Now I am not out for “free” cable here…I can get a used regular box from eBay pretty cheap and these “descrambler” boxes are quite a bit more than the regular used boxes. I just wanted to know if these people claiming to sell these “descramblers” are legit.
A lot of the dish systems allow for dual Tivo reciever inputs on a single Tivo recieverwhich let you record a show and watch a show, or record 2 shows and watch something that’s on the Tivo.
Thanks for the replies…I cannot get the dish since I live in an apt and the landlord won’t allow it…so I am stuck there.
The link you provided will work, but then I get analog channels only when I don’t use the Tivo, which is OK, but I wanted to be able to see all the channels both ways…looks like I will need another tuner.
It should be noted that there are TWO types of cable television, at least in the US: regluar, old-fashioned analog-signal cable television (that you can feed straight into a VCR or television) and digital cable television, that uses a digitally-encoded signal, that requires a digital cable descrambler. It’s not a scam, when you order digital-cable-television, the cable company brings you a digital cable descrambler and you have to use it, even if you previously had regular-cable and fed it straight into your VCR/TV. A digital-cable descrambler is totally different than an old analog one, and the one we got from Charter Communications is the same model as the eBay one. And if you only have ONE tuner, you can only watch or record ONE channel at a time. You also have to select the channels you want to watch through the digital-cable box, because it only has one output and that is sent on channel 3.
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You can’t just buy a digital cable box off of eBay and have it work. Even if you get one that’s apparently the same model as you already have, it may be configured for a different cable company. Also each box is addressable (via MAC address, I believe) and the cable system knows which boxes it should talk to. If you’ve ever had your cable box replaced, you’ll notice the technician needs to go through a process to activate it. As I remember, he needed to call in the serial number of the box to HQ.
Also, usually the digital cable box belongs to the cable company, so I wonder where all those boxes on eBay come from.
Commercially available digital boxes for purchase should be (or may be already?) available soon. I don’t know where or what the details are–only that I work for a cable company in New Jersey and we were requested by the state Board of Public Utilities to set up our system to accommodate these. (We haven’t had to put any in yet, but we were required to be ready so it must be around the corner).
Also many cable companies (like the one I work for) are releasing Digital Video Recorders built into their digital boxes–with this device, you don’t need a telephone line for the return path, and you can watch one channel and record another. You can even record two programs simultaneously–but you need to watch one of them. You may inquire if your cable company has plans to launch a DVR service in your area. You wouldn’t need TiVo anymore, just one converter box instead of multiple digital converter boxes and a TiVo unit.
