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RE: need a cable box expert

Posted by blue_z on October 13, 2011 at 12:38:02:
I've never opened up a cableTV STB, but based on what I've seen on CECBs and related chipsets, I'd say that you won't be able to disable the protections in a STB.
The major components in the CECB tuners for digital OTA are:
* a power supply (AC to DC converter)
* the RF tuner (the old-style tin can or modern solid-state IC)
* ATSC demodulator (8VBS for OTA, cableTV needs 64-QAM and/or 256-QAM)
* SoC
* RAM
* ROM (flash memory for the operating system and application firmware)
"SoC" is the acronym for "system on (a) chip". "System" means a computer (typically a 32-bit RISC) processor with peripheral devices. From some Broadcom and STMicro info that I've read, the SoCs used in the CECBs appear to be stripped-down, cost-reduced versions of fuller-featured chips suitable for a cableTV STB. So the list of (hardware) components for a STB would be similar as the CECB list. Of course the firmware (the software for the embedded processor) would be more complicated for subscription authorization and signal decrypting.
A modern STB is essentially a dedicated computer for processing MPEG transport streams, and decrypting them if necessary. All processing is performed in the digital domain whenever possible. The only analog signals would be RF that is input to the ATSC demodulator and the outputs for stereo audio and component/S-video/composite video.