I have recently noticed an abundance of SPAM in my e-mail inbox advertising cable descrambler. For a one-time fee of $100 or whatever, I get a special tool that allows me to get all the cable I want, including pay-per-view, and it is totally legal. What gives? Does this really work? Is this really legal? If so, what should I look for in purchasing one?
If one of the main selling points of a product is that it’s actually legal, then there are probably good reasons why you don’t want to buy it.
My understanding is that it’s not illegal to own a cable descramber, but using it sure as hell is. We’ll wait and see what the legal eagles have to say, though.
There are cable descramblers out there that you can buy, usually $250- $300, last time I looked, that will unscramble the Premium services like HBO and Showtime and Pay-Per-View. These channels have to already be coming through the wire. That is to say, if you turn to channel X and there is a scrambled signal there, the box unscrambles it. Currently they only work with the Analog (old) cable service, not the Digital (new) cable service. They are certainly not legal because they allow you to obtain service that you are suppose to pay for. Someone else will have to get into the specifics of this, but apparently these boxes are legal to sell, but not legal to use. Like crack pipes. There is no way for the cable service to know you have one (unless they see it sitting on top of your TV) and the good ones are “bullet-proof”, meaning the cable provider can’t send it a signal that disables it.
There are places on the Net to buy them. I would search for one of those sites (just Google: cable descramblers) and find one that appears to have been in business for a while and one that offers other products as well. I bought mine,…uh,…I mean I know a guy who bought one and was not satisfied with the picture quality. He called the supplier who instructed him to send it back and they sent him a better (higher priced) box for the price he paid for the lower quality box. Good service. You need to know the brand and model # of the cable box your cable provider normally rents to customers. Then look for one on the descrambler seller’s web-site that replaces that box.
Even so, I have never seen one that gives as good a quality a picture as you get from going the legal route, but maybe I’m just picky. To most eyes the signal probably looks fine, especially since it allows you to see hundreds of dollars worth of stuff for a comparatively small investment.
One other caveat. Our local cable provider recently moved all the Pay-Per-View channels to the “Digital Tier” meaning that people still going the Analog route no longer have access to them either through their legal cable box or their illegal one. If this is true in your area, that might leave only Starz, Cinemax, Showtime, ect. for the box to unscramble. And if cable companies discontinue ALL Analog service, the descramblers may become useless. I expect, but don’t know, that Analog will be around for a good bit longer until Digital service has penetrated the marketplace to a greater degree. Even then, as far as I know, the Analog signal may still be coming through the wire, but others can advise on these possibilties better than I.
are there no digital descramblers? (not that we have cable or would be interested). Is it encrypted too well?
As I understand it, buying, selling, and owning the descrambler is legal. But using them to steal the signal is illegal. I could be wrong, but I have read that some cable companies will allow you to use such a device in lieu of renting their own device, but you must still pay for the signal to keep it legit.
We generally allow threads asking what the law says, but since these devices seem to offer such a strong temptation to break the law by stealing the signal, I’ll close this thread before someone comes along and gives tips on how to do so.
bibliophage
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