Anyone who was around in the 90's remember those illegal black pay per view boxes?

[1987_Lakers]

I remember my dad had one of those, you could buy them at a flea market or something and when you connected it to your TV, you could watch pay per view movies for free, still remember watching Austin Powers, American Pie, Bid Daddy etc on it countless times

[1987_Lakers]

[SouBeachTalents]

[Patrick Chewing]

Use to obsess over getting one of these as kid. Never did. Could care less about PPV today as access to watch movies and sporting events has changed.

[glidedrxlr22]

We had one. When the folks weren't around I used to watch Spice Channel.

[highwhey]

My dad


Used to get HBO for free. Watched Oscar fight too.

[ELITEpower23]

Plus she stumbled on her words and they didn't do a retake? How bad were her outtakes then

[highwhey]

iwth the big tv to go with it...you know, the one that looks like patrick chewing:

[Chick Stern]

They have these today - jail broke fire stick

[n00bie]

I had those boxes. I remember Rogers having to come into the home for a service call and we had to hide that box lol.

Anyone remember the "UFO" box for the Super Nintendo? I use to rent games and then copy them on floppy disks LOL. Those were great times.

[warriorfan]

I had those boxes. I remember Rogers having to come into the home for a service call and we had to hide that box lol.

Anyone remember the "UFO" box for the Super Nintendo? I use to rent games and then copy them on floppy disks LOL. Those were great times.

If there’s one thing the Chinese excel at, it’s pirating media.

[n00bie]

If there’s one thing the Chinese excel at, it’s pirating media.

Actually very true. My white friends in elementary school wanted to come over 24/7 for the pirated games LOL

[bladefd]

Yes, had a few for dish network (I believe it was the viewsats). They worked great until 2011 before they put on unhackable software on the satellites. Streaming nowadays is decent but the streams are not as stable as the boxes used to be. Those were actually legit boxes but the software on it were hacked.

There were also these black cards that people used to have to put into receivers. The cards would unlock everything - I never had one but these were illegal. Only licensed installers could carry one with permission from dish network/directv (not sure why they could carry them). You could actually get in big trouble if you had one of these - a family friend got in trouble for it (I don't remember the exact circumstances).

[Charlie Sheen]

I had those boxes. I remember Rogers having to come into the home for a service call and we had to hide that box lol.

Anyone remember the "UFO" box for the Super Nintendo? I use to rent games and then copy them on floppy disks LOL. Those were great times.

I remember my friend being so paranoid he thought a cable truck driving in the neighborhood was scanning for black boxes and someone from his family would rush inside to go unplug it if they saw one.

I also remember every apartment we moved into, there was a dude outside who introduced himself as someone that "worked for the cable company" which always meant stealing cable.

[TheMan]

Never had a black box but I purchased satellite tv service in Tijuana around the middle of the 2000s that I'm positive was pirated, every channel on Directv was open, the premium movie channels like HBO, Showtime, Starz, Cinemax, all the PPV events, MLB games, NBA games and NFL Sunday Ticket for like 300 bucks per year when that easy can run you into the thousands in the US, no way it was legit

Also had my PS and PS2 jailbroken and had literally hundreds of pirated video games because they were so cheap, same with DVDs and Blu-ray discs until a few years ago, haha. Always laughed that those pirated discs carried that FBI warning about selling and purchasing copyright material.