Descrambling Cable
by Dr. Clayton Phorester
If you were thinking about opening your cable box, don't! Most cable boxes have a small metal connector in the front right of the box. Once the lid is off, the connection is broken and a little battery inside remembers. I learned this the hard way with a Pioneer converter. Once the connection breaks, the little channel display on the box will go all screwy, and the only button that will work is the power button. If you did open the box, you would now notice that whenever you turn the TV on, it goes to a preset station and can t be changed. This station is usually the one that your box displays when you tune to a premium channel that you don't subscribe to. At any rate, cable companies will fine you around $25 to reactivate your box. And if they think you've tampered with it, that goes up to $1,000 (according to California law). All the cable company has to do is press a few keys on their cheap computers in their cozy little offices to get the box at your house back on line. (And you thought their regular rates were bad!) If you did open it, maybe you could tell them that it fell on the floor during an earthquake or something. Or, you could do what I did. I told my cable operator that I was throwing away a TV, and was going to return my cable box. Well, I returned the box (after I closed it back up, of course) and about a month later I told my cable company that I got a new TV. I went to the cable office and picked up a new box. Result: I got a perfectly good box, while some dumb Wilson got the old tampered-with one! And, of course, the Wilson won't know what the hell's going on when his box doesn't work, so he'll call the cable company and complain. The cable company (arrogant as they all are) will naturally assume that this person was trying to tamper with it, and they aren't gonna believe anything this guy is gonna tell them. Ha! Ha! Ha! (That's just my sick sense of humor.) The point is: Don't open the damn box! Inside there are a hundred little dials, screws, and thingamabobers, but messing with them won't do you a lot of good if the box won't respond to any commands in the first place! I just recently downloaded from a local BBS the following instructions to make a cable descrambler. It appears to have been uploaded in 1988 (how's that for Sysop incompetence?) but it's worth a shot anyway. I'm almost certain that it won't work with a handful of cable systems because every one is different in its own little perverse kind of way. In Step 6, the author assumes that you will be using a cable box. I don't think that having a box is a requirement, because I don't have one, and my descrambler works just fine. On my cable system, boxes are an option for old TVs that don't go any higher than Channel 13, and TVs that you want to receive premium channels. So if you have one or not, don't sweat it. Enough talk! Whip out your wallet, your car keys, your soldering iron, and kick some cable company butt! HOW TO BUILD A PAY TV DESCRAMBLER: AUTHOR UNKNOWN ------------------------------------------------- Materials Required: 1 Radio Shack mini-box (RS #270-235) 1 1/4-watt resistor, 2.2k-2.4k ohm (RS #271-1325) 1 75pf-100pf variable capacitor (hard to find) 2 F61a chassis-type coaxial connectors (RS #278-212) 12" No. 12 solid copper wire 12" RG59 coaxial cable Instructions: 1. Bare a length of No. 12 gauge solid copper wire and twist around a 3/8-inch nail or rod to form a coil of nine turns. Elongate coil to a length of 1-1/2 inches and form right angle bends on each end. 2. Solder the variable capacitor to the coil. It doesn't matter where you solder it; it still does the same job. The best place for it is in the center with the adjustment screw facing upward. Note: When it comes time to place coil in box, the coil must be grounded. This can be done by crazy-gluing a piece of rubber to the bottom of the box and securing the coil to it. 3. Tap coil at points 2-1/2 turns from ends of coil and solder to coaxial chassis connectors, bringing tap leads through holes in chassis box. Use as little wire as possible. 4. Solder resistor to center of coil and ground other end of resistor to chassis box, using solder lug and small screw. 5. Drill a 1/2-inch-diameter hole in mini-box cover to permit adjustment of the variable capacitor from the outside. 6. Place device in line with existing cable on either side of the converter box and connect to a television set with the piece of RG59 coaxial cable. Set television to HBO channel. 7. Using a plastic screwdriver (or anything else nonmetallic), adjust the variable capacitor until picture tunes in. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!