--> a little cable tv assistance please... - Toyota Tundra Forums : Tundra Solutions Forum

TundraBear · #1 (**permalink**) 05-06-2003, 12:37 AM

to make a long irritating story short, my ISP changed over from AT&T to Comcast. i'm paying the same monthly but now get thier standard cable tv, which is basically just clearer local stations (CBS, PBS, WB, NBC, ABC, KCAL, UPN, HSN, ETC). anyways....they brought out a cable box that allowed me to view more channels. nothing great like SHO or HBO, but i was able to watch comedy central. i had them remove the box since they decied to sign me up for more than was originally agreed upon. now that the boxes are out of the equation i can listen to what's happening on some of those other channels (TBS, USA, MTV West, Comedy Central, etc...). but just can't see them.

i was wondering, if i were to purchase the same box (motorola dct 2224/1661) do you think those channels will become clearer?

i've seen different types of boxes for sale on the internet with the usual disclaimers and such, but am rather new to the cable tv scene. in the past i only had cable for internet.

TundraBear · #2 (**permalink**) 05-08-2003, 03:20 AM

bueller?......bueller?......anyone?......anyone?

Agent WD-40 · #3 (**permalink**) 05-08-2003, 03:45 AM

I"m not sure how all that works but it seems like all they did was scramble your channels. If you got a cable descrabler they shold come back in clear. I think that is illegal though. This will work as long as they channels are at least coming to you scrabled. Sometimes they will physically unhook your from everything but the basic local stations and the rest are just snow. They may take a while for them to get a guy out to your house to do that too. Sometimes they just hook a filter somewhere in your system (probably at the little box where the cable enters the house) which will block all of the higher channels. Then not even a descrambler will work. The filter works just like a crossover for audio speakers. If you can unhook the filter (at my house it was a long black tube about the size of a silicon canister with cable at either ends) you can get the upper channels back. That is just my guesses based on how it went down at my house. I just played with stuff to see how the were keeping cable from gong to my house. After a few months I tried unhooking it again and I'm guessing they got someone to my house to physically unhook me because when I unhoked the filter I still got nothing in the upper channels. I wasn't trying to steal cable. I was just curious to see how it all worked. As soon as I took the filter out and saw that I got cable back I put it back in and lost my cable.

molecule · #4 (**permalink**) 05-08-2003, 10:52 AM

Most cable co have switched all the Premium and Pay per view channels to Digital ,I do not think there is a Descrambler Digital box available .
If SHO and HBO are on Analog then you can get one of the Boxes offered on the net to view these .

TundraBear · #5 (**permalink**) 05-08-2003, 11:06 PM

well that makes total sense. i could relly care less if i do or don't have cable tv. as long as i have internet connectivity, i'm good.

thanks for the replys....

toynut · #6 (**permalink**) 05-09-2003, 01:18 AM

If you have your cable internet, you would have cable. They both use the same signal. The only difference is that you wont have your digital cable tv. If you split your cable internet line and connect to a tv you will see basic cable. I am paying for my cable tv cuz I like the sci-fi channel and thats not included in the basic setup.