Basic Information on Cable Descramblers
A cable descrambler is allowing you to view pay-per-view and
premium channels. It is capable of restoring the picture and
sound of a scrambled channel.
Cable descramblers are legal products. Anyone is free to
purchase descramblers, converters or cable equipment, provided
they let the cable TV company know that they are using their
signal.
There is a wide variety of cable descramblers available for sale
on the market. A cable descrambler may cost between 55 dollars
and 450 dollars, depending on its quality feature and amount of
'service' provided. If you don't want to spend a large amount of
money on a cable descrambler, you may buy one from cable TV
companies that are renewing their equipment. But purchasing this
bargain cable descrambler will not necessarily mean that you
will receive all channels available, as it may not be compatible
with your cable network. Therefore, our advice is for you to buy
an up-to-date cable descrambler from your cable TV company. In
this way you will benefit from the latest technology at a
reasonable price, as cable TV companies usually have different
price offers for different customer budgets.
If you decide to still buy a cable descrambler off the market,
be careful what you are buying. Don't confuse cable descramblers
for converters. A converter is an electronic tuning device that
'changes' all channels broadcasted by the cable company and
outputs it into an RF signal on your TV set. It basically makes
your TV set get the channels even if your TV is not the cable
ready type. A converter will not be able to descrambler premium
channels that have been previously encoded. In order to view
these pay-per-view channels, you definitely need to use a cable
descrambler. And you need it even if you possess a cable ready
TV set.
You should know that a certain product type - combination
converter/descrambler is also available for sale on the market.
This is a device that is also descrambling pay-per-view or
premium channels. It encloses both a converter and a cable
descrambler and it transfers the signal directly to your TV set.
You can most commonly purchase it from your local cable TV
company.
In conclusion, cable descramblers are those magic little boxes
that are giving you the happy chance of watching HBO (and many
other channels your wife shouldn't know of!).