brown@nic_vax.UUCP (04/29/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** OK, I will!!! As I said in my followup on Saturday, I called CableVision of Central Florida. Here is the scoop from there engineer. As I had suspected, HBO is a trap type pay channel. If you don't pay for it, they trap out the carrier, so that all you are left with is the high end of the video, all of the color information and the sound carrier. But, also as I had suspected, the other pay channels are scrambled at the head end (the main plant) using the Zenith system. It is like the sine-wave-sync- supress that I had mentioned. He gave the correct name, but being long distance and after being on hold for awhile, I didn't ask him to spell it. Also they use an addressable system. If you don't get the pay channel they take your box out of the addressing for that pay channel. He said that they also have some boxes that aren't addressable, but most of them are. The idea of doing something in the connection box was incorrect, except for HBO to add or remove the trap. When I called the first time, I was on hold listening to the tape they have. It is a tape that hypes their cable system. On that tape they also talk about turing in your illegal box to become legal, no questions asked, until May 15, anyway. I was then cut off when someone didn't know how to transfer a phone call. I called the second time and got a gentleman named Dave Grace(?). At least it sounded like Grace. Listening to the tape, I found out that HBO is on channel 21, Cinemax is on channel 22 (Zenith converter channel 20) and on Saturday I found out that you also have Showtime and Disney. You know, a simple phone call to your cable company would have answered all of these questions a long time ago. Dave was very nice about answering my questions. Some cable companies may not tell what kind of system they used, but they would at least tell you where things are done. I guess this should be it. Mr. Video (ihnp4!uwvax!astroatc!nicvax!brown)
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (05/01/85)
> You know, a simple phone call to your cable company would have > answered all of these questions a long time ago. Except that, as the tape you listened to suggested, they are having an all- out war on theft-of-service perpetrators, and I didn't want them to get the idea I was trying to figure out how to beat their scrambling. (You should see the newspaper ads... a guilty-looking man holding a screwdriver and a cable while his wife and daughter look in a shocked manner off-camera at someone has just caught him red-handed stealing cable service.) Well, I will believe you, I guess, except for a few puzzling details. It's Cinemax that uses a different scrambling method from the others; there is a special switch in the tuner box that turns on only for cinemax. Also, my tuner box is, from what you said, one of the non-addressable ones; they give you the choice here of which you want, and the new addressable ones are MUCH more expensive. This still doesn't explain how they enable and disable the channels without coming into the house for the non-addressable devices; however, I guess it is in there somewhere. Ironically, all this has diverged far from my original comment, which was simply that here in Orlando you can indeed get all the pay channels, except Cinemax, on a cable-ready TV; which was what the original poster I responded to asked (I think). Soon I will be getting a cable-ready TV myself, and since I have Cinemax, I will get to see first hand how they handle that. -- Full-Name: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642
bobn@bmcg.UUCP (Bob Nebert) (05/01/85)
> *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** OK, I will!!! > > As I said in my followup on Saturday, I called CableVision of Central Florida. > Here is the scoop from there engineer. > > As I had suspected, HBO is a trap type pay channel. If you don't pay for it, > they trap out the carrier, so that all you are left with is the high end of > the video, all of the color information and the sound carrier. > I'm not to sure what you mean by a trap, but if they supply the video info and more important the sound, won't a sipmle and cheap to build sync generator give the signal full video. Drop the sync into the blanking sector and off you go. **** IF SIMPLE IS SO SIMPLE WHY CAN'T I SPELL IT ****
brown@nic_vax.UUCP (05/04/85)
> > *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** OK, I will!!! > > > > As I said in my followup on Saturday, I called CableVision of Central Florida. > > Here is the scoop from there engineer. > > > > As I had suspected, HBO is a trap type pay channel. If you don't pay for it, > > they trap out the carrier, so that all you are left with is the high end of > > the video, all of the color information and the sound carrier. > > > I'm not to sure what you mean by a trap, but if they supply the video info > and more important the sound, won't a sipmle and cheap to build sync > generator give the signal full video. Drop the sync into the blanking > sector and off you go. Sorry, I should have said what a 'trap type pay channel' is. There are two kinds of trap systems. The first type, the same used in the above Florida system, is where the signal is sent down the system like any other channel. If you don't get the pay channel, they filter (trap) out the video carrier. Without the main carrier, the tv doesn't have much left to go on. The second type of trap is where an extra carrier is added to the signal. Around here, before they stopped doing it, another carrier, equal in amplitude to the main carrier is added 2.25 MHz above the main carrier. This causes the tv agc to run the rest of the signal into the noise. Too much signal, so the gain is changed. This type of system doesn't even allow you to hear the channel either. But, it is a bad idea because to get the pay channel, that added carrier is filtered (trapped) out. It also filters out part of the high frequency picture information. The sharp edges aren't sharp anymore. I believe the thing you described above is called 'gated sync'. That idea is used in another cable system next to Madison. -- |------------| | |-------| o| JVC HRD725U Mr. Video | | | o| |--------------| | | | | | |----| o o o | | |-------| O| |--------------| |------------| VHS Hi-Fi (the only way to go) (!ihnp4!uwvax!astroatc!nic_vax!brown)