Cable descramblers are legal products. Anyone is free to purchase descramblers, converters or cable equipment, provided they let the cable TV company know that they are using their signal.

There is a wide variety of cable descramblers available for sale on the market. A cable descrambler may cost between 55 dollars and 450 dollars, depending on its quality feature and amount of ‘service’ provided. If you don’t want to spend a large amount of money on a cable descrambler, you may buy one from cable TV companies that are renewing their equipment. But purchasing this bargain cable descrambler will not necessarily mean that you will receive all channels available, as it may not be compatible with your cable network. Therefore, our advice is for you to buy an up-to-date cable descrambler from your cable TV company. In this way you will benefit from the latest technology at a reasonable price, as cable TV companies usually have different price offers for different customer budgets.

If you decide to still buy a cable descrambler off the market, be careful what you are buying. Don’t confuse cable descramblers for converters. A converter is an electronic tuning device that ‘changes’ all channels broadcasted by the cable company and outputs it into an RF signal on your TV set. It basically makes your TV set get the channels even if your TV is not the cable ready type. A converter will not be able to descrambler premium channels that have been previously encoded. In order to view these pay-per-view channels, you definitely need to use a cable descrambler. And you need it even if you possess a cable ready TV set.

You should know that a certain product type - combination converter/descrambler is also available for sale on the market. This is a device that is also descrambling pay-per-view or premium channels. It encloses both a converter and a cable descrambler and it transfers the signal directly to your TV set. You can most commonly purchase it from your local cable TV company.

In conclusion, cable descramblers are those magic little boxes that are giving you the happy chance of watching HBO (and many other channels your wife shouldn’t know of!).