Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!adm!cmcl2!lanl!beta!tims From: tims@infidel.lanl.gov (Tim Sullivan) Newsgroups: sci.electronics Subject: cable TV and better black boxes Message-ID: Date: 4 Oct 90 03:23:14 GMT Sender: news@lanl.gov Organization: Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos Lines: 30 I have just come home from a tense, angry meeting of a local cable TV board. It occured to me that much of what was causing the tension between the public representatives and the cable company ought to have a technical solution. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into the details of the current issue, but it could be solved by "black boxes". (The cable company isn't proposing to install them since when they tried a few years ago they lost half their subscribers.) Now as I understand the objection to these boxes, it is because the descrambled signals come out on channel 3 and you have to select which channel you want to watch with a switch or remote control special to the box. This prevents unattended recording of shows on different channels by your VCR among other things. Now my question is: Why can't someone make a box that will take all those channels coming in, descramble the ones you've subscribed to, and put them all out at once on a cable to your tuner so the tuner can do its thing? Given the heat generated by this issue such a box should be a billion dollar item, so I figure there must be some technical limitation that makes it hard (I can't see any reason why it would be impossible). Can someone enlighten me? I know nothing about how signals are scrambled, but the description of the items being put in our lines indicated they were strictly passive devices. What makes this problem hard? Tim Sullivan (tims@infidel.lanl.gov)