Cable boxes are nearly 100% remote controlled from the head-end (the management software I'm familiar with is eye-gougingly bad, btw). They can tell a lot about

Cable boxes are nearly 100% remote controlled from the head-end (the management software I'm familiar with is eye-gougingly bad, btw). They can tell a lot about what's going on by looking at the box, and the status and logs it sends up. You generally can't change the settings on a box because the state is protected from changes (you can break into boxes, but that still won't give you access to the video streams you're not entitled to, since that access is cryptographically protected from the head-end).