[Russ]

Originally Posted by popper

more to the point, theres far to many assumptions being made yet again,its not illegal, its currently against the VM T&C contract to attach non VM supplyed kit to the wire, you can take them to court to get that invalid UK/EU consumer contract restriction officially reversed/removed though.

and you ,like any other EU member state end user can perfectly legally buy any free market docsis cable kit you please.

as for buying ebay NTL/TW/VM etc kit, you do run the risk of it being still the property of VM, HOWEVER and everyone forgets this point, IF VM or the pre_VM companys billed the Seller for not returning said Item and they payed that BILL then its NOW that persons personal property to do with as they please......

sure its all the technicality perhaps, and you would still need to get a court ruling to force VM to stop limiting your rights to buy and use and plug in/operate your EU protected cable kit on the VM wire but its doable and it only takes one case ruling to finally free up the UK locked in market place if you care to try it sometime.....

OC iv always contended that VM should just stop messing around and work with these EU cable kit suppyers and authorise an official select few OEMs kit and just sell it to anyone that cares to buy it, instead of forcing people to rent it all for their profit margins (its just so 1970s being forced to rent your kit) so as not to lock out the EU OEM vendors to the UK market place etc.

AND VM WOULD MAKE A VALID NEW PROFIT ON THEM TOO.

ill take 2 3d party CMs and 2 3rd party DVB-C PC cards plus valid BB/TV subscriptions please, so i can multicast LAN stream all my payed for Mpeg2 (shame it not AVC OC) encoded DVB channels directly to/on any LAN PC kit i want, without it being degraded into composit video scart and so needing re-encoding again just to watch it how i want.

and ill take them ASAP, we probably wont get the option of direct transport streaming of the cable mpeg* video even when and if the new docsis3 STBs come to market though will we, while the EU and US consumers have been officially and legally doing exactly this for years.

Whereas you are raising interesting points, from an Admin's perspective discussing the subject always has been a contentious subject and because it sails a bit too 'close to the wind', it's not the sort of discussion we encourage on CF.

If someone wants to (or already has done so) buy a second-hand VM modem then we will not permit a thread to continue about how to 'crack' it, or how to get it to work etc. Not suggesting this is where the OP was going, but I'm pointing this out just for reference.