10/25 The cable company has recently added a filter to block out
channel 34-70 on my cable TV. Do they have an electronic way
of knowing whether a filter is present or not for "basic
cable" subscriber? Or do they do this one by one. I've been
without the filter for quit many years. -curious
\_ Dear Curious the Furious: No, they don't know electronically
and they rarely enforce the rules. Go ahead and take it out
but note that you may get fined heavily if someone reports you.
\_ they periodically go and check the cable distribution boxes
where these things are installed, and will notice if it is
suddenly gone. Most likely they'll just put it back.
\_ When I moved to my house in Fremont in 2000, the cable was already
connected. So I enjoyed free cable for a year until the company
somehow figured out and quietly removed a connector in my cable box.
I heard that one way they figure out is that they run specific
infomercials on certain channels. If you don't subscribe to those
channels and you call the phone numbers in those infomercials, they
send someone to check your cable box. (That wasn't the case for me
because I never call any numbers from infomercials.
\_ I enjoyed similar case when I moved into my apt last year.
Something changed in the past few months, so now I get zero
reception on channels 2-6 and mediocre receptions on 36 and up.
I don't understand how things could've changed that blocks 2-6,
but not 7 and up.
\_ Maybe you now don't have cable signal at all, and your cable
wire is acting as an antenna and is picking up the radio
signals for Ch7 and up. You can try disconnecting your wire
from the wall but leaving it connected to the TV and see what
happens. -- PP
\_ These aren't over the air broadcasts. I'm still getting
comedy central and other cable channels. Disconnecting
will make all the channels go away, as most channels are
"snowy" as it is. I've also tried switching my tv's
signal setting from "cable" to "antennae" for shits and
giggles and it wouldn't pick up any channels. I'm wondering
if the cable guy disconnected it from the splitter in the
building junction box, but it's close enough to pick up the
signal? |