So what is the legality of this....

[Zef_66]

Alright, so the wife and I have limited cable TV. We have the most basic plan we can get. It has about 25 channels, but has the networks and we are happy. Well, my dad gave me his old TV, which is bigger than ours currently. So I set up the "new" TV in the living room, and am putting the extra TV in the spare room for whatever. When we had the cable hooked up, we only had one TV. But the cable guy said we might as well get two hooked up cause it would be the same price. So we had the master bedroom hooked up. So since we don't have a TV in the master bedroom, I have to switch it to the spare room.

Okay, so I open the cable box on the side of the house and go to change the line to the spare room. Well, I find this little silver thing in the incoming line, like a filter. I remove it and find out that we now have like 70 channels of TV. So that little filter was blocking over half the channels coming into the house. Well, being unsure of the legality of what I did, I put it back in. But now I am curious. Is it illegal to take this out? I mean, the cable company is sending all those channels to my house anyway. They are there, I just can't see them. So it is illegal for me to take out this filter from the box on my property, attacked to my house?

Thanks for your help.

[c.sander]

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[ScaredOnce]

It's surely against the subscriber agreement you signed. But it'd never been an issue if you weren't an upstanding, moral individual. If you delete your post I'll delete this one. While it "may" not be legal, it's in the same realm of the way I stock up on taco sauce packs at Sheetz at lunch time every couple of weeks.

Sleep soundly...

[phillyshooter]

As the other posters said, shhhh.

Just make sure if you need the cable company to come out for anything, to place that filter back on.

[ungawa]

Okay, so I open the cable box on the side of the house and go to change the line to the spare room. Well, I find this little silver thing in the incoming line, like a filter. I remove it and find out that we now have like 70 channels of TV.

ROFL! I have never worked for a cable company but I have never heard of such a silly system. What would they do if you ordered more channels? Come swap out this "filter" with a custom one?

The image I have in my head is something the size of a chapstick that is probably not programmable (but how would I know). I wonder if it is intended for a purpose other than keeping you from channels you don't pay for - perhaps they are channels they don't offer in your area, or perhaps they don't want to offer them because they need to upgrade service in the area to provide them reliably.

Maybe the cable guy will chime in.

[bdevil73]

ROFL! I have never worked for a cable company but I have never heard of such a silly system. What would they do if you ordered more channels? Come swap out this "filter" with a custom one?

The image I have in my head is something the size of a chapstick that is probably not programmable (but how would I know). I wonder if it is intended for a purpose other than keeping you from channels you don't pay for - perhaps they are channels they don't offer in your area, or perhaps they don't want to offer them because they need to upgrade service in the area to provide them reliably.

Maybe the cable guy will chime in.

Actually, they do come and swap out filters. The use them to block channels that you are not paying for. My ex BIL used to work for Comcast. Don't know what they look like now, but the old ones looked kind of like a C02 cylinder for a pellet gun. Don't ask me how I know.

[knight0334]

You're legally allowed to added more TV's to your paid service. For the most part you're allowed in the SDU box to add another line so long as you dont tamper with the traps or filters. The cable company is only allowed to charge you per TV if they dont have a maintenance fee for any or all reception problems.

The removal of the trap/filter is a violation of federal law - "cable theft", tampering with communications devices or facilities. And also a violation of PA law - "Theft of service". Both can result in jail time and massive, I mean massive fines. The fines for the federal charges are around $25K if I remember correctly.

I used to engineer and manage two cable tv companies comprising of 15 systems at one time(merged several) in five counties. ...DuCom Cable TV and Treasure Lake Communications before we sold them to Comcast and Zito Media, some we shut down. In the course of time, '89-'06, working for those cables companies I reported and pressed charges on a dozen or more people that stole service from just having filters for descrambling to complete theft of service. A couple pleaded out to 1 day less than 2 years in Clearfield or Jefferson Co jails, plus fines, plus restitution, plus court costs, plus community service, plus probation. Of all that went to court - we won every case.

Most settled out of court for playing for service of the determined theft all the back to the time that our last tech was there to upgrade/downgrade/install/disconnect or to the point that they could prove that they moved into the dwelling.

[markheck1]

yes...it's called theft of services.....

[PisnNapalm]

Leave the filter in place. That's my reccomendation.

[Atomic Dog]

Leave the filter in place. That's my reccomendation.

I concur.










However, if a strong gust of wind came by and it happened to fall off.......

(get your attorney on speed dial)