Cable TV Left Open By the Internet Guy...can my buddy get caught?

[orty]

This is sort of a networking issue, as it was the cable internet guy that left this hole open.

A buddy of mine signed up for cable internet service. He does not get cable TV from the company, as it's much too expensive (he just has a set of rabbit ears to get the local channels). Anyway, just for kicks, he plugged into his TV the cable that was ran to his house for the Internet. He now has cable TV, and he's not paying for it.

Now, is there anyway he can get caught doing this? I'm trying to discourage him, as the last thing he needs to have happen is to have his sorry butt thrown in jail, but I can't really see how he'd get caught. The cable guy, it appears, opened the block in for the internet access and also opened it for the TV access. He doesn't have a cable box (our system here doesn't need one, just a cable TV) and he doesn't do anything fancy to get the signal. He's just got a cheapy Radio Shack signal splitter, with one piece of coax running to his cable modem and one to his TV.

He can't afford cable, and can barely afford internet. Personally, I think the cable companies are charging us too much for both, anyway, but that's my personal gripe. I guess I don't know enough about how the cable TV system works (blocks, filters, etc...) to know if he's safe. Any resources out there? Tips, hints? Ideas? Is my buddy goin' to jail?

 

[rocmonster]

<< He can't afford cable, and can barely afford internet. Personally, I think the cable companies are charging us too much for both, anyway >>



last time I checked, the U.S. Constitution didn't include the right to steal cable if you can't afford it, and the fact that a service is too expensive is not justification for stealing it. Will your friend get caught? Anything's possible.



<< I guess I don't know enough about how the cable TV system works (blocks, filters, etc...) to know if he's safe. Any resources out there? Tips, hints? Ideas? >>



Why would you want to get involved in your friends scam?

 

[trend]

ha, well ..... hmmm.... it would be a good case in court... but really they cannot track this down.

alright.......................................... you know how they can tell you how many people watched a show. they do this buy seeing how strong of a signal they get back at their office. so everytime a tv comes on, the signal degrades just a little. since nobody keeps their tv on all the time. it would be hard to see an addition decreaese or signal (measured in volts or something).


this info might be old school, and if I am wrong please email me, because this is how it used to be, i don't know about it now because of sat. tv and such,

this is just how it probably is done


in conclusiion, no he is 'probably' never going to get caught. even if he did, it would be a good court case.

 

[kind-of-blue]

Technically its illegal, however if you, oops I mean your &quot;buddy&quot;, doesn't report the problem chances are low that you would ever get a knock on the door from the Cable Police. Think about the court costs involved in prosecuting every Joe Schmoe who finds themselves in this &quot;unfortunate&quot; situating. Free cable, perish the thought

Since it is the cable companies resposibility to attach the filter that blocks cable feed, you can at least use this defence if you ever get caught.

Your &quot;buddy&quot; might not go to jail if caught but as an accomplice you might

 

[Neoplasia]

Always the chance that he'll get billed and/or sued for the Cable TV service even though he didn't sign up for it. I've heard of this happening before (forget where, I'm sure some of you remember this story). The best thing to do would be to have it blocked, if for nothing else than to cover his ass.

 

[Eug]

My thought was they had no way of knowing short of specifically checking.

However, when my ex-girlfriend moved into a new place she didn't get cable. About 6 months later I plugged the TV in just for kicks, and whaddya know? Free cable. The next day the cable van showed up and disconnected it. Probably just coincidence, but it was damn creepy. :Q

 

[orty]

kind-of-blue: Hehe...I had to laugh at that, as it really is my buddy, and not me. If I had free cable, you think I would mention it to anybody, let alone publicize it on Anandtech? Don't think so!

Regardless, I'm probably going to stay out of it, just tell him to have fun with it, and to not come crying to me if/when he gets busted. I was curious about the whole technology behind it (as I knew there were many ways for the cable companies to check if you're using an unauthorized cable box), more out of curiousity then of trying to screw the cable company.

Take it easy, guys!
-orty

 

[Taz4158]

BTW they can tell if someone's running what they shouldn't. Most cable companies have this ability.

 

[orty]

Yeah, I'm sure the cable companies have this ability, but how they check for illegal usage is what I'm wondering about. I know the various methods they use to check for illegal or tampered cable boxes, but I haven't a clue how they check it. The signal strength thing (trend's post) sounded interesting to me, but it doesn't seem to show how single people can be tracked that way. The overall strength would go down, but that wouldn't be able to point to a single person (correct me if I'm wrong). If anybody has any web sites that show more about the actual technology behind cable TV and the electronics and filtering methods behind it, I'd love to see it. I'm not a hacker by any means, but this kind of stuff is interesting to me.

BTW: My friend has already decided to pull the plug, as he got paranoid. He's still paying for his internet, as it's still the fastest game in town right now (DSL here is lousy as the phone lines are so bad). He's hooked his rabbit ears back up and is enjoying the 3 channels he gets .

 

[Wik]

A friend of mine has had free cable TV untill he moved back to Iowa. His apartment near Chicago he lived in for a year and never payed for cable yet he had it with movie channels. He then moved to Peoria and when I hooked up his TV to the cable in the wall, free cable. He then signed up for cable interenet and after the cable dude left his cable TV was still there. When he moved back to Iowa we tried the cable and now signal. So he signed up for his cable interenet and the basic cable service for $10 with just the first 13 channels. The cable dude could not figure out how to only let him have the basic channels and told him &quot;well looks like you get a free upgrade&quot; So he has full cable for the basic price. About 4 years of free cable for him.

 

[MiniMe69]

How many of you peeps split your one connection into 2 or 3 signals to multiple TVs without paying for all 3? I do it here and have never been caught. Everyone I know does it. So as for your friend using the cable from the wall...go ahead...chances are no one will ever find out.

 

[aUt0eXebat]

here you dont have to pay for aditional tv outs for the cable... i have 3 cable tvs right now. I think one way they can check, is through some kind of program they have there. cus my mom use to block some channels so we couldnt get it, and if they can block some, i sure they can see what we watch...

 

[coopa]

our house has cable modem and cable tv. In my room i only have a cable modem outlet. i think that the two cable lines are seperate becasue our tv cable wasnt good enough when we got @home installed. I dont have a tv, but coul i buy a splitter for the cable and a wintv and have cable on my computer?? wouldent that be cool... and if they found out i was using the internet cable for the tv I could say i thought that it was an outlet for reg. cable right?

 

[Unclemo]

Here nearby Chicago you can have as many cable runs as you desire with no charge (as long as in the same house of course). I... mmmm 12 TVs running off of cable. But the signal really starts to suck. Just this morning I installed a new (real, non radio$hit) amplified cable distribution hub... helped a lot. Oh, and we would call and bitch to our ATT cable co. all the time that our reception sucked. They just kept on telling us we have too many TVs off it.

BTW, I say &quot;oooppps&quot; I did not know I was not paying... i thought it came with the cable internet. I am sure they get questions from subscribers asking if cable TV comes with it.

 

[perry]

I lived in a place where we got free cable. We started the service for a month then decided that Primestar made more sense (6 of us living there, full package came out to like $12/month each) so we called MediaOne and cancelled the cable service. No one ever came out to disconnect it so we had free cable service for the next 11 months. That was pretty cool.

My neighbors here in my current apartment have free cable. It was still connected when they moved in so they never started the service up. No one ever came knocking at their door.

I do believe that the way they track how many people watch a TV show is through the Nielsen boxes and then just extrapolate the numbers across the entire country. There really isn't any way of knowing exactly how many people are watching a particular TV show, AFAIK.

 

[Daniel]

In my area they don't care how many times you split the cable either, running 3 tvs here and when the guy came to hook up @home he just added another splitter to the tv near the pc and was good to go.

 

[Mday]

he can get caught. but will he? probably not.

if the company finds out, they'll just take the guy to court. lawsuit for the services...

 

[Orbius]

It's not like he went out of his way to steal cable, it's the Cable companies mistake. Relax, sit back and enjoy the cable. The fact that it's their mistake completely removes any liability you may have. I mean can you imagine a jury convicting a guy of cable fraud when its the companies fault? Never happen in a million years.

I get HBO here at the house because they never shut it off, I feel thankful that I get it, but I don't feel the least bit guilty watching it. Thanks Cable company .

 

[MissingLinc]

I have a hard time believing the cable company can magically glean remotely that he is stealing cable. I have heard rumor of them polling cable boxes to see if there were any unauthorized mods made to the box, but I think that has to be a particular model of box rented out to the user. Since your friend goes right into his TV I do not see a need to worry. I am not going to judge the rightness or wrongness, but if the cable company was really concerned about people watching basic channels so much, they really should brief their installers to make sure not to leave any 'loose ends'.

In my area, Cox charges $30/month for the cable modem service (not including the modem itself) if you already subscribe to TV cable. Otherwise they charge $40/month, so the extra $10 covers the basic lineup!

BTW, make sure the splitter is a good one. A cheap two-way splitter degrades signal a lot more than one that you pay $10-$12 for. Having a crappy splitter upstream from your cable modem will probably degrade performance.

There is no difference in the cable running to the TV and cable modem. Hopefully, the cable company at least used the higher quality coax (RG-6) to hook up the cable modem. I use the RG-6 on both (I had to buy some for my TV but the cable guy used RG-6 for the modem --told me it was standard for cable modems).

 

[orty]

So what would be a good splitter? I've seen the cheapy splitters at Radio Shack, but I don't know if I trust them at all for much of anything. I've heard that the ones that amplify the signal can be bad for Internet data.

And what's the dif between RG-6 and regular cable? Any place on the web I can find some of this stuff? All the electronics stores in this town are staffed by idiots, so I'm turning to the Web. I'm working on wiring up a new house that I'm working on, and I wanted to make sure I get it right so I don't have to get under the house and fix it down the road.

Thank for all your help, guys!
-orty

 

[MissingLinc]

I see &quot;good&quot; passive (unamplified) cable splitters at Lowe's and in department stores electronics sections. You will basically pay $10-$12 for a two-way (the gold-plated RCA two-way for instance, with a 2.5dB loss per channel, IIRC). I even replaced the four-way splitter in the cable junction box outside of my house with a better one (the cable guy never hung a 'tamper-indicating' tag on it), which I paid $25 for at a local electonics supply store.

The end game is less signal loss, which requires better components. The cable modem installer also told me not to use an amplified splitter because they usually negatively affect cable data transmission. I guess those guys are trained to say that because the majority of amplified cable splitters out there are not very good quality (especially in regular department stores, where low prices are the goal) and often introduce more noise into the path along with the gain (the noise figure probably gets worse outside of the cable TV freqs, since the designer is on a budget and figured the viewer had no need for the other stuff). Perhaps the amplified splitter may affect upstream operation. I have not researched into it. The only reason to have an amplified splitter is if you have too many splits to retain decent signal quality, in which case, I would do the following: put a good passive two-way splitter at the junction box (or as far upstream as you possibly can get without treading on the cable company's territory which borders at your junction box), connecting one channel directly to the cable modem and the other branch to the amplified splitter which will feed the TVs. That will leave your cable modem out of the path of the amplified splitter. If you live in an apartment complex, college dorm, or other high-occupancy building, it is quite possible to get poor cable signal performance because there are too many ports in use for the equipment, crappy splitters (ampified or unamplified) in use, etc. Try to work with the proprietor to get better stuff (even if you have to buy a couple of good splitters and RG-6 for the path between the junction box, where the cable company's responsibility ends, and your dwelling --good luck). Remember, the cable company is more than happy to take care of anything downstream from the junction box for you... for a price

RG-6 cable can be found at any decent electronics store... even online I am sure. It is a higher spec and costs a little more than regular RG-58 but it is definitely worth it, IMO. You should find RG-6 printed on the cable jacket if it is indeed RG-6 spec. I have always sweet-talked the cable guys into some every time I meet them. Amazing what 'warming' them up with a friendly conversation and offering a cold drink will do... after all, the cable comes out of the company's budget (buying in bulk is a lot cheaper), not his pocket. Great customer service.

BTW, if you have any open cable jacks, even on a splitter, screw a 75-ohm terminator on them (better yet, disconnect the unused cables at the junction box, leave them hanging, and terminate at the main splitter until you need those cables). 75-ohm terminators for cable TV can be found at most dept stores and Radio Shack pretty cheap. The terminator prevents signal losses due to standing waves developed by the 'open' ports.

I do not know how I got on this signal quality kick, but there you go. Sorry I got so long winded.

 

[ProfessorD]

You have got to see this article regarding this issue. It blew my mind a few weeks ago when I read it.

 

[Ryu]

Trend is right about how cable companies check if you getting service that you shouldn't, at least in my area. I've talked to the cable guy when he installed my cable modem, they put frequency filters on ur line to block out the channels and at time they do random checks at the outside tap to see if your pulling in too much signal.

Also on the amplifier/cable modem issue, i have no idea how the stuff really works but from what the cable guy told me the data is on the return frequency and putting an amp on increases the noise which will hurt ur cable modem. ne one an electrical engineer wanna explain it for us?

 

[Jamey]

The amplifiers must be two-way if you use them (as per my cable installer). Most amplify one way. My cable guy recommended their's for $75. I decided against that route. I just split the signal, run one to my modem, and the other to my (cheaper) amplifier. From the amplifier, I split and run I run to 6+ TV outlets. Picture is decent to good, and my cable modem works fine.

 

[Orbius]

Nice scare story there, the story is more about bureacratic BS than about anything to do with cable though. Trust me if that was me I'd be speaking to someone in management threatening to counter-sue their ass for bringing a frivolous lawsuit, it was their fault that the cable was turned on in the first place. The guy was scared when he should have been brave.

Also thanks for the info on the splitters, I just installed a TV tuner card in my PC and I fear i'm using a sub-standard splitter. I sit pretty far away from the 32&quot; tv so I never noticed the poor quality but when I switch the tv tuner to full screen I get nasty lines. If I get really close to the 32&quot; I notice them too, thought it was my TV tuner at first.