A Gateway to Pay Televisión
Addressability is the control of the cable subscriber base, such that every user is uniquely identifiable. The diagram shows how levels of control exist within an addressable cable TV system in a hierarchical structure.
The highest level is the subscriber management system and computer control. This is where the subscriber information is stored and controlled. The data generated by -SMS is then passed to a Conditional Access Module (CA). The CA, which is second level of hierarchy, takes data and assigns it in a conditional manner. The access and security are then applied before encrypted data is passed on. The third level of hierarchy is the encoding unit, where depending on exact set up, upto 128 channels are scrambled. 128 channels are necessary to allow for future developments involving wide bandwidth cable. After the signal encoding, the signals are modulated, combined and distributed in a normal way. It is to be further noted that addressable systems do have an upper user limit, but for most systems, this figure is one million and thus unlikely to be a serious drawback. The number shown on the diagram i.e.16 million implies allowing upto 16 million users, is provided by some professional addressable system manufacturers.