Consumerist Forums reader “1gunit” discovered free porn while channel surfing on his new HDTV. It began when a strange program appeared that started to automatically fast forward itself through what was some presumably boring dialogue. When the program began to play at normal speed, “1gunit” realized he was watching someone else’s “On Demand” porn. How did this happen? His letter, inside…
About a month ago i discovered that i was getting a few unlisted channels on my cable tv. I do not subscribe to “Digital Cable” I get “Extended Basic” (basically all the channels you can get with out the box) one of the 1st shows i came across was a porn and to me and my wifes surprise right after a rather interesting scene it started to fast forward to right passed all of the talking parts. It was then we realized we were watching other peoples “On Demand” shows. It varies from Blues clues to PPV movies to hot girl on girl action
This only happens on my newest tv which gets HDTV channels the Chanel’s in question are in the 107 range..107-1….107-10. I asked about it at my local charter office when paying my bill and after a lot of apologizing and assurances that I was the only one this was happening to (more on that below) they took my number and told me some one would call the next day its been 8 days still no call and I still get free porn.I went to work the other night (At a group home for mentally handicapped people) and guess what they get the free porn as well
I’m just wondering of anyone else is getting the same thing on there HDTVs. I’m not really complaining I like free porn (even if the jerk with the remote fast forwards through the redheads)but I bet someone a little less open minded than me will freak upon discovering this.
We commend you on your strength of character because most people wouldn’t complain about free porn. For most adults this would be no problem but naturally there are others such as children who should not be able to freely receive adult programming. Since you also observed this phenomenon at work, it must mean that this situation is at least partially widespread. Because you have already reported the problem once with no relief, you should elevate this problem to someone in a higher position and see if they can help you bring a happy ending to this story.
Free porn on my charter cable [Consumerist Forums]
(Photo: Getty)
More From Consumerist
-
Charter Admits It Shouldn’t Charge Customer Modem Fee, Keeps Charging Her Anyway
-
Charter Gives Me Free DVR, Won’t Let Me Use It Anymore
-
Charter Spreads Misinformation, Hopes You Forgot How 2009 DTV Transition Worked
-
Time Warner Cable Says Maybe Motorola Is Responsible For Customer Ordering 17 Porn Flicks In 4 Days
-
Charter Ends Twitter And Facebook Customer Support
It’s the QAM thing. I don’t know the technical details but one of my coworkers has a Media Center PC set up and he sees this all the time. He calls it “Mystery TV”.
I don’t know what’s more shocking; the fact that the guy is getting free porn or that he knows while that guy is fast forwarding he’s “pleasing” himself.
Somebody needs to write Charter immediately. Corporate offices, preferably.
We just have Cox here, thankfully. And Queasy Qwest, the company that we had customer service problems with.
Cox just needs to get on the HD ball, but it’s trying to cobble up a network built by a cornucopia of older cable ops and rebuild it.
I used to get that free service too. Unfortunately, it switched to regular boring basic cable some months ago.
Damn you consumerist. If this post causes them to alter the system to encrypt on demand, you will have to change your name to the anti-consumerist. And the guy that posted about this is my new worst enemy. Everyone already knew you could watch free on demand via your HDTV. And I bet this guy felt he was the first person ever to notice this. And is probably all happy that his post made the front page. But pointing this out as a problem is only going to encourage cable companies to get these channels encrypted.
I think it’s unlikely that cable companies are going to spend the money to encrypt these channels — it’s pretty much impossible for anyone watching to know when or what will appear on an given channel as they are allocated randomly when needed. You can’t assume that porn will be on channel xx at any given time or that a certain movie will be on at 8pm. There are a large number of these ephemeral channels, and most of the time nothing is on them. Even if you asked everyone in your neighborhood to notify you when they were planning on watching PPV, you’d still have to search through all the channels to find the one allocated to them for that particular viewing.
It’s easy to prevent people from getting something for free if you make it just barely difficult enough that it’s not worth the effort to do it.
we had a problem similar to this with satellite tv, only our neighbors could change our channel, we used to fight back and forth changing the channel until one of us just finally gave up and watched what the other was watching.
Best thing to do if Comcast doesn’t respond – write to the local newspaper/TV station and also any city councilman who likes to stir things up. Give Comcast a public black eye and things will get fixed much more quickly.
Sorry – Charter Cable, not Comcast.
My wife and I were getting free porn for awhile…but it was gone. It was the same pattern as the OP, it was in FF quite often and it’d change channels a lot. We also got free HBO, showtime and cinemax. About every 2 mins though, they’d all shift up or down .1 channel (e.g. 107.2 would shift to 107.3 and all would follow suit).
We have Comcast, and this happens on our new TV as well – we just blocked the channels and leave it alone…
I’m just wondering which of my neighbors is watching it, though – everyone knows everyone around here!
Leave the parenting to the parents, guys. Some people aren’t afraid of kids learning about or watching naked people rubbing together. It’s pretty immature and dim-witted to figure that’s going to cause harm to any human being assuming they’re educated.
idx: Very Interesting. Exactly which channels are we talking about here?
Re: a couple of comments above: You most certainly can buy a new non-HDTV with a digital tuner. They are quite cheap to boot. (Just look for the SDTV logo, and the 4:3 screen)