You ARE allowed to own your own method of descrambler, provided
you only descamble what you are paying for! Let's say you have a
box from the cable company that allows you to get Showtime. So you
pay the extra $20 a month for that 1 channel on that 1 TV. You can
use your OWN descrabler to also get that channel in another room
of your home, as long as you are not watching it with the original
box. You paid for the ability to watch it on 1 TV. It's up to you
how you go about that.
As to stealing cable, that is a joke. They are using scare tactics
to try to get you to pay for something that they can not tell if
you are paying or not. Invasion of privacy claims keeps them from
actually knowing what you are doing, and rightfully so. What they
say and what they do are 2 totally different things. If you do as
I did once before, and climb the pole to connect the cable, if they
find it connected they disconnect it and that's it! No fines or
bills or nothing. Just because cable is going into your home does
NOT mean you are using it. They will check back for a week or so
to see if it's connected again, and if so, they will send you a
warning letter that tells you to stop connecting the cable or you
will be fined. But, still no fine at that point, just a warning.
If you waited a few weeks to reconnect the cable, chances are you
are good to go again, until they have a need to climb the pole for
servicing another customer, which could be years. This is not guessing
on my part, (which it seems many people are doing here), but has
been tested by many.
My only point is that since this is the worst case of stealing cable,
yet they do nothing to 95% of the people, how or why do you expect
them to know or do anything about the 100's of thousands that are
paying for cable, yet getting a couple extra channels for free?
Of course a few cable employess will respond to this thread that I
am full of it, and that they prosecute all, and other shills will
say how there buddy got busted and thrown in jail. Don't believe it!
Unless you are making money off of this, they worst they will do is
give you a warning for a first offense, but they must first figure
out how to catch you.
BTW, I pay $400 a year month for basic cable, and I would never buy
a box that allows me to get every channel at no additional charge
for a one time fee of $150 to $200. Never. If the cable company
changes formats, the box could be useless.
