I canceled my DirecTV subscription quite a while ago and IIRC, they asked for the access cards back when I canceled but not the hardware. Since I figured those units could be put to good use for someone else wanting to use TiVo with DirecTV, I sold them. The buyer is now saying that DirecTV won't activate them because they are "leased" despite me never paying a lease fee when I was a DTV subscriber (I even went back to my bill to double-check) and them never asking for the hardware back either. I saw on the Weaknees THR22 page that DTV will consider any unit to be leased if it was ever activated after March, 2006.... which of course, any used unit would be.

So what now? In the olden days, DirecTV would just send you an access card as long as you're an active subscriber and pay the monthly fee for a second unit... is that no longer a thing?

Or is the hardware now just destined to be recycled and can never be activated again?