Was anyone doing this hack around 1985?
Posted by -Granby-@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 171 comments
Anyone remember doing this? An analogue cable box and an index card would get you free HBO, Showtime and Cinemax.
hamellr@reddit
Watching 80s porn like this just hit different too.
Newt_the_Pain@reddit
Good ole Lady Chatterly and her lovers...
Kreesto_1966@reddit
I did something similar. Where I lived we had Warner Qube which was susceptible to a magnet on the back to unlock premium and adult channels. It was flaky as hell, but when you're a kid looking to see boobies, the 30 seconds or so it would stay tuned in was gold.
gaporkbbq@reddit
When I was a kid, I went out to the cable box and saw there were tubes (filters, I guess) connecting lines of the coaxial cable. When I removed them and reconnected the ends, free HBO and Cinemax. Too easy.
UnanimousControversy@reddit
Yep. Same.
HackedCylon@reddit
Yup. They were nothing more than band-stop capacitor/inductor pairs. From a materials cost POV, it was more expensive for them to not give HBO than to give HBO.
AdhesiveSeaMonkey@reddit
Same! Ours were even labeled "HBO", "Cinemax," etc.
Blue_Henri@reddit
Folded playing card behind the dial to make it stick in the zone.
Mysterious_Winter164@reddit
What did this do?
Blue_Henri@reddit
The squiggly lines from the blocked channels would “tune” to something approaching watchable.
sidewaysbynine@reddit
Not saying I did or did not dig into the wall between my apartment and the one next door and daisy chain into their cable, but I will say I didn't have a cable bill
Micheal_Noine_Noine@reddit
Herandar@reddit
"I see a nipple! ...or an eyepatch..."
TechnicallyMeat@reddit
NeverEverMaybe0_0@reddit
Oh hell yes. Years before I also broke the hasp on the 2" post by the curb to reconnect the coax.
Ok-Wheel8149@reddit
My uncle scored us a black box which was all of the movie channels including soft porn. I was 10 or 11 years old checking out boobies for the first time.
HiredGoon_40@reddit
Would this get you the playboy channel?
Agreeable-Remove1592@reddit
In my town 31 was the Playboy channel. I was in fifth or sixth grade at the time and you NEVER wanted to say the number 31 in class. Because if you said the number 31 in class, all the kids would start hooting and hollering implying that you were watching something naughty.
Regular teachers knew to avoid the number 31 . But substitute teachers did not . Hilarity ensued on substitute teacher days ….
HiredGoon_40@reddit
The 6-7 of 198X 😄
-Granby-@reddit (OP)
Yes it would
Goodrun31@reddit
Good night this information is gold … I never heard this! Our old boxes were brown with a slider channel changer. Also we didn’t have cable … 😕
goblinspot@reddit
Holy teenage boy flashback. 😂😂😂😈🧴🤧
Neomorder224@reddit
Every Friday and Saturday nite 😉
glucoman01@reddit
Wait! I think I can see it.
rubberduck71@reddit
I get this joke! Take my upvote...
jk_pens@reddit
And mine
aimlesscruzr@reddit
Mine too
Main-Video-8545@reddit
I had four boxes set up like that at my house at one point. We ran that way for years.
sdhank3fan619@reddit
My brother bought one off the Cox cable guy for $50. It had a clipped wire in the back with an alligator clip to reconnect them. Wanted the pay channels just unclip it.
Scared-Ideal-1483@reddit
What did this do? We had a pirate box for years and never did any tricks to it.
-Granby-@reddit (OP)
This was just a regular cable box. If you didn't subscribe the premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Playboy and Spice were scrambled. When you stuck the index card in like that and jiggled it around it unscrambled the channel.
F_is_for_Ducking@reddit
We get that, but how?
Scared-Ideal-1483@reddit
That's interesting.
arothmanmusic@reddit
Playing card. Free Showtime! And then Viacom came around and replaced the boxes with new ones that used proprietary screws…
DoookieMaxx@reddit
you mean you had cable?!?! We didn’t have the cable.
JQAdams1825@reddit
YOU HAD A TV?? We didn’t have a TV. We had to re-enact the shows with sock puppets in a cardboard box.
ArgentMoonWolf@reddit
You had cardboard and socks? Hell, we just watched the dinosaurs eat the neighbors, that was our entertainment.
mburke6@reddit
Our cable box looked like this In 1979/80, we got cable and had an HBO subscription. To view the other pay channels like Cinemax, you would halfway press the HBO button while halfway pressing the Cinemax button then jam a couple toothpicks to hold the buttons. It would work for 15 minutes before you would need to re-adjust.
After a couple years my mom canceled our cable and I watched the technician climb up the telephone pole and unhook the cable leading to our house. Late one night, I climbed up there and reconnected it. I bought a cable ready tuner box from Radio Shack and we had free cable for years in my bedroom. RIP Radio Shack.
Capable-View4706@reddit
Friend in high school came from very poor family so no cable but a storm turned their antenna toward the cable junction box on a pole in their corner lot. Could get cable channels 2-13 bit snowy but better than 4 channels
fdader@reddit
We got HBO in 1979 and I remember they had 20 minute breaks between movies with a camera moving through, what I believe was, Central Park.
MarcusAurelius68@reddit
In the 90’s when I lived in NYC I knew a guy who knew a guy and for $150 I got a black box that decrypted every channel. Just had to pay for basic cable.
AcidRayn66@reddit
ex local 3 guy here and yea, the black boxes were the shit! then the hacked cards for sat tv in the later 90’s. i always “had a guy” lol
MarcusAurelius68@reddit
My FIL is ex Local 3...the stories he told me about job sites in Manhattan...
AcidRayn66@reddit
believe every single thing he told you! i lived it. so much fun. the shit we got away with. ask him if he knows the story of the boat disappearing at the javitz center. that was a fucking classic!
kelso_boy@reddit
I bought a card from a guy for our Dish Network receiver. It was wild getting all the locals from every city. There was never not an episode of Simpsons or Cops on.
Kooky_Werewolf6044@reddit
I had one of those boxes. As the box aged the stations started getting interference and got worse and worse over the years. I still got my moneys worth out of it though.
Latter-Confidence-44@reddit
Had a tree branch knock down the cable in my first apartment (renting a basement in a rowhouse), so I pulled off the signal filters while it was laying on the ground and the tech just put it back up on the pole and suddenly I had all the channels. It was the best.
DorktorJones@reddit
My brother climbed the pole in our backyard and removed the filter. Pre cable I recall a salesman coming around and pitching one of those giant dishes.
digawina@reddit
This was our box too. I used the fine-tuning dial on the side to get fuzzy Cinemax.
And I remember the FIGHTS amongst siblings if one stole the box from the other when one had to get up to go to the bathroom. "I call the box!" ... goes to the bathroom. "Tough shit."
teach4food@reddit
TIL i coulda hacked that box!
Tiny_Arugula_5648@reddit
I used to create line filters that would descramble cable.. I think I got the design from 2600 Magazine (hacker zine). Turns out "scrambling" was just extra signal added and if you removed that using a specific notch frequency filter you got free cable. They looked something like this..
Later on I used to pop the cards on DirectTV boxes and that would give all channels and Pay per view but that was much harder..
shotsallover@reddit
The way DirectTV closed that hole was pretty genius, I have to admit.
Tiny_Arugula_5648@reddit
By losing their business to Netflix? =P
shotsallover@reddit
That too.
No, they did a year long multi patch that looked innocuous until the last part came down, combined them all, and locked everyone out of the card exploit all at once. Pretty smart.
davekva@reddit
In the 80's and 90's our cable company used filters that screwed into the coax, between the incoming line and the cable box. Each filter would give you a different pay channel. When I was in my early 20's and living in a house w a couple buddies, we bribed the cable guy into giving us all of them, lol. Then someone I work with sold me a black box that gave us all the pay-per-view stuff for free. Pay-per-view movies, big fights, porn, we got it all. Our house was very popular with our other friends, lol!
joekryptonite@reddit
My friend went out to the box at the curb, unscrewed the cylinder, drilled through it, stick a wire in there, reinstalled, and it opened up a bunch more channels. Lasted a while, then the cable company discovered it or changed systems and the party was over.
steveoa3d@reddit
The filters were called traps. I still have some traps and trap tools from when I was a traveling lineman.
Tiny_Arugula_5648@reddit
I'd say that's how most people got it at the time.. Especially in NYC where you could just go to China town and get cable box..
xt0rt@reddit
Yeah that's what I remember. They were metal cylinders and screwed onto the F connector on the back of the box.
stevencastle@reddit
Yeah my step-dad just clipped a wire in the box with the first one we had.
Ok_Acadia_5661@reddit
A HS friend's dad had a separate PC that would give all the PPV channels free.
M0BBER@reddit
Somewhere around 83/84, we got one of those big ugly dishes (BUD) & a box that we can watch anything unscrambled on several satellites.
You couldn't get me to go play outside. I would scan every satellite feed. Watch dirty movies after mom went to bed. Every movie I could watch...
ED-DOG92@reddit
Before the internet had hackers there was this trick on cable. To get them blocked channels like the playboy and Rendezvou on 22 to show up without paying for it. Damn we wasted a lot of time just to see a tit on the screen...
overmonk@reddit
Rendezvous - that’s a throwback for sure
ChesterDood@reddit
In Canada, in the early 80s, if you had a Jerrold cable converter, and "knew a guy" you could get a black market "descrambler" that would decode "pay TV"
We had the Canadian Star Channel for years, back when they basically played Highlander, Footloose and a bunch of Canadian movies over and over again.
Tephlonb@reddit
Stacked some books on there. Worked out great.
overmonk@reddit
YES. My mom was terrified the SWAT team was going to bust in and forbade it. Until SHE wanted to watch something.
Then it was piracy city.
Artistic_Progress155@reddit
Wish I'd known, then I might not have been trying to watch Emmanuelle on a scribbled and wavy screen.
Beginning-AD1992@reddit
🤣 I may know exactly what you mean 🤣
rubberduck71@reddit
I cannot confirm or deny, Senator...
therelybare5@reddit
What’s the statute of limitations on this! 😂
Impressive-Shame-525@reddit
We were too broke.
The only kid in the neighborhood who had cable could afford all the channels..
bigrobdd@reddit
Graduated from that one to this model and a set of wired alligator clips.
AlfhildsShieldmaiden@reddit
This box is how little me accidentally saw porn for the first time. I was in elementary school, with no concept of porn or pay channels other than we got Disney.
As I moved the slider to the Disney channel, it stopped on a soft porn channel right at the beginning of a video. Intrigued, I stopped to watch.
It was a burglar breaking into a woman’s house, looting stuff in one room, but then he hears the lady pleasuring himself. He goes to check it out, drops his bag of plunder at the door, and joins her. It was so enjoyable that he forgets the bag as he leaves.
I didn’t know what I was watching, but I sorta knew I wasn’t supposed to be watching it, so when I heard a parent in the hall, I quickly switched to Disney. Not sure what the glitch was, but it was not repeatable.
shotsallover@reddit
“Accidentally”
general-illness@reddit
That’s the box we had. I broke it trying to get Escapade which wax the scrambles adult channel.
GalegoBaiano@reddit
That box had the easiest method to get all the channels
Ridcully@reddit
I haven't seen that device, but I understand the sentiment. I used ASCII PCB wiring layouts (BBS?) and made my own version, except I lacked the chemicals to do etching with a copper clad substrate to - you know - get the end results. I didn't have the means or opportunity to do that. But:
I did a lot of scratchin' away of the copper (with tools) and it looked pretty good... and I learned some things, but in the end it was just wishful thinking and a lot of time invested. I wish I still had that PCB.
Sometimes motivation for something you want in the peripheral (even if it's not free TV with... scantily clad women) can lead into something much better, because of learning something on the way.
DallasMotherFucker@reddit
Wish we’d had a box like this you could hack when I was 17. Maybe I wouldn’t have developed a fetish for green-skinned, black-eyed women who appear and dematerialize randomly if we did.
MassCasualty@reddit
Playing knee, shoulder, or boob...
moneyman74@reddit
Never tried this, just watched Playboy on scramble and wait for the picture to be straight for 30 seconds at a tiime
TheZuckuss@reddit
I found that the lighter/whiter the picture the clearer it was.
I discovered this while trying to watch something and suddenly the lady dancing naked was in front of a white background. While the image was not perfect, she was as close to perfect I had seen up until that point.
I wish I knew who it was.
DokZayas@reddit
I think that was a boob!!
VeinyBanana69@reddit
Score!
IchibanChef@reddit
Didn't have to. My mom's cousin lived across the street and he worked for the cable company. We had everything. It was glorious.
CK_CoffeeCat@reddit
Wow, you had a box? 🤩
Certain-Singer-9625@reddit
NOW you tell me.
Big77Ben2@reddit
For real! Where was this guy in 1990?
fdader@reddit
No the trick was a matchbox under the dial to keep it exactly halfway between two channels
Sensitive-Rip-8005@reddit
We had a console TV that you could adjust the channel frequency with a small dial underneath the channel dial. We had basic cable with no box. I remember turning it to UHF and playing with the frequency and found the mother load of pay channels! This was about 1983. I have no idea how it happened.
classicsat@reddit
The trick was really knowing why that worked, and making your own tuner do the same thing.
threesunrises@reddit
We used to stick a nail in the bottom of our box and would get HBO, Cinemax & Showtime. Unfortunately one time we shorted out the box. That was difficult to explain to our parents. I'm sure the cable tech knew what we had done. 🤣
Thirsty4Knowledge911@reddit
Where was this information when I was 13?
dennishoppersballs@reddit
ALL THE CHANNELS
rkrenicki@reddit
I worked for a cable company, and I remember these boxes occasionally coming bring returned absolutely chock-full of business cards.
mabus42@reddit
We had a neighbor that altered our box to get all the channels despite only paying for the cheapest tier. This was back in the Centel / Jones Intercable days.
TheRatPatrol1@reddit
We had this same cable box originally, with a descrambler box that sat on top of it with a toggle switch that had “standard” and “premium”. My dad had them sitting on the end table next to the couch so that he could change the channel from the couch.
Later on we got this one when they scrambled every channel.
elspotto@reddit
Hang on. Are you saying you had a box that meant you didn’t need to squint to see boobs? Not that we ever had the box you show, but still.
-Granby-@reddit (OP)
Correct. With the index card trick you saw clear boobs.
elspotto@reddit
Dammit!
OcotilloWells@reddit
Oak Industries!
FantasticPainting232@reddit
Oak. Jerrold. Scientific Atlanta
This_Fkn_Guy_@reddit
No our box had a switch that we would only switch for wrestling and boxing.
leche_lover89@reddit
🤔I don't remember this. We had the woodgrain Prism box that only had the On/Off knob
Igpajo49@reddit
My dad wild jam a thin wooden door shim, or a book of matches, behind the channel dial and if you stuck the dial like halfway between channel 19 & 20, HBO would unscramble. Halfway between 20 & 21 was a Showtime. This was around 1982.
F-Cloud@reddit
It could also be done by wedging a flat-head screwdriver between the dial and body of the cable box. There were spaces in between the channels that allowed unscrambled signals through.
erilaz7@reddit
My family didn't have cable, so no.
FletchGordon@reddit
Didn't use this trick, but in South Shore Mass we had Dimension Cable. If you plugged the wall wart power supply of the box into a dimmer switch, you could unscramble the pay channels. The brick would get wicked hot so it was watch one movie and then plug it in normal, but that was awesome.
MrTenBelow@reddit
We had this style box. Take a few toothpicks and jam them down between two buttons to hold them in their halfway pressed location and premium channels were decoded. Late night Cinemax!
It’s really amazing to me now how this knowledge traveled so far and wide by word of mouth before social media or the internet. This was early 80’s at the latest.
dtoddh@reddit
It's because we used telephones and letters to share valuable information across long distances.
ru_k1nd@reddit
When we moved into a new house on base one of the rooms had that style of box. My buddy and I one evening were able to tweek the fine tune dial and lo and behold - The Playboy channel! It was mostly black and white, some color on the sides, but oh boy - PLAYBOY!!
My folks came home, my mom went upstairs. My dad walked down to say hi, what are you guys up to? Told him we were watching Playboy! My dad said yeah sure you are. Looked at the TV, looked at us, and asked how did we do that. We explained the ‘trick’. He was impressed. Then we hear my mom turn on a light switch upstairs and suddenly Playboy went back to being scrambled. Never could get it back again tho.
Atrkrupt1@reddit
We also convinced the world Marilyn Manson had ribs removed...
1leftbehind19@reddit
I can remember getting one of those. I thought wow, what are we gonna do with all those channels.
mden1974@reddit
Matchbook
Texas_Prairie_Wolf@reddit
Ours had screw on inline filters out in the alley at the box, we used to just unscrew them and screw the cable back to the junction. No lineman ever checked because unless one of the neighbors was getting an upgrade or there was damage to the outside box the cable dude never came around, unlike a meter reader.
bigtime_porgrammer@reddit
I think that was a thing for a while. If you upgraded to premium, someone had to come out and remove a physical filter from the line. I believe it was just something like a frequency high or low pass filter and they had the basic channels in one range and premium in another.
Where I lived that was up on a pole. In an alley right where you could get at it sounds nice. The "hack" where I lived was to toss the cable guy a 20 to take the filter off while he was up the pole.
Then there were the "scrambled" adult channels and you could buy a black market descrambler.
SheriffBartholomew@reddit
I set up some cones in the street to protect my ladder and went up onto the wires with an extension ladder to remove the filters. They remained removed for years and years until the cable company went digital.
Atrkrupt1@reddit
Same box, too. Can someone explain how/why that worked?
NOGOODGASHOLE@reddit
I took a cable box the Radio Shack and the guys DELIGHTED in making it a "hot box'
cqshep@reddit
YUP
flixguy440@reddit
Made a lot of $$$ doing that in the early 80s.
OldDude1391@reddit
No cable available where I grew up and dad wasn’t paying for satellite tv.
grimmtoke@reddit
Our hack was shoving a thicker piece (like part of a bar coaster) behind the knob itself.
painterlyjeans@reddit
We had one with the remote attached. You could get it between the channels
Dry_Ad687@reddit
I bought a loded cable box for $10 at a flea market in the 90s.
LeftyBojangler@reddit
Didn’t know about this particular hack, but I did figure out you could balance the knob right in-between scrambled channels to get the one on-screen to display unscrambled… Skinemax FTW!
PM_meyourGradyWhite@reddit
Kinda tricky holding that knob with one hand the whole time.
LeftyBojangler@reddit
A knob in each hand- teenage hormones are a helluva drug.
MEB-Softworks@reddit
Yup, and where I began my career as a “remote” worker 🤣🤣🤣
jazzlike-sounds@reddit
Well, this information would have been more useful if someone had shared it with me 40 YEARS AGO!
(There's some movie line I'm paraphrasing here but I can't remember what it's from.)
DrJaneIPresume@reddit
The Wedding Singer
https://i.redd.it/yxvf20xb4cyg1.gif
gmhelwig@reddit
In my experience, that seems to be the facebook algorithm's goal, at least for me. I'll find out about the hobby show two weeks later.
jazzlike-sounds@reddit
Holy shit, that was a quick reply! Thank you!
aftrnoondelight@reddit
Didn’t know that trick, but our first VCR had channel selection buttons on top, and per channel fine tuning dials under a cover that snapped in place. We found that if you ran the cable into channel 3, but switched to channel 4 and fine-tuned it almost all the way back to 3 you’d get a slightly strobing, noisy, desaturated, but otherwise not terrible picture.
Auslander808@reddit
I don't think my apartment complex had the option of cable when this box came out. When it finally did, we had to pay the installer $20 to flip on the movie channels. The whole neighborhood had every channel and that guy got paid.
SamhainHighwind@reddit
My Dad and grandfather had this lol 😆
bannock4ever@reddit
In Canada there was a way to get the only pay tv channel available by connecting your coax cable to a copper pipe with a copper coil in the pipe and then connecting that with another coax cable to your tv. By adjusting the coil angle you could get better picture quality. Good thing I was a kid in metal shop at the time!
Mtlkfn@reddit
Also used to be able to do it with antenna wire and a sleeve of tin foil that you slide along the wire.
TheBatmanWhoPuffs@reddit
This was our first black box. Got it in 1986, then went to satellite in the 90’s to early 2000’s now all done by an app.
sumbozo1@reddit
I had this box too. If you waited for a preview on a premium channel, then unhooked the little cable inside your box wouldn't get the signal too cut the preview, you could have free HBO for days! Then the whole box would shut down, you'd have to reconnect the cable, cycle power and wait for another preview
user_uno@reddit
I got a box like that in 1989. Took getting my own place to have cable as my parents never would subscribe. Once that box was set up and the cable tech left, I felt like I had arrived in the world!
ApprehensiveLawyer22@reddit
That’s so crazy! Not long ago I was telling my friend how we used to do that. I think they didn’t believe me. Also knew a satellite guy. Iykyk!
hkusp45css@reddit
Getting those little cards from your Sat guy was awesome. Then they started frying the cards, so we got card condoms.
Ah, I kind of miss the days of the technology arms race between producer and consumer.
I feel like we lost a lot of that with the "It just works" expectations.
mrkstr@reddit
Where were you 40 years ago?! Lol
Ya-Not-Happening@reddit
No way!. I did not know that - So many wavy lines boobs....
JimTheJerseyGuy@reddit
Wometco Home Theater in the NYC area. Tune into UHF 68 at midnight and hope for a glimpse of boob.
Scouter197@reddit
As they say, we got it all on UHF!
Roseliberry@reddit
I don’t even know what that is. It wasn’t for poor people I’m sure.
xosherlock@reddit
We did that too but I never understood why it worked. Love to hear the why. Used playing cards.
Heavy_Firefighter287@reddit
We had this box, but I never knew this trick!
FENTWAY@reddit
Now I really need a Delorean
medigapguy@reddit
We had they type, but nobody showed us that trick
I was however thankful for that box and also hated it
My dad ran long coaxial so he could have it right beside him.
Good news, I no longer had to be the human remote
Bad news, he flipped channels worse than ever.
JimTheJerseyGuy@reddit
Never had a cable box like this. Does anyone know the mechanism that would cause an index card to gift you free premium channels?
itaintme99@reddit
First box we had I went around my high school that you could take off the back and there was a dial, you’d put on the nasty channel and just turn the dial until the picture unscrambled.
Brilliant-Ad8607@reddit
Our first
Frank_chevelle@reddit
Our first cable box did not have a dial. Just some buttons for channel up / down. Power and fine tuning.
EquivalentStart2595@reddit
I showed my dad how to do this lol, as i stood there turning the dial for him (human remote)
Shotgun_Mosquito@reddit
How did the back work? Did the card block s signal or did it flip a switch inside the unit?
-Granby-@reddit (OP)
I really have no idea. I just know one day my uncle came over and he demonstrated the trick to my dad and I and from there we had free cable. Maybe it flipped a switch or bumped a wire? All I know is it definitely worked.
Fritzo2162@reddit
There must have been some kind of mechanical switch inside that was activated with a subscription.
Anonymo123@reddit
never heard of it nor seen that type of box. Hell we didn't have a color TV until the mid 80s as my dad refused to spend the money on it lol
MelodicGoatHerd@reddit
Of course. Gotta fold the card first, then pull backwards until you hit the sweet spot.
apple_pi_chart@reddit
Yes. I did that around 1982.
Musicman1972@reddit
WTAF no I was not. I think my dad might have been through when everyone else went to bed...
He was a bizarrely cheerful man.
SGFCardenales@reddit
I discovered that the just reverse the polarity on the cable connection so I taped the cable center conductor to the outer screw wall and got free cable for three years
geraldine_ferrari@reddit
I remember the ZZZZIP sound it made when switch channels quickly. Never knew about that hack!
digdugnate@reddit
yes, my dad did. lol
YRUSoFuggly@reddit
Used a business card.
Ray_The_Engineer@reddit
That's hilarious..
StrangeAssonance@reddit
My cable boxes didn’t look like that but my brother may have obtained an illegal one that unscrambled every channel. I may have utilized it a few times…
-Granby-@reddit (OP)
I never had one of those. We just used the card. Turn it to the channel you want and it would be all scrambled. Slide the card in and move it around for a few seconds and then the screen would unscramble.