Cable Co. claims this was my fault:

[rpm1200]

When I was a kid we had cable and I tried connecting it to a stereo receiver. There were a couple of interesting things... they deliberately rebroadcast the popular stations on different frequencies so that there wouldn't be multipath between the cable signal and the over-the-air signal. Also, there was one station that was just a constantly repeating two-tone beep. I believe that they used that signal to sniff out illegal cable connections. The cable company employees could just tune a portable FM radio to that frequency and check for the signal coming from a property that was not paying for cable service.

I remember those Jerrold boxes, I also remember the Hamlin boxes with the big slider for channels 2-58. They had a primitive remote control system where the channel selector was tethered to the actual cable box by a long cord. When I was growing up we had the Oak box with a single knob for channel selection (up to channel 36). If you wanted premium channels you had to pay a monthly charge for the Zenith SSAVI box with remote.

[matt_s78mn]

Originally Posted by rpm1200

Also, there was one station that was just a constantly repeating two-tone beep. I believe that they used that signal to sniff out illegal cable connections. The cable company employees could just tune a portable FM radio to that frequency and check for the signal coming from a property that was not paying for cable service.

I know of one cable system that did this... except that the story was the FM radios in the cable service trucks would be tuned to that frequency so that as they drove around town doing their daily work they could easily sniff out illegal cable connections, and other leaks in the system.