🚀 go-pugleaf

Our local cable board was presented with the following argument from
our local cable TV supplier and need some help in separating fact from
BS. 

Cable company proposes to add the service called Showtime. However, to
do that they say they must remove a currently offered premium service,
and the one they pick is Playboy (which has only achieved a 2% market
"penetration".) Wait says cable board, we don't want to defend
Playboy, but what is going to happen when we want to add some other
premium service?

Issue revolves around following problem according to cable company. We
do not have black boxes in our area, so the cable company sends out
premium services they expect more than 50% subscriptions to in the
clear and send scrambled versions of services they expect less that
50% subscriptions to. Then on top of the telephone pole with the cable
leading to your house, they install filters (supposedly passive) that
block or pass the services that each subscriber is paying for. Each
filter is a cylinder approximately 1in in diameter and 2in long. The
problem, says the cable company, is that each filter degrades the
signal and depending on what is being subscribed to now, as many as
five of these filters are required. Thus, to add another service (and
its filter) will lead to poor-signal-quality problems. Besides, these
filters only work in channels 2-22 (above 22 are higher frequencies
and nobody makes ones that will work with the higher frequencies) and
if we add another premium channel in this range we will have to deal
with the "storm of protest" over loss of channels in Basic Service
(such much watched channels as LIFETIME "fitness, health, hobbies, and
more!") 

So what are the technical facts? More than 5 filters a problem? No
filters for use above channel 22? (Is there somewhere I can get
catalogs of companies that supply to the CATV market, so I know what
is available to these guys?)

Thanks for any help,

Tim Sullivan (tims@infidel.lanl.gov)