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From: wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA (Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI)
Newsgroups: net.video
Subject: Re:  Satellite Signal Scrambling
Message-ID: <8603142332.AA16579@seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 17:02:25 EST
Article-I.D.: seismo.8603142332.AA16579
Posted: Fri Mar 14 17:02:25 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 22:38:59 EST
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Thanks for the response! That sounds *much* more sensible than the 
methodology that those other postings implied. Does this mean that
everybody who watches HBO, either from off their local cable system
or off their own backyard dish, has an addressable descrambler box 
in their home, and, for the ones on the cable, the enabling signal
comes down the cable line along with HBO's signal? That is the only way
I can envision that the previously-discussed concept (of a home dish owner
in Outer Nowhere, Montana, calling a cable system somewhere in, say,
Alabama, to get a good rate for that month's worth of HBO) would 
work -- that that cable system sends off his decoder serial number,
along with the serial numbers of the decoder boxes of its hardwired
subscribers, to HBO HQ each month, so they are all entered into the
HBO "enabling" database.

If the cable system had only one descrambler at its head end, it
wouldn't be interested in re-selling the authorization to receive HBO
to other people not on its own wires, would it? Right now, are there
then two types of cable systems operating -- one with a single head-end
descrambler, and others with in-home descramblers? And this second type
are the ones who are selling authorizations over the phone via chargecard?

What keeps people from paying the going rate for one descrambler box,
but then feeding that recovered and now "normal" signal into local,
"unofficial" cable, MATV, or other distribution systems? That way,
some hundreds or more TVs could get HBO for the cost of one. The only way
I can see HBO catching this is physically investigating and looking
at the installation.

Will

ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA     USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin