Apparatus and method for preventing unauthorized circumvention of television program blocking function

摘要

A method and apparatus for preventing unauthorized circumvention of blocking of television programs. The system of the present invention prevents an unauthorized person from circumventing the VChip blocking of a specific show or channel through tuning with the cable box. A controller monitors the vertical synchronization (VSyncs) of the video signal coming into the TV (102). If a video interrupt is identified by the controller without the TV sending an IR command to the cable box, the controller redials the cable box to the channel it was on before detecting the video interrupt. This hinders an unauthorized person from working around VChip blocking functions.