02-23-2004, 04:40 PM
Quote:Seriously, I've never heard of a black box that doesnt get all the channels. Whats the point of getting illegal cable if you cant get it all?
Back in the day, all cable channels were mainly analog so hot boxes were hard to shut down. The cable companies got better technology eventually and began to change the frequencies of certain channels, mainly the movie chanels - but the hot-box people got wise and figured out ways around this. Eventually, cable channels just moved some channels out of the range of most analog boxes, thus rendering these stations "unviewable".
Now with Digital Cable, it's all but impossible - in theory - to use a hot box because the box itself acts like a computer and has an issigned IP address - plus the programming is digital and "pushed" to the box, instead of streamed like analog is. In other words, even if there was a digital hot-box, said box would have to "talk" to the cable company to "request" programming. I remember hearing about some kind of a connection that you hooked up between the cable feed and the cable box which essentially spoofed your IP address and let you view anything you wanted, but I haven't heard much else since so I think it was bogus.
My analog hotbox still works, but only up to channel 99 HBO is intermittent - sometimes it works, others it doesn't. The other pay channels work fine, however.