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From: whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Cable TV question
Message-ID: <17336@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 91 01:44:06 GMT
References: <471@pyrite.nj.pyramid.com>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 37

In article <471@pyrite.nj.pyramid.com> dcm@pyrite.nj.pyramid.com (David C. Miller) writes:

>Since this is an 8 event VCR, I find it frustrating to have to
>switch between the internal and external tuner.  If I go away
>for a weekend, I have to choose to record only the unscrambled
>channels or only the scrambled channel.
>
>What I'm looking for is a way of adding a circuit that will
>effectively unscramble the pay channel in place. 

>
>                           Cable Tuner  +----- Channel 3 out
>                           Descrambler  |
>Incoming cable with          +-----+    v
>scrambled signal on   +------|     |----+
>channel 28           /       +-----+     \+----+
>--------------------+                     |    |------------+
>                    ^\                   /+----+
>cable splitter -----+ +-----------------+   ^
>                                            |
>                                            |
>Device that blanks out channel 28 on      --+
>straight through line, then map channel 3
>from the tuner to channel 28.

	You can do this with a UHF block converter; put the
converter after the descrambler, and it will turn the 'CH 3' output
into a UHF channel, which can go into your VCR's UHF input (or
to a UHF/VHF combiner/splitter).  It may in fact be more
convenient to feed the descrambled signal straight, and 
mix everything else in the cable signal to UHF (so that you
can set your VCR tuner to 'normal' instead of 'cable' tuning).

	Block converters are available widely (try Radio Shack
for instance).

	John Whitmore