majortool
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We call them cheaters boxes. All the Pay-per-View. Put this together with a programmable VCR and shit was off the hook.
One time, my parents recorded While You Were Sleeping with Sandra Bullock and we sat down to watch it the next day, and VHS tapes have that 10 seconds of blank tape at the beginning and then instantly it was porn. Right at the good part, too, because the porn movies were different lengths than the actual movie.
Still in my head I see my parents tripping over the coffee table trying to reach the VCR.
We call it the Before You Were Sleeping incident.
Vidikron
I had one. Since whichever pay per view played the movie over and over, I may have watched The Green Mile more times than I should admit.
hushpuppyextraordinaire
We had one in the 80s
daeval
Pretty sure this was just a converter box, usually called a cable box. It took a signal from a coax input, provided by your cable company, and turned it into something you could watch on an RF or composite output, which was what pretty much every TV had on the back. These were the transition between antennae and over-the-air signals to through-a-cable signals. Turning it into a descrambler required modification, or were third party hardware that wouldn't have been from a big brand like Zenith.
daeval
Still cool to see though! It's been a long, long time.
localdisturbance
bring back tech being made of wood. and furniture, while we're at it
decarnatedame
This was the model of cable box our local company handed out. It wasn't a cheater box for us.
lightfoot2
Hm, I thought that was a remote control, not a descrambler. Oddly enough I remember Grandpa's "Space Command", it was a remote that had tuning forks in it. The TV would listen for that audio frequency and do whatever when the button was pressed.
sevro77
I remember having a couple of boxes, one was a small grey Panasonic box that had the decryption scheme for this Zentith box. Then we switched to the Directv hacks.
majortool
$10 fucking dollars a month, Ricky!
Exyr
My mom's boyfriend had a chipped cable box. It was the tits.
majortool
Until they zap your mom's box. I said what I said.
Exyr
Oh yeah they tried that a couple times.