So I got wondering the other night, what with the boxes being tied to a smartcard, and needing a load of activation hits, and virgin surely being able to see things on the network, how do people still "steal cable"?
I gather it'll be something to do with the broadcast nature of the main channels.
Which brings me onto....
why if they have on demand, therefore theoretically providing each customer with their own personal channel (which I believe is done at cabinet level) can they not broadcast to the cabinet and have channel changing done remotely? thus freeing bandwidth for other users and potentially destroying the theft of cable by removing the ability to tap in?
How exactly does one steal cable, and how can they stop it?
I know someone who steals cable and uses a bog standard box that you can buy on ebay (by bog standard I mean a cheapo one rather than one supplied by Virgin) that is unlocked by hooking it up to a computer. It will go off every few months and then the code will need to be changed. But it receives every single channel including the premium ones and can also receive the special events channel.
But that's as much as I know as to how it works. Other than that you get 19 ITVs and 31 BBC1s - all of which are the same, not regions. I assume it uses a central EPG database that is routed to the regional centres to provide the regional variations.
But that's as much as I know as to how it works. Other than that you get 19 ITVs and 31 BBC1s - all of which are the same, not regions. I assume it uses a central EPG database that is routed to the regional centres to provide the regional variations.
Good Lord!
It is due to the Nagravision encryption used by Virgin Media which is years old and was cracked years ago as well. They could change to Nagravision 2 but this has also been cracked, some satellite broadcasters still use this but many e.g. Premiere in Germany, Digital+ Spain have moved to Nagravision 3 which so far as not been cracked. Virgin Media could do the same, wouldn't need new boxes but everyone would need new cards.
Sky on satellite use NDS encryption which hasn't been cracked but are replacing all cards this year anyway due for contractual reasons.
Digitalspy has much more discussion of this in the cable forum, search for Nagravision on their.
Sky on satellite use NDS encryption which hasn't been cracked but are replacing all cards this year anyway due for contractual reasons.
Digitalspy has much more discussion of this in the cable forum, search for Nagravision on their.
I think it might actually be to do with the networky nature of cable these days. I know you can steal broadband by spoofing the MAC address of the cable modem, and I seem to think that other services can be nicked that way too. No idea how, I should point out!
Knight knight