Jerrold Cable TV Boxes
How a Simple Cable Box and an Innovative Company Shaped Our TV Experience and Revolutionized an Industry
We were not the first family in our area to get cable television; other families had been using it for years. Although I was exposed to cable programming, the hardware behind it remained a mystery to me. I occasionally glimpsed the boxes the adults used to control the TV, but as a young guest, they were usually out of reach. When my family decided to get cable TV, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I figured it would involve some kind of remote control, probably a wired one, but I didn’t know the specifics.
The cable installation happened while I was at school, and knowing it was being installed, I rushed home that day. By the time I arrived, my mom and sisters had already spent hours exploring the new channels, leaving me with free rein over this exciting new gadget. The cable box was smaller and more wood-like than I had imagined, sitting on the coffee table with a cable running to a larger box on top of the television. It was made by a company called Jerrold, and you can see what it looked like above.
This model, the Jerrold JRX-3, was the exact one we had, although ours, like many others, had a sticker over the numbers to show which channels they corresponded to. Even though the sticker is long gone, I still remember what most of the channels were. The device was intuitive, capable of tuning in up to 36 channels. It connected to the TV through a coaxial cable, with the output set to channel 3 in our case. You selected a channel by moving the switch on the left to choose a row, then pressing the button corresponding to the desired channel. On the far right was a fine-tuning dial to clear up any signal issues, although I don’t remember using it much, which wasn’t always typical.
This particular unit, the Jerrold JRX-3, was one of many similar devices, some larger or with fewer channels. As far as I know, Jerrold didn’t make any models capable of handling more than 36 channels or offering pay-per-view access. For those features, we eventually upgraded to a more advanced wireless system.
Here is a look at the full system, including the cable box and remote unit. Compared to today’s streaming boxes, it seems large, but at the time, it felt tiny and magical. We used Jerrold equipment in our home for at least a decade, though I never learned much about the company behind it.
A History of the Jerrold Electronics Corporation
Jerrold Electronics Corporation was a pioneer in cable television technology, founded in 1950 by Milton Shapp, who later became the Governor of Pennsylvania. Jerrold played a key role in developing Community Antenna Television (CATV), an early form of cable TV, by helping deliver TV signals to rural areas that couldn’t receive broadcasts via antenna. They achieved this by designing equipment to amplify and distribute signals through coaxial cables, laying the groundwork for the modern cable TV industry.
Jerrold gained prominence in the 1950s and 1960s when it began manufacturing cable equipment. Recognizing the challenge of providing television to remote or mountainous regions, Shapp devised the idea of shared antennas placed on high ground to capture signals and distribute them to homes via cable. This innovation led to the development of CATV. Jerrold not only created hardware but also offered turnkey solutions, helping design and build entire cable systems with equipment like amplifiers and head-end units for processing TV signals.
By the 1970s, Jerrold was the leading supplier of cable TV equipment in the U.S. The company was purchased by General Instrument in 1967 and continued to dominate the cable industry through the 1980s and 1990s as cable television became more widespread.
Jerrold Cable Boxes Through the Years
Jerrold became well-known for its set-top boxes, which allowed consumers to access cable channels by decoding signals sent via coaxial cables. These boxes were critical in expanding cable services in urban and suburban areas.
Basic Analog Cable Boxes (1960s-1980s)
Jerrold’s early cable boxes were simple devices used to convert cable TV signals into analog formats that home televisions could display. These early boxes were primarily channel selectors that allowed users to switch between a limited number of channels. The cable company sent a continuous signal carrying multiple channels, and the Jerrold box would convert the chosen frequency into a viewable channel on the television.
Addressable Boxes (1980s-1990s)
As premium channels like HBO and pay-per-view services emerged, Jerrold introduced addressable cable boxes. These more advanced devices could be remotely controlled by the cable company to activate or deactivate channels based on the user’s subscription. Each box had a unique address, and cable providers could send signals to grant or deny access to specific channels, allowing for subscription-based services and scrambled premium content.
Converter/De-Scrambler Boxes (1980s-1990s)
Jerrold also produced converter boxes that could unscramble encoded cable signals. As cable companies began protecting premium content, these boxes became essential. A market for black-market Jerrold boxes also emerged, with modified devices allowing customers to bypass payments and access premium channels for free.
Digital Set-Top Boxes (1990s-2000s)
With technological advancements, Jerrold, under General Instrument, transitioned to digital set-top boxes. These devices decoded digital cable signals, offering improved picture quality and more channels. They also allowed for two-way communication between the user and the cable provider, which facilitated services like Video-On-Demand (VOD) and interactive program guides.
Jerrold’s Decline
Jerrold was a major force in the cable TV industry from the 1950s to the 1990s, but as new technologies like satellite TV, fiber optics, and internet-based streaming gained popularity, traditional cable boxes became less relevant. General Instrument, which had acquired Jerrold, was absorbed by Motorola in 2000. Motorola continued developing cable box technology before selling its set-top box division to Google in 2012. Although the Jerrold brand no longer exists, its legacy lives on in the infrastructure that still supports cable TV and internet services today.
Jerrold Electronics Corporation played a crucial role in transforming cable television from a niche service into a household staple, shaping how millions of people watched TV from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Though the brand has faded, its innovations continue to influence modern cable systems and digital set-top boxes today. Nowadays, those boxes don’t serve a purpose, but you can often find them for sale on the cheap. For me, owning one is a physical connection to an amazing moment in my life when a new world opened up to me. All transmitted through a wire to this magical box.
In the late '80's I lived in an apartment building with a box that sent the TV signal to each apartment. HBO was the only premium channel so if you paid for HBO the technician would remove the mechanical HBO blocker from your circuit. My cable service stopped working once and the only way It could be fixed was to remove the HBO blocker so I got free HBO for a few years. Nice!
This is a great article. My grandfather - Frank Ragone - was the engineering executive at Jerrold responsible for the creation of original box. He used to tell us about the initial call he made to a 3rd party electronics company (Alps) with the concept and our family still has copies of the original patents! Thank you.