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Why do you get random numbers while watching TV?


Ever wondered why you get a random set of numbers on your TV screen?

Here's the reason

People watching TV, tech aficionado

Well, assuming you watch TV at least once a day other than Youtubing and binging on OTT platforms, you must have noticed the appearance of random numbers on your TV screen. This is a unique number generated by the cable providing company which in your case could be some set-top box brand such as Tata Sky, Videocon D2H, or maybe Airtel specifically for your set-top box. You can make sure of this by putting on the same channel on two TVs and noting down the numbers. This number is uniquely generated for all the set-top boxes. The numbers are specifically generated for the purpose of stopping piracy. There are a lot of enthusiastic people out there who think to live stream a football match by recording using their camera and making it live on YouTube or Facebook. Also, people record an episode of some TV series and after a day or two, they upload it on YouTube. So suppose you record a show and then upload it to some platforms with the random number generated in it. Now the content creator saw this code, he'll contact the set-top box company in order to get your details and the set-top box company can track you down and legal action can be taken against you for piracy. These numbers can be used to track down your city, address, zip code as well as phone number, and name too. Remember when year back government of India was requesting to switch to the set-top box, this was the sole purpose for setting this up. But these numbers are not only limited to avoid piracy, these are also used for audience counts on a different channel and analyze the target rating point known as TRP for different shows. It can also be used for tracking down multiple users using the same set-top box. But this piracy can be easily avoided by simply blackening or blurring over the unique number. It was the first step towards piracy tracking, in near future, there are going to be much better ways to stop piracy.


Make sure to like the post and share it with your friends and family and let them know these facts too.



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