All Chipped Cable Boxes Going Down

[mouqeet]

right on the tp it says ads by google chipped box ?

[Hiroki]

Probably because google adverts pick up from words in the forum i.e. chipped in this topic title?

[saabmania2]

Originally Posted by TheDon

The OED and Merriam Webster mean nothing when it comes to UK law though, and although TraxData is making his point badly, he is right.

The theft act is VERY clear on the definition of theft.



The key part is bolded. When you use an illegal box you are not permanently depriving VM of any property, therefore it isn't theft. It's the same as why copyright infringement isn't theft (no matter how much the riaa will tell you otherwise) as long as you're not physically depriving someone of something then under UK law it's not theft.

That's not to say it's not illegal (is it) it's just covered by different laws.

No but if i lived next door or a few doors away to that person stealing services from vm, they would be in effect depriving me as they are reducing the bandwidth available to me which would/might deprive me from receiving my full service. which in my book is theft
gone into hiding now!!!

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by saabmania2

No but if i lived next door or a few doors away to that person stealing services from vm, they would be in effect depriving me as they are reducing the bandwidth available to me which would/might deprive me from receiving my full service. which in my book is theft
gone into hiding now!!!

No they aren't.

All the channels are sent down the cable regardless. The same bandwidth is used regardless of if there is a chipped box there or not.

If it was a cloned modem it'd depend on if the courts saw bandwidth as property, but as dishonestly using electricity is it's own seperate crime within the act, and you could claim a cable providing bandwidth is similar to one providing electricity, I doubt they'd see bandwidth as being covered (especially as that's also covered by other acts of law, so assumably it isn't by the theft act).

You'll have to try harder

[boroboi]

Ive just discovered a well hidden white cable coming out of my brownbox, under some broken tiles on my path, through the fence and bolted onto their wall and going into their living room wall... are they thieving cable TV through my wire or what!? :|

They do have their own brown box but its looks like its been smashed up a little bit, but its essentially coming from MY brownbox! (every house has its own connection in my street(

I've already phoned virgin and they are investigating, but would like some oppinions here.

[frogstamper]

Originally Posted by boroboi

Ive just discovered a well hidden white cable coming out of my brownbox, under some broken tiles on my path, through the fence and bolted onto their wall and going into their living room wall... are they thieving cable TV through my wire or what!? :|

They do have their own brown box but its looks like its been smashed up a little bit, but its essentially coming from MY brownbox! (every house has its own connection in my street(

I've already phoned virgin and they are investigating, but would like some oppinions here.

If it was my drop box with a cable going next door I'd get out the bolt cutters.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by boroboi

Ive just discovered a well hidden white cable coming out of my brownbox, under some broken tiles on my path, through the fence and bolted onto their wall and going into their living room wall... are they thieving cable TV through my wire or what!? :|

They do have their own brown box but its looks like its been smashed up a little bit, but its essentially coming from MY brownbox! (every house has its own connection in my street(

I've already phoned virgin and they are investigating, but would like some oppinions here.

There is a chance that it could be legit, it's not unheard of for VM to run a cable from the box next door, but it's always done with the permission of the next door neighbour. I would say it's far more likely to be them illegally obtaining cable though, especially as the wire is white. I've never seen VM use anything but black wire for external wiring and white for internal.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by frogstamper

If it was my drop box with a cable going next door I'd get out the bolt cutters.

Seconded, Followed by a call to the police.

[boroboi]

Thanks, i thought as much, the cheeky chav @£*&%!!!

Not with my permission at all, i thought it looked a bit suspicious because of the white wire, since all the rest are black and the fact it looks shoddy. The woman next door is a benefit fraud and her kids are in and out of prison so it wouldnt suprise me if they were robbing cable, especially from my box!

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by frogstamper

If it was my drop box with a cable going next door I'd get out the bolt cutters.

I'd then wire the end upto my 30kv psu that I use for powder coating but I can be a nasty cow at times

Kymmy

[boroboi]

lol evil.

Well i wouldnt like to call the police, id rather not sh*t on my own lawn if you get what i mean but id just like virgin to find the wire intact, disconnect them and then they can go as far as they want with regards to further investigation, and if it re-appears, then i'll just cut the wire next time.

[Kymmy]

Oh I'd surely plug the wire back in after the 30kv....mainly as the neighbours bigger than I am and also Virgin's gotta have some evidence to prosecute with

Kymm

Originally Posted by TheDon

This video is a good introduction to what the benefits are, and here is a fair bit of information about it.

There is alot of technology out now that lets them do this quite easily, and it's all headend based they don't have to touch the last mile network at all.

As for them pushing all the bandwidth onto broadband, the end of the video talks about the new applications that will come from it, and one of the main ones is QAM sharing, which means that QAM's can be shared between switched video, vod, and data, so you could have a range of QAM's for each, and then some shared ones for overflow capacity which would be used by the service which had a higher bandwidth requirement at the time. You could probably also QOS the shared QAMs so switched video would take priority over vod which would take priority over data.

Switched video is nothing new, and I know ntl looked at it a few years ago, but rejected it.
Theres no need for Virgin to go totally VOD. Once analogue is gone theres more bandwidth. Virgin want to do VOD for more HD as they can't get real time feeds of Sky's channels without paying for 1.5Gb/s fibre feeds for each channel to feed into one of the central headends. Virgin's ex telewest CTO made the big booboo when he stuck with Telewests choice of MPEG2 for their HD. It was a bad decision, one they will have to pay for with a lack of HD bandwidth until they do bring an appropriate stb out using the current appropriate encoding/decoding technology (a CTO should have been able to see that).
VOD is Virgins substitute for HD, at the moment.


A few years ago, the chiefy cheese of ITV said HD was a fad, and wouldn't take off. Hence ITV did not produce any HD content. They currently have zero HD archived material. The current chiefy cheese has acknowledged HD as here to stay and has decided ITV will have a HD channel - however they have no content, so can't launch a fulltime channel hence part time red button linking.
I wonder if Virgin are talking to ITV however as they could easily take ITV HD as its not encrypted.

[saabmania2]

Originally Posted by TheDon

No they aren't.

All the channels are sent down the cable regardless. The same bandwidth is used regardless of if there is a chipped box there or not.

If it was a cloned modem it'd depend on if the courts saw bandwidth as property, but as dishonestly using electricity is it's own seperate crime within the act, and you could claim a cable providing bandwidth is similar to one providing electricity, I doubt they'd see bandwidth as being covered (especially as that's also covered by other acts of law, so assumably it isn't by the theft act).

You'll have to try harder

naa!! i hid after my first thought and i can't run that fast these days i better leave it

Semantics seem to be abounding.

Aren't we talking/posting about people taking services that should be paid for, but aren't.

Call it theft, stealing, or Henry the near-sighted Albino Alpaca, it's all about someone taking something without payment for that something.