How much longer will analog cable hang on

[radiotvnut]

I don't see cable boxes going away; rather, I see the NTSC RF output connector going away from future boxes. As long as the cable company is sending out it's signal as "non-clear", there will be a need for some sort of decoder between the cable line and the TV.

And, yes, the current digital cable boxes must be activated. When we got our boxes and connected them, there was a message on the screen with instructions to call a phone number. When the number was called, I was directed to an automated system (no surprise). After entering the serial numbers of the boxes and after the system pulled up my account, a signal was sent down the line to activate the boxes and enable them to receive the level of service that I was paying for. I suspect the new way of doing it will prevent a lot of cable theft. In the old days, a crook could climb the pole, connect his cable, and he was in business (until they caught up with him). Back then, cable boxes could be purchased at many electronics stores and they required no sort of activation.

The way they used to prevent viewing of certain channels was to install a trap in the line. Many times, I've heard of people bypassing the trap and were able to watch the premium channels. Someone told me that they were once able to watch a PPV movie by fine tuning one TV to receive the sound and fine tuning another TV to view the picture. I've also heard of people, back in the early days of cable, wrapping a piece of aluminum foil around the cable and sliding the foil up and down the cable in order to receive HBO. At one point, I remember some of the premium channels could be clearly heard; but, the picture would be scrambled. IIRC, HBO was the only premium channel in my area that had both the picture and sound scrambled.

Back in the late '80's, someone was bragging to me about how he climbed the pole in the middle of the night, connected his cable, managed to get an "under the table" cable descrambler box, and was able to watch everything the cable company offered (for free). I warned him that they'd eventually catch up to him; and, they did. After that, I think he realized that he should have just gone ahead and paid for the service.