🚀 go-pugleaf

   I've been wondering about this for a while.  How is pay TV
encoded?  It's a screwy scheme since it let's the sound get
through undamaged, but the picture portion of the signal is a mess.
Occassionally the picture looks okay for a few seconds (it seems to
depend on the picture content), then is will get wild (as if the horiz.
hold was twisted with a vengence), sometimes the color (intensities)
are inverted.  I think the encoding must have been chosen to tantalize
non-subscribers since you can hear & see what's happening occasionally.
   I have heard claims that it is done differently in different places,
but from what I can see it looks the same with several companies
in both Toronto & Montreal.
   Do they do this in the US?  Here in Canada cable is *very* common,
additional TV channels (for an extra cost) come encoded this way.  It also
happens to be illegal to build your own decoder, I think.
   My apologies if this has come up before.
   Greg Dudek
-- 
Dept. of Computer Science (vision group)    University of Toronto
Usenet:	{linus, ihnp4, allegra, decvax, floyd}!utcsri!dudek
CSNET:	dudek@ai.toronto.edu 		ARPA: dudek%ai.toronto.edu@csnet-relay
DELPHI: GDUDEK
Paper mail: Dept. of Comp Sci, Univ of Toronto, Toronto, Canada