DirecTV to Pursue Pirates 291
Trinity-Infinity writes "This story from CNNfn details DirecTV's & Hughes Electronics' plans to eliminate the piracy of their signals through a direct-mail campaign. Their source for creating their list of who to mail letters to? Searching bootlegging operations the feds have already busted. It is interesting that as many as 1 million people may be pirating, in comparison to DirecTV's 10 million paying customers." Ya know, I really want to pirate DirecTV, but not to get all the channels... just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish so I could use my DirecTivo for The Family Guy and That 70s Show. Is that to much to ask? I already pay for HBO and Sci-Fi channel. Anyway, there's definitely going to be a lot more cracking down on pirated dish stuff: they are getting crazy with the protective measures.
Will Canada be targetted? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:i know it's been said before, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Then you've been out of the loop for 15 years! Thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, it is very much illegal for you to receive a signal 'not intended for your receipt'. This law was ramrodded by the cellular phone industry so that radio enthusiasts with scanners wouldn't be able to listen to your wife ask you to buy bread and milk on the way home.
Why they can't (Score:5, Informative)
They don't control the channels they offer as much as who they buy the channels from. Say they setup a deal with Disney, Disney now says you must require everyone of get ESPN and Disney Channel or no Disney at all. The same with Viacom channels (or whoever owns them now.)
Dishnetwork had a deal called dish pix, $10 10 channels. BUT you couldn't get MTV, Vh1, and a lot of others since their required bundling didn't allow them to be a low tier package. But you could get other "lesser" niche based channels. But those started disappearing as they were being bought out by bigger companies and being tied to other channels.
Discovery was the best at not having requirements, but they may have changed now (with about 20 channels in their lineup)
It all comes down to the provider; DirecTV, DISH Network, and Time Warner are locked down to the channels they offer with others.
They are even restricted by the providers competitors. So if the mid package has A&E, A&E's competitor must be in that package as well.
Now if you go and get yourself a BUD (big ugly dish) you may be able to find a provider who sells more channels ala carte, but they usually have a fee for changing your schedule. They make their money off of fee's and have more options that way.
PPV is actually becoming the preferred solutions for long events. You can sign up to watch a week long cricket match already. I'd think in another couple years you'll probably pick and choose events. But the price will probably be higher (like $20 for the entire Tour.)
Re:From what I understand... (Score:1, Informative)
There are basically three methods out there...
H Card programmed to be an 'aux card' for emulation via DOS (SLE) and Linux (Pitou), if the card has been Black Sunday'd (Super Bowl thing) then an unlooper in Phoenix mode is required. If the card is 'virgin' or 'clean' a programmer will do.
The difference between DOS and Linux emulation is... the Linux version allows distribution of authorization packets from only one 'H' Card using TCP/IP in a LAN or low latency connection over the 'Net (cable/dsl preferrably within the same provider)... from what I've gathered this must be under 100ms to maintain authorization for the receiver. This program is known as 'pitou' it can be found at http://pitou.sourceforge.net/ It was mentioned here a few weeks ago. Which has DirecTV in a frenzy... this has probably prompted them to more scare tactics, this article just details yet another.
H Card w/ bootloader (to get a Black Sunday'd card working with a script) ... the scripts are far and few between now?
The newer HU card programmed using an unlooper, right now these cards have been taken down fairly quick (loss of channels mainly).
For more information, go to... http://www.dssunderground.com/ http://www.hitecsat.com/ you'll find everything you ever wanted to know in the forums...
I myself spend more time reading/testing it out then actually watching TV.
"Pay-Per-View" Article Now Out on DirecTV (Score:3, Informative)
Of course I wonder if the article will be pirated too. :-0
Re:PC (Score:2, Informative)
What you do with an emulation setup is get an old PC, and emulate the operation of the microcontroller (an 8051) in the PC. That way, if the code gets reprogrammed, you don't have a useless card, just a PC to reboot.
There's some background information on emulation [canadahu.com] at canadahu.com.
There's also a DirecTV emulator for linux called Pitou, as mentioned previously on Slashdot. [slashdot.org] That one's pretty neat, since it's based on an existing 8052 simulator called ucsim, and it allows you to use a descrambling card across TCP/IP. Pitou's home page [sourceforge.net] is on sourceforge.
Re:Just the channels I want (Score:2, Informative)
event but to get that I needed to buy 50+ extra channels. Not worth it in my opinion.
You just want 20 channels not 500?
Ok, that will be $50.00 per month.
DirectTV's costs are not deliniated on a "per channel" basis. They have very high fixed costs ie. satellites. The marginal costs of adding the other 480 channels you your "favorite 20" is negligble. this idea that the cost of 20 channels should be "20/500 x monthly cost" shows an extreme naivete in the way business works.
Same false logic that if record companies sold music by the song than that hit single you like would only cost 1/10 x $15.00 == $1.50. Weell, no average "hit group" only produces 1 hit single per year. I doubt your $1.50 mp3 download would support music creation effort behind that years worth of work.
Re:From what I understand... (Score:2, Informative)
The emulator emulates the card itself and only sends on the actual key requests. Any writes are done in the emulated card in the PC.
It's interesting, but the people that really get into this aren't into TV as much as the challenge. It's kind of like one of the last REAL brain challenges left.
If DTV was smart, they'd just start hiring the best crackers (at any price, really) and have them start searching for methods to stop pirating.
They have legal recourse? (Score:2, Informative)
Though I suppose the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions do apply to doctored smart cards. Sigh.