anchors. Don't think I can even do OTA without a sat subscription - true? Any other uses, maybe a standalone Linux OS from the underground forum?? Is there any residual resale value or do I basically toss them on the old basement technology pile with my Sears BETA VCR, Zenith mechanical tuner TV, and Magavox mahogony console stereo with 8-track player??

 

Yea, that's pretty much what I figured. I think there's like 1.5-2 terabytes in aggregate between the 2 HR10's and an upgraded SD Hughes. Guess it's time to dig an old tower case and motherboard out of the junk pile and build a new file server...at least my media center PC will be happy to see the storage.

 

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Well, small sample size: while I've had the box a couple of weeks, only got the cable hooked up yesterday, LOL. Cox had to schedule the cablecard "install", which took a week. Then the tech was clueless (surprise surprise) so I had to wait until he finally gave up and left the cards with me so I could call into Cox support myself and actually talk to somebody who knew how get them initialized. But first impessions are very positive. OTA tuners seem to be much less susceptible to multipath issues than the HR10s were (the constuction that killed my sat signal also reflects OTA digital sigs in all directions). Great sig strength on OTA Boston stations, about 45 miles away, that were up and down on the HR10. SD and HD off of cable looks as good as DirecTV, though I'll admitmy eyes were getting blurry by midnight when I finally got a good tech on the phone to make it all work. TiVO interface on the III is much more responsive, but then again the box is empty and I haven't set up the 35 season passes yet. Time will tell. But as much as I liked satellite over the years, at this point I think the only thing I'll REALLY miss is Sunday Ticket.