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Watching My Neighbors Watch On-Demand TV
Josh Levin, Slate Magazine writes "I have a magical box that allows me to watch other people watch TV — their movies, their sports, their cartoons, and their hour-long procedural dramas. And sometimes, usually around 11:30 on Friday nights, their soft-core pornography... I solved the mystery by consulting online message boards. At techie sites like AVS Forum, other voyeurs described their adventures in freeloading. I was intercepting video-on-demand channels through the power of my Samsung's QAM tuner."
...he's only watching what they're watching...
Yeah, between childrens tv shows and softcore porn there isn't much that interesting, except that when they watch the nudity scene in a movie and then replay it 5-8 times.
Watching what other people watch can be fun.
I use stumble video and will often check out what my friends have watched recently, but the real interesting videos are to be found within the logs of random users.
People find and like the strangest things.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I have the lesser model of that device called binoculars lol ;) but hey don't yell at me, my neighbors are WEIRD! I gotta keep an eye on them lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I have the same thing going on with my TV. At first you think, "Wow! Free VOD!" but then you realize you have no clue when a show starts, no way to unpause if the real viewer gets a phone call or goes to the bathroom, and well... it's pointless. You end up flipping through a good 50 channels for hours having literally no clue what shows are on and no clue if that person will finish them.
It sounds neat but it's rather boring and partially stinks since you have to manually program those channels out. I mentioned this happening when the cable guy stopped buy and he seemed pretty "meh" about it.
Channels 97, 100, 115 seem to be the on-demand channels in my area.
I was showing off the ability to intercept on-demand programming to some of my friends the other day and we happened to come across some of the softcore porn being fast forwarded through. Curious to see what they were fast forwarding to, we watched for a little bit... the person fast forwarded to a dialog interlude. Our curiosity piqued, we watched a little more and noticed that as soon as the actual intercourse portion of the movie started, they fast forwarded to the next scene that included dialog.
Could we have found the only person in the world who reads playboy for the articles?
Ya know, Softcore is actually sexier, as in, more of a "turn on" than the hardcore stuff. The hardcore stuff comes across as more anatomical than anything - at least in my advancing age.
I said "cums" ...huh, huh, huh....
OK, I'm not too advanced in mental age because I still think of "Beavis and Butthead"...I said "Butt"...huh, huh, huh...heh.....heh...heh....
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
"People find and like the strangest things."
Surfing Slashdot.
It doesn't take a techie. Heck, a suggestion like "just plug the cable in" in a world of proprietary cable boxes, encryption, DRM, a half-dozen compression and modulation schemes, cablecards, various incompatible resolutions, framerates, and interlacing schemes along with all of their associated digital and analog audio and video interconnection formats... is at best a long shot.
Unless you have one of the LCDs with an undocumented QAM tuner and a cable company broadcasting PPV on unencrypted QAM channels, what are the odds that plugging the cable in would get you anything beyond analog channels in the first place?
Heck, it surprised me. I get HD cable with no box, including my neighbors' PPV and some bizarre channels that appear to be fragments and scaled images for use on the menu system of some sort of cable box.
It's probably just as legal as using a randomly available wifi signal...
Privacy is terrorism.
My parents in Annapolis (writer mentions DC-Baltimore) have a similar occurrence. They also pay for basic cable and are able to plug the line straight in to their tv's digital/hd tuner to grab the digital signal. They also receive channels that I chalked up to being PPV, and some of them show smut too. The odd thing is that sometimes they can watch a movie all the way through, and other times they will loose the signal in the middle, almost as if some one realized they were watching a movie they weren't supposed to get and flipped a switch to turn it off. Sometimes they can change the channel then come back to watch it again, other times they can have the signal then change the channel and come back to find that the program is gone. It's very strange and only happens on one of the two tvs (different brand, model, and year) that they have hooked up this way. I guess this article explains what is really going on.
I double checked, and no, Josh Levin is not a pen-name that my dad uses, so it looks like this is pretty common.
Imagine sitting alone on a Friday night, no girlfriend in sight, flipping through the channels, running dead up against a soft-core channel, looking wildly left and right irrespective of loneliness, yanking at the wanker furiously hoping there is time, and then being beaten by the creep next door who started early and staring at Ma Bush staring back at you from CNN.
Having a program randomly fast forward and go back and repeat parts sounds like watching TV when my wife has the remote. Except for the porn part.
No thanks, already got some.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's not exactly the same thing, but close enough. All it would take is a prick DA and an idiot judge. Neither are in short supply.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's not a secret. It's useless information. Given the reaction to many of the same kinds of infractions lately though, poor John Levine will be sent to Guantanamo for the next five years. Mr. Levine's article is to the movie business what the Boston Strangler is to the single woman alone at night - he's a traitor who's violated the DMCA and allowed people unauthorized access to .... utter crap. He'll be lucky if they don't just shoot him.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wonder if the author realizes that all of the over the air HDTV stations are broadcast on UHF frequencies so you need only a standard UHF attenna. Those are the loop kind or occasionally they enclose the loop in a rectangular thing. You can fold the rabbit ears down because you don't need them at all.
Still, this is interesting. I might think about running a cable feed to the tuner and see what happens. I went with OTA in the first place because the cable company wasn't carrying the local NBC and FOX stations in HD but now they are. Never even dreamed I'd get the occasional free VOD stuff.
We you got something good, keep your yap shut.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I learned how to make martinis, tie a bow-tie, and properly wear a suit.
They have had some great interviews. I highly recommend PLayboys articles.
I also look at the naked ladies.
My wife even bought me a subscription. Which I let lapse when we had children.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unfortunately for the O.P. the DMCA will rule his watching of unencrypted video feeds a violation, because he is circumventing a protection mechanism.
The DMCA and it's supporters have shown time and time again that it does not matter how lame and technically incompetent a protection measure is, it merely has to be 'broken' to incur the wrath of the law. Publishing the technical details is probably instant guilt in terms of 'trafficking in circumvention technology' or whatever the legalese is.
The early analogue cable TV transmission systems in the UK used to transmit premium channels unencrypted (and then moved to using some fairly trivial to counter sync-mangling) which simply required a tuner that could see outside of the usual UHF 21-68 band to view. While the frequencies used on the actual cable networks were sufficiently out-of-range of normal 'terrestrial' channels, the company actually supplied an add-on box clamped to the back of the cable receiver which would downshift all of the cable channels so that the normal 'terrestrial' channels carried on the cable service were tunable by 'normal' TV's. If the TV had a tuner which could see outside the usual UK 21-68 band (Channel 21 is 471.25MHz, 68 is 847.25MHz) then the channels are there for your viewing pleasure regardless of what the cable receiver thinks you are entitled to see.
All the article does is move this into the digital realm with QAM.
Minus several million points out of ten to comcast for not encrypting traffic here.
otherwise, it's old news.
When I first moved to my apartment building, I plugged in my Sony LCD TV and got to watch other people's on-demand shows until I got my own cable service. I was able to watch about 3 movies this way. It was kinda funny, they ended up pausing the movie at the exact same time I needed to get up for a health break. Also watched some porn and it's fun/creepy watching other people's porn habits and how much porn they "need". Haha.
About as likely.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
For watching unencrypted digital cable on a PC, take a look at the HDHomeRun:n
t -hdhomerun-qam-tuner-review.html 2 47
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomeru
Two tuners, works with MCE (2005, Vista, x86, x64), BeyondTV, SageTV, etc.
Linux - works with MythTV and VLC.
Mac support is rumored to be soon.
http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/03/silicondus
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1531
it's a damn tired and old joke.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the UK the older Sky boxes were notorious for offering your current viewing to neighbours - only this was simple RF leaking from the rear. Careful placement with a small aerial and you could get a half-decent picture. This meant you could watch your neighbour flicking through the channels, usually quite rapidly until boobies appeared, at which point he of course rolled back a few times in order to check out the action.
My local cable system's video on demand does not go over the wire in the clear. (Time Warner)
I'm not sure if it's just encrypted or if it's done over a packet-switched channel (DOCSIS) instead, although there is mention of VOD IP addresses in the diagnostic menus.
Now I would be really pleased if my cable provider could sell/rent me a CableCard, but I'm stuck with using their dreaded SciAtlanta decoder.
Who would have thought it was possible to invent something more boring than watching TV. Of course... watching people as they watch TV. Genius!
/Mike
I think I just felt the world get a little dummer.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
Funny how the comcast spokesperson lies:
Cable encryption is done per channel, not per title. The problem is that Comcast's infrastructure is built on SeaChange, which is running Windows NT 4 (if I remember correctly). They just can't handle the load.
The other architectures (non-SeaChange) can handle encrypted VOD streams, but tend not to because the operator hasn't thought about it.
And lastly, encryption of VOD content is done by fiat from corporate - that's how the cable industry works. And that's exactly the kind of thing that corporate is for - to set systemwide policies like that.
We had this happen too with our cable connection. Back when we had high speed internet set up, comcast had to pull a filter from our line because it was interfering with our signal, I thought that this was the reason, not QAM...but I never bothered looking up if anyone else could do this too. Now years later, the old tv went out so upgraded to an HDTV, it was surprising when it detected 300 channels when we previously had 20.
The problem is when trying to watch what the neighbors are on-demanding, the channels are registering on a channel.other number, so you will get channel 25, 25.1, 25.3, etc... but when on demand users on the lower numbered dot channels turn off their signal, the channels collectively drop down. So one second you could be watching a Disney movie, the next could be a Debbie Does... movie, so it is certainly something to use at your own risk if there are kids around.
I don't see anything wrong with watching these channels either. If the cable company screwed up and didn't configure my connection correctly is it my fault that they made a mistake that let me do this? I'm not going to go out of my way to let them know so they can fix it, it has saved on movie rental over the last few months. I usually stick to conventional programming that I can predict what is on and play in the "naughty channels" only when there isn't anything else worth watching on.
Think about things like slash and yaoi, which have been getting increasingly popular for women. They range from soft- to hard-core, and while a lot of them go for the emotional side of sex and relationships, there's no shortage of just straight sex. Ok, so "straight" is probably the wrong word. Or 'Queer as Folk' - huge female audience, and that's not because they identify with the single pair of lesbians. It's not guys writing all that Sparrow/Norrington or Aragorn/Faramir fiction out there.
Frankly, as a woman my issue with actual porn in general is the same issue I have with movies in general. They're poorly made, the good ones are few and far-between. And frankly, if you're talking about limiting the misery, hardcore films at least have sex to break up the bad acting/lighting/costuming/etc. I'd have to disagree that hardcore sex is inherently violent - it's simply graphic. Maybe you're watching the wrong ones? =) Try looking for hardcore that is marketed to women... it tends to be better, all around. Especially if what you're wanting is something your wife/girlfriend/fling will watch with you.
I suppose the point I really want to make is that women are very much like men in that they're individuals. If you think you're going to "understand" women like they are some sort of weird single organism, it's just not going to happen. Interest yourself in the individual and you're more than half there.
~ Leilah
It makes me afraid that somebody could be watching me while I'm watching what somebody else is watching.
They might think that I'm actually watching it when I'm just watching what they are watching. Honest!
He said they've already got one!