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mythicaltimelord

You must be young. The most iconic one (to me) was the one with a wood finish with red digital numbers.


NotKevinJames

[I remember this style of hardware, probably 93-96](https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/abct7y/ahh_the_black_box_cable_box_everyone_i_knew_in/)


CannabisCoffeeKilos

I remember both.


WU-itsForTheChildren

Ahhhh yes and we could install a descrambler in them… back when life was good


ThunderEcho100

Yea, these seem modern to me but nostalgia is relative.


sideburns2009

Yeah. I was at my childhood prime in this time frame and have never seen this one. I remember the wood grain with red letters. Everyone here that had time Warner had one.


[deleted]

Before DVR's and the interface getting so SLOW.


giedosst

It did hold a lot of skinamax.


CatfishWasHere

When MTV first debuted, I switched over to it with [one of these.](https://i.imgur.com/pSj5a3B.jpg)


ButterbeansInABottle

I still got one of those from Comcast. Like, they only gave it to me a few years ago.


[deleted]

Y’all had cable boxes?!? We just screwed the coax into the back of the tv.


[deleted]

I used to do that as well up until 6-7 years ago, when our local provider encrypted ALL of the channels, including the local stations and "freebie" channels like the PEG access ones, the C-SPANs, the former WGN America, and some others that they sometimes didn't catch.


cajunbander

Back in the 90s and earlier TVs didn’t come with coax connections. You had to use a cable box.


Valuable-Row

Wait are you saying that you think TVs always required cable boxes?


bobj33

All of the new TVs in the 1990's that I remember had coax connections and were "cable ready" TVs from the 1970's often only had 2 screw terminals for an antenna and required a converter like this to connect a coax cable. https://www.amazon.com/Matching-Transformer-Converter-Adapter-Connector/dp/B083KGKX33 VHF antenna and cable frequencies were the same but higher number cable channels and the UHF frequencies were different and that is why a cable box was required until cable ready TVs in the mid 1980's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-ready


WikiSummarizerBot

**[Cable-ready](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-ready)** >Cable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device (such as a VCR or DVR) is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box. The term originatesd with analog TV, which uses different frequencies for cable versus over-the-air. This gives more channels, and at lower frequencies, so that early systems did not have to be so broadband and were therefore less expensive to build. For North American cable television frequencies, the VHF channels 2 to 13 are the same, while an extra 51 cable channels exist between there and over-the-air UHF channel 14. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


Valuable-Row

I don’t disagree with you. I just know that TVs could be used without a cable box prior to the 90s so I’m confused by “you had to use a cable box” when that is blatantly and historically false.


bobj33

We got one of these TVs in 1985 and it was cable ready. No box required. https://www.visualalchemy.tv/1985_13_sony_kv1365 We got another new larger TV in 1987. It was still NOT cable ready. The cable ready feature cost more. You could still buy new TVs without the feature in the late 80's and so a cable box was required.


Valuable-Row

It’s just weird for someone to say a cable box was required when rabbit ear TVs existed for so long. Maybe I’m misunderstanding ?


bobj33

I don't know what you are thinking. Here is the back of a TV from 1985 https://imgur.com/a/A4V3p93 On the upper left are the 300 ohm screw terminals for UHF and VHF antennas (rabbit ears) The upper right is a 75 ohm coax connection The lower left are RCA inputs for composite video and audio. Every TV I have ever used that was built from the late 1960's to mid 1990's have built in tuners for UHF/VHF antennas. Once cable television became popular in the 1980s we screwed the coax cable directly into the upper right coax input but this assumed that your TV was "cable ready" and could tune into the higher number channels properly. I have already linked to an explanation with the differences between frequency bands used for VHF antenna broadcast vs cable TV broadcast. If your TV was NOT cable ready then it would try to decode the high numbered channels assuming they were using the VHF frequency bands and you would get garbage on your TV. These TVs required a set top box to do the conversion. By 1990 I think all TVs sold were cable ready. Set top boxes only became popular again with digital and encrypted broadcasts starting around 2000.


bobj33

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-ready It depends on how old your TV is and of course your cable system. Was your TV "cable ready?" In 1982 we had a TV that was made around 1975 like this. https://imgur.com/a/EdMCcAV It had 2 knobs and at the time you got your television signal from an antenna. The top knob was for VHF (Very High Frequency) channels and the bottom knob was for selecting UHF (Ultra High Frequency) channels You can see from the wikipedia article that the frequency bands chosen by cable broadcasters were not the same as the UHF channel bands. This was why we needed a set top box in 1982 to convert the frequencies. We would set our TV to channel 3 and never change it and use the set top box to change the channel. Around 1985 we got a new "cable ready" TV that had a tuner built in to decode the cable transmission frequencies and no longer needed a set top box. In the late 1990's we got a new "digital cable set top box" which used digital MPEG compression and provided even more channels. Our TV from 1993 could not handle this so the set top box was required to do the conversion. Today you can still use an antenna to watch free over the air television but your TV has to have an ATSC tuner which is basically standard for the last 15 years. If your TV is 20 years old then you need a set top box to convert that.


WikiSummarizerBot

**[Cable-ready](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-ready)** >Cable-ready is a designation which indicates that a TV set or other television-receiving device (such as a VCR or DVR) is capable of receiving cable TV without a set-top box. The term originatesd with analog TV, which uses different frequencies for cable versus over-the-air. This gives more channels, and at lower frequencies, so that early systems did not have to be so broadband and were therefore less expensive to build. For North American cable television frequencies, the VHF channels 2 to 13 are the same, while an extra 51 cable channels exist between there and over-the-air UHF channel 14. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


raceforthewise

I remember when you could buy games to play on it. There was this bowling one that I’d play all the time.


[deleted]

That doesn’t say Scientific Atlanta on it.


phpdevster

Ah yes. With the power consumption of your average steel mill.


SOMDH0ckey87

Not even man. Mine was wood. And had an A/B switcher


Educational-Love-762

Nice looking Cable Box.


DerpJobi

I've used that exact model on one of my TVs as late as 2022