Back in the 80s some guy in the mid west was watching HBO for free with his backyard dish. HBO sued and lost, the courts saying the signal is on his property HBO should take action to protect is product the homeowner was not libael. HBO started the whole encryption game withe Video cypher II encryption , decryption system. In fact in the 1950;s it was used for our Nuclear weapons safeguarding.
The day came the HBO was to flip the switch for satellite owners and force them to pay if they wanted to watch HBO and many other programmers who followed suit, HBO was so confident they offered a $100,000 challenge to any one who could break the encryption codes. I'm not sure on the the exact date but lets say January 15th 1985 or thereabouts HBO scrambled there signal! at 10 AM a group of Hobbyist broke the signal retrans it for all to see, and wanted there $100,000 reward. HBO quicky point out that hacking into there signal was against the law and they were not going to pay.
Was breaking the encription code illegal ??? HBO took to court and the court ruled that since it was there hackers own equipment they had broken no laws and HBO was left once again misinformed about who they were. Remind any one of AT&T. During this time period up till 1999 I chiped more VCII, yes they tried to epoxy the circuit boards, nope found a way around that they would change autorizion keys, nope got new ones, at a $1000 a box 5 to 7 a week I would like to thank HBO for one bumbling move after another.
Than in 1998 the Digital Millennium act came about 5 years in prison and up to $50,000 fine for modifying or altering any encryption system. so if you own or lease the singal now really does belong to HBO and the rest of the programmers. So if you open up the cable box and put in a bigger Hard Drive you are breaking the law and could lose some coin if you get caught. As I understand it Comcast can tell if you add 50 ft of cable to your setup, I have no doubt they could easy see there hard drive triple in size. I wrote this from memory only so if i'm off on some date or the order of the facts, save the criqticking and take it on down the line.