Author Topic: Big Brother and your Cable/Satellite TV......  (Read 11364 times)

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Offline Thor

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Re: Big Brother and your Cable/Satellite TV......
« Reply #25 on: February 20, 2011, 07:43:03 AM »
As a former head end tech,with the On Demand movies/ shows over cable, those movies/ shows are downloaded onto a HUGE series of hard drives in the head end. When the request comes into the head end, a movie is sent to one's converter box.The converter box acts like a cable modem with a huge buffer in them. It has it's own MAC address which is recognized by the head end software. That way one can fast forward, pause, rewind or simply play the movie like they would on a DVD player. The billing system is also tied to that MAC address. It's conceivable that the cable companies COULD monitor what people watch, but they don't except for the On Demand or Pay per View movies. They're not going to waste time or assets to worry about what channels one watches in their "cable package". They have one QAM modulator per movie and one hard drive per movie.

I also had video over the twisted pair. Again, because of the nature of HOW it works and bandwidth required, every time one switches a channel, the phone company's "head end", typically called the Central Office, shuts off the one channel a person was watching and sends the new channel to the converter box. Again, supporting TVDOC'S statements, they simply don't want to monitor what people watch except for the On Demand or Pay Per View stuff because it requires MORE equipment and there is no tangible benefit to them.

Both the cable companies & telephone companies who provide video DO have what are called "ad insertions", where the local company's equipment is set up to listen for a "cue tone" in order to start their ad. The networks send out that cue tone. Sometimes, if a company is messed up, the consumer will hear that cue tone. The ads presented by the cable company have a specific amount of time that they run. MY cable company is messed up and their head end techs aren't very good because sometimes,the ad insertions will start at an inappropriate time. The typical set up is that the network ads run, then the cue tone for the local ads. The local ads are developed by a salesman going out and selling ads to local businesses, not  by monitoring what someone watches.

All in all, as TV DOC has said, they just don't care to spend money to obtain data that yields no return.
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