Cable box (outside)

A cable box is a usually dark colored box (found in the vicinity of a house that has cable television service) that connects a house or building to the cable service. This is traditionally the demarcation point and signifies where the service provider's responsibility ends and the customer's responsibility (for cabling and connections) begins. The box is usually located near the connection points for other service connections (Electric or Telephone). Other locations include centralized locations ( Apartment Buildings), lawns, or telephone poles.

The (Federal Communications Commission) has recently decided to make cable companies split the functions of the cable box. First is authentication by letting the cable companies know who is subscribing to them and what channels they are able to receive, which will be done by CableCARDS that users may rent from cable companies. Second is cable tuning to decode signals from the cable box, which companies will be able to experiment with by building the function into other devices. [Wildstrom, Stephen. "Unchained from the Cable Box." Business Week. Jjune 18, 2007. 9/21/08 .]

Purpose

These boxes provide access to the cable wiring inside the house or building being serviced. Service providers place filters to control what channels are available to the service location, this is an older method of controlling available content. Modern digital cable networks do not utilize filters, rather they use digital methods for controlling available channels.

ee also

*Digital television
*Digital Cable