Context: my apartment building used to provide basic cable to all the residents, and we had cable boxes in our apartments as well as in the lounge spaces in the main office building. They discontinued the service for residents and we had to turn in our boxes, but the tvs in the lounge space still have cable boxes and get those channels.
If I bring a cable box from a friend’s place and plug it into my wall in my apartment, will I have cable again?
I guess what I’m asking is, does the service really come from the box or from the cables in the wall?
In: Technology
You need a box to decrypt the signal that’s coming from the wall. The box will almost certainly need to be activated in the providers system. Just bringing a box from your buddy won’t work unless it’s activated on an account
Today, in modern cable systems they send a signal to the cable box to disable the box, but the cable coming out of the wall has full signal.
Before digital cable they would have to come and physically disconnect the cable coming into your house from the pole as analog cable could just be hooked up to a TV without a box
But today, with digital cable the signal is encrypted and the cable box is required to decrypt the signal. By simply disabling the cable box, they can ensure you can’t watch without paying since you can’t just hook the cable directly into your TV, and they save the cost of sending a guy out to disconnect the cable
Its the cable signal outside in the “hot box” you see, those brown, sometimes green locked boxes. Thats what enables and disables services. Techs just go in, see which unit / house is yours and flicks a switch.
The way TV service works now is that your receiver has a decryption key associated with your account. Your key only lets you access the channels you have as part of your service. The signal coming from the telecom company is encrypted in such a way that you can’t just patch in.
Back in the day (80s and 90s) it was just a matter of a physical connection. But they realized that wasn’t enough security and moved to a card based system in the late 90s/early 00s. Over time, as the receivers got more complex, they just moved to digital decryption keys that sit in the equipment’s hard drive. Which is how it records shows for you.
To answer your last question. It’s both. The cable is bringing a signal with a specific lock on it, and only paying customer’s boxes have a key for it. The reason why they want the box back is because they can update/refurbish the equipment and lease it to a new customer. Which saves them money from having to buy a brand new unit.
The signal is always coming into your house, however it’s encrypted. The cable box checks your account to see what channels you have access to and decrypts it. So getting another cable box will not work.
Having worked in the periphery of our local cable TV company in the 80s and 90s in my part of Canada, the difference between regular and premium cable TV was an RF trap they put on your line in the box on your street that would filter the higher channels from ever reaching your box.
Getting a set of box keys was of little issue, and late-night visits to remove the traps would mean free TV upgrades.
That all ended in the late 90s with the introduction of cable internet and digital TV, but they were fun times.
Latest Answers