167 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
167 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
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|| Cable Piracy ||
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|| by ||
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|| Psycho Bear ||
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|| Thanks: Mad Poo Bandit ||
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After reading another G-file on cable theft that was almost completely
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inaccurate and totally wrong, I felt that I was obligated to write a G-file
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about cable piracy that really does work.
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BACKGROUND:
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-----------
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There are two ways to scramble pay-channels (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, The
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Movie Channel, Disney, Playboy, Bravo, etc.). I call them the "old" way and
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the "new" way. (Yeah I know it's dumb)
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The "old" way of scrambling channels works this way: The cable company
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sends a clean, unscrambled signal of ALL the pay-channels, and only at the
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"junction box", "cable box", "green dome" or "beige dome" are they scrambled
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(this is not really true...a few channels like Disney, in my area, are
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scrambled...so you'll just have to go without Goofy).
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The cable company sends a clean signal out to a neighborhood in large 2
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inch diameter underground cable. At every 4 houses; 4 houses square, that is
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to say you, your next door neighbor, the house behind you, and the house
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behind your next door neighbor (or every 2 if your house backs up to a street
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or a park etc.) this underground cable comes out of the ground and into a
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"green dome" ("beige dome" if it's every 2 houses) is split into 4 separate
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coaxial cables (the same size as the cable in the back of your TV), and the
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signal boosted. Then, depending on what each of the 4 houses subscribes to,
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certain channels are scrambled.
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The cable company scrambles channels by screwing the cable into a 3"
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metal cylinder. These cylinders can range in size from 2" to 4" but it is
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usually 3". The cylinder will have a sticker on it with one or more letters
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telling what channel(s) is scrambles. For instance if it scrambles channel
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20, it will say "NF-G", the last F being the important letter. If it
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scrambles channels 20,21,22 it will say "NF-GHI". Cable companies are weird,
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so they might put two of these cylinders on, say one "NF-G" and one "NF-HI",
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but it will do the same job the as the aforementioned.
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GETTING CABLE IF YOU DON'T SUBSCRIBE:
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-------------------------------------
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This is for the "old" way you've just read about. First, you'll have to
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find where the "green dome" is. The "green dome" will be either a green dome
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(of course) or a beige dome, with a yellow "Cable theft is naughty" sticker on
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it. Like I said above, you have a one in 4 (or 1 in 2) chance of having it in
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your own backyard. If it's not in your backyard, then find out whose backyard
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it is in, and go over there some day when they're at work or something.
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Now that you've located it, you must get the master lock off. There are
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three proven methods of doing this. You can either kick the living shit out
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of it, or take some pliers and grab the loop that the lock goes into, and bend
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it off by twisting it back and forth, or take heavy duty wire cutters and cut
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the loop off. And don't worry about the damage you've done; cable men do the
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exact same thing, and if you're lucky they might have done it already! So it
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won't appear to be anything out of the ordinary.
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Once you've got the lock off, you can take the big green dome off. You
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will see a box with 4 terminals (places to screw in cable):
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_______
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/ \
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| o o |
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| | <-- the "box", each "o" is a
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| o o | terminal to screw in a
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\_______/ cable
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| |
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| | <-- metal pole/big cable
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they may or may not be any cable currently screwed into these depending on if
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you and your neighbors subscribe to cable. If someone does not subscribe to
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cable, there will simply be a terminal where the cable is not screwed in. The
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terminal where the cable is not screwed in might have a little dull grey 1"
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cylinder to prevent you from getting cable free. See, the cylinder is hollow
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and will carry no signal, so if you reconnect the cable to it, you will get
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nothing. DO NOT RIP IT OUT!!! I have, and it will rip the terminal right out
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with it and then the cable company WILL come out to fix it. These things use
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the same idea as child-proof bottles; you have to push "in"/towards the "box"
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and then unscrew. It will take awhile to do this, so don't get perturbed.
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So, if you are not currently subscribing to cable at all, there will be
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an unused terminal, and one end of a cable lying somewhere in the dome. All
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you have to do is reconnect the unused cable to the unused terminal, and there
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you go! Instant Cable with all pay-channels included!
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If you are paranoid, you can connect it at 6 pm (when the cable company
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closes for the day), and then disconnect it before 9 or 10 am. This way, even
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if they come out and look at it, it will be disconnected--nothing unusual.
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Of course you can leave it hooked up ALL the time. It sounds crazy, but
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Mad Poo has had the cable company come to his house four times and work on his
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box, and they didn't say a word! I guess the cable linemen don't have records
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of what everyone subscribes to.
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GETTING PAY-CHANNELS IF YOU ARE ALREADY A BASIC SUBSCRIBER:
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-----------------------------------------------------------
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If you are currently subscribing to the basic cable service, and you want
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all the pay-channels that you aren't already subscribing for, read this.
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First you'll want to find out which cable/terminal you are. Go turn on your
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TV and then go out to the green dome and unscrew one of the cables from a
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terminal. Go back inside and see if you've disconnected the cable for
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yourself. Once you find which cable disconnects yours, your done. And DON'T
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leave your neighbors unconnected or the cable company WILL come out.
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Remember how I said that cable companies scramble the pay-channels?
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(above, in the BACKGROUND section) Well, those 3" metal cylinders are kept in
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black plastic cases about 9" long. There are a few ways of getting the
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cylinders off. The first is to get some pliers and grab the cable tight,
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close to the black cylinder. Then grabbing the black cylinder as tight as you
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can (so that it grips the cylinder inside), unscrew the cable. Once you've
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got one side unscrewed, do the other side.
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The second way is to get wire cutters and cut up the edge of the black
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plastic cylinder. This is a lot easier, and this way you actually get to see
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the 3" metal cylinders inside. I recommend this one.
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When you're done with that, either attach the cable coming out of the
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ground to the terminal (leaving you with one short length of cable; go use it
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inside your house or something), or get a male-to-male coaxial cable converter
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and attach the two (this will not look suspicious, as the cable company uses
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them too).
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THE "NEW" WAY OF SCRAMBLING SIGNALS:
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------------------------------------
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Just like phreaking has it's ESS, so cable piracy has it's Addressable
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Converter Box. The "new" way works like this. You have an Addressable
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Converter Box at your house, which means that the cable company can talk to
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your converter box and tell it which channels you are currently subscribing
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to. ALL pay-channels are pre-scrambled (there is never a "clean" signal to
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tap into, so the "old" way of cable piracy won't work). If you are currently
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subscribing to HBO/channel 33, then the cable company will send a signal to
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your converter box saying "un-scramble channel 33". So your converter box
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will unscramble that channel.
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The Addressable Converter Box is weird. Every hour or so, the cable
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company will send out a signal to EVERY Addressable Converter Box and
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depending on it's Address, it will tell it which services it gets.
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Say my Converter Box's Address is 12345679 and I get HBO. So I take my
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Converter Box to Mad Poo Bandit's house (who doesn't get HBO), and hook it up.
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Then we can watch HBO over at his house now. See, the Converter Box can be
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ANYWHERE. The only thing the cable company looks for is the Address of the
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Box.
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There are a couple of reasons you can't pirate cable with the "new" way.
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One G-file talked about subscribing to ALL the pay-channels, waiting for the
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cable company to send the signal to your Addressable Converter Box telling it
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to un-scramble ALL the pay-channels. Then disconnecting the cable from the
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Addressable Convert Box, calling them up and unsubscribing to all the
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channels. Then when the cable company sends the signal to NOT un-scramble any
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pay-channels, it will not reach the Addressable Converter Box because you have
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disconnected it.
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There are two problems with this idea. First, the cable company (in my
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area anyway) sends out the signal telling Addressable Converter Boxes what to
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un-scramble, and what not to, every hour or so. So once you re-connect cable
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after the little scheme, you'd lose the channels in about an hour or two.
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The second problem is that if you leave it unconnected for too long (a
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few weeks-a few months) the RAM of the Addressable Converter Box will go bad
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and forget even how to work at all! This is no bullshit! When it happens,
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you have to call up the cable company and ask for them to re-initialize your
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Addressable Converter Box.
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AFTERWORD:
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In some areas, they have not made the transition from the "old" way to
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the "new" way completely. This is obvious: not everyone is going to go out of
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THEIR way to get a stupid Addressable Converter Box. So the cable company
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must use BOTH ways. So you'll have a the "old" scrambled HBO on say channel
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20, and the "new" scrambled HBO on channel 33. If you are in the transition,
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you can still use the "old" way of cable piracy.
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