I just got an email with a coupon for the Dell Outlet for 15% off the purchase of a refurbished PC. As some of you may know, I went this route for my CableCARD setup and have had great success. You can't buy the ATI DCTs from the Outlet but you can usually find plenty of them on eBay and they are also available from Sonystyle.com. The coupon code is: W017V8S0?Q6FF1 Just copy and paste it into the appropriate section after you add the item to your cart.
Here is some information I posted on another thread about how to tell if a specific XPS 420 on the Dell Outlet has the proper BIOS so that they can be used with CableCARDs:
I think I've figured out how to tell if the PC has CableCard capabilities. First of all, I looked at the item number that I posted above. It is YN974. I'm pretty sure any XPS 420 that's in the outlet right now and only has 2GB of RAM is NOT capable of doing CableCard. I added one of these with 2GB of RAM and another with 3GB of RAM. The item number for Vista on the one with 3GB of RAM is YN974 (just like the one I ordered) and the item number for Vista on the one with 2GB is DT012. Also, Vista is listed further down in the list when it DOES have CableCard capabilities.
So, as far as I can tell, in order to determine if one can do CableCard you have to add it to your cart and then click on "Detail View" to look at the parts list and look for item number YN974.
Also I would recommend looking for one with at least a 256MB video card. They sell them with the 128MB 2400 Pro but I've heard there were some incompatibility issues and they stopped shipping brand new XPS 420s with that card and CableCARD tuners.
I received mine using this method and it was CableCARD ready and it's been working fine now for a few months.
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