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--- Friday, October 28, 2005

"How does a digital cable descrambler/filter work?"

Permalink: 10/28/2005 11:19:00 PM | << Back Home

"There are TONS of ads for these "digital descramblers". They are NOTHING MORE THAN A HIGH PASS FILTER! They do not work!

What these things do is prevent a cable modem or digital cable box from talking back to the cable company, therefore it will not report Pay-Per-View purchases back to the cable company. Here's the catch though: The cable company is constantly polling the digital box for signal levels, purchases, and troubleshooting information. If it doesn't hear back from the box, they will flag your account and roll a service call truck on it. Since there is no way for you to clear the PPV purchases out of the boxes' memory, you're going to end up getting charged someday anyway.

Don't waste your money."

-- Source: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/6893

I always saw ads for these things and googled... this came up. :) Sneaky, glad I didn't buy one of those, heh.

HOWEVER:

On the Comcast DVRs there is a way to erase them completey and reset everything. I'm *not sure* if this will dump the order list/history or whatever... but if you're interested anyway here's how to do it:
To format the drive, you go into diagnostics mode (turn the box off then immediately press select) then press replay, replay, replay, my dvr, my dvr, my dvr, live, live, live. That quick formats the drive. Give it a try.

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