Cable Descramblers

[Hatz]

I was just reading through some junk mail and came across a cable descrambler. Aren't these things illegal? I'm not saying everything is legal in email but I was just wondering if these things were still out there. Supposedly they are. I remember a buddy that used to have one and it seemed to work good.

How can they monitor these things? How can you get busted? Has anybody ever used one? I'm not saying I want to get one or anything because I have Direct TV and those illegal access cards are a whole different story. I was just wondering about cable descramblers. Any sites I try reading on them are pretty much just junk sites. Thanks for any help you can give me.

p.s. I am not advocating the use of these things because no one on this board does anything illegal.

Hatz

[Roundabout]

Hatz,

Buddy, glad you're back. Haven't seen you much lately!

As to cable descramblers, it's not illegal to own one. What is illegal is hooking one up to the cable system and receiving signals that you haven't paid for. Although I doubt that people would buy one just to tell the cable company they have it, it probably does happen.

One instance would be where the cable co. charges a rental fee for the use of their box, you could buy your own to avoid the rental fee and pay for the services you use. Some cable companies might allow this. OTOH, they want the rental fee and they'd rather you use their box, gives them more money.

I don't want to go into technical details about the difference between addressable and non-addressable converters on this forum. We do not advocate doing anything illegal here, and an extended discussion would inevitably lead to something that we should not talk about.

Suffice to say, there are ways to get the signal without paying for it (I don't think that's a secret), if you know how. But the penalties aren't worth it, if you get caught.

Stay clean.

[Doramius]

Yeah, we don't do anything "ILLEGAL" here. And nobody "ADVOCATES" it here either. However, Roundabout is right. You can own one and there are some cables companies that will allow you to use your own.

Make sure if you're using digital cable you're using a digital one and an analog descrambler for analog cable. I'm trying to find a cheap analog descrambler myself, because I can use one here, but the rental fee for the cable company's box is around 1/3 the price of purchasing one. After 3 months, it's already paid for. Think of it like having cable broadband access by using your own equipment or paying a rental fee for the cable company's equipment. If you're going to be using the service for quite a long time and the rental fees are stupidly high, you might as well get your own and skip the rental fee.