To rent a movie, a phone line had to be connected to the receiver box. The box would dial out to DirectTV and send over the information that "jrib purchased movie X".
I learned that I could connect two phones directly with a 9V battery and the right resistor in the middle. So I connected a phone line on one end to the DirectTV receiver and on the other end to random phone.
The receiver waited for a dial tone, so then I played a dial tone sound on repeat on my computer into the phone's microphone.
It worked and I got to see the movie!
I felt really guilty though so I told my parents a few days later and we let the satellite box connect to a real phone line to pay for the movie :)
This link explains how the phone circuit is setup: https://hackaday.com/2012/06/08/using-old-phones-as-an-inter...
