Abstract: Subscriber terminals serviced by a plurality of remotely located two-way addressable cable television systems are polled using polling command signals addressed to the different terminals from a polling center. The polling command signals are sent to the subscriber terminals via their associated headends. Responses from the polled subscriber terminals are successively received at the polling center. The round trip signal propagation times required to communicate the polling command and response signals to and from each of the headends is equalized so that the response from the polled subscriber terminals are received in the same order in which the terminals are addressed by the polling command signals. A uniform delay is inserted after each successive polling command signal to allow for variations in the signal propagation times between the headends and individual subscriber terminals coupled thereto.

Abstract: An addressable CATV converter for connection with a remote headend in a cable distribution system contains a memory into which a unique address code identifying that converter is downloaded from the remote headend.