From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!cbosgd!mark Newsgroups: net.video Title: Re: Ripoff features of T.V. sets Article-I.D.: cbosgd.<2970 Posted: Tuesday, 11-Jan-83 13:26:36 EST Received: Thu Jan 13 03:35:00 1983 References: eagle.719 For what it's worth, here in Columbus, our cable TV company ("Coaxial Communications", we aren't in the QUBE area) uses three (!) different kinds of protection. HBO is broadcast on channel 2, with a filter in the line if you don't pay for it. (We're in an underground wiring area, so there is no pole to climb to access the cable TV box.) The movie channel is broadcast "scrambled" on channel 17, and clear on channel 23. They give you a switch box that only goes up to channel 22 unless you have paid for the extra channels from 23 up. (I understand they are phasing out the clear TMC - when we moved they replaced our box that went up to 39 with a box that only goes up to 22, with channels 2-13 on our VHF tuner and 14-22 on the box sitting on top of the TV. If we had remote control we could use it for ch 2-13, but since we don't, we wear out our mechanical tuner even though we have cable!) By the way, for those of you who think QUBE is neat and wish you could get it (it's the system with feedback from the viewer) be warned that there are nasties involved. QUBE bills you for each movie you actually watch, even if you only watch a small portion! I've seen complaints in the local "Action Line" column about people being billed for movies they didn't watch, and Warner Amex is much less cheerful about fixing mistakes on the bill than your local phone company. Action line is a real heavyweight, but was unable to get QUBE to change its mind.