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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Subject: Re: Cable converters that don't disturb channel mapping
Message-ID: <1991Jun23.174621.15850@Think.COM>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: barmar@think.com
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
References: <1991Jun22.225534.4713@hermesa.uucp>
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 17:46:21 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <1991Jun22.225534.4713@hermesa.uucp> mark@hermesa.uucp (Mark McWiggins) writes:
>I subscribe to a couple of premium cable channels that require a descrambler.
>The descrambler maps everything to channel 3.  If I had an "inline"
>descrambler, it would generally be much handier for me; I could tape one
>premium channel while watching another, etc.
>
>Does anyone offer this?  Is there some technical reason why it's not feasible?

It would be more expensive.  Most converters only have only one tuner and
descrambler circuit, so only one channel's signal can be descrambled at a
time.  To permit simultaneous descrambling of all premium channels you'd
need as many tuner/descrambler combinations as there are premium channels.

Also, many cable companies derive revenues from rental of additional
converters, when a customer has more than one TV they want to watch premium
channels on, so they might not want to make it so easy to connect multiple
TVs to the same converter.

-- 
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar