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Open Cable Standard Not So Open
Mike Hicks writes "A few days ago, I heard about the FCC approving new rules for standardizing digital cable in the US. This involved using a set top box or tuner integrated into a TV along with a smart card (much like digital satellite services). Unfortunately, it looks like the standard (believed to be OpenCable) is meant to tightly control the hardware and software that can be used, probably making any open-source implementation very difficult if not impossible. I seem to be having a case of deja vu"
TiVo is fine. You should be surprised to learn that the TiVo from DirecTV is a one box solution - it does the decryption and recording all by itself. TiVo is careful not to piss off the networks, cable providers, and FCC so they are able to market products like this. Hopefully they'll be able to release something like the combo unit for digital cable once it becomes standardized.
OpenCable uses MHP for its middleware, it's based on Java and all the specs are available from ETSI, open implementations should be possible, of course this is only part of OpenCable but if everything is encrypted to start with it doesn't matter if you can implement open versions, you're stuffed (until its broken).
I hear ya. I have a DCT2000 and it's the worst piece of garbage ever made. You can make your own PVR for them though. Check out http://www.mythtv.org. Someone in the forums there figured out how to talk to a DCT2000 using the serial data port.
While I agree, there are a rather large number of people who can't get satellite due to the birds being obstructed by landscape, buildings, or orientation (the latter mostly if you're in an apartment/condo). I'm one of them -- you have no idea how much I'd like to ditch my cable company or how long I've wanted to.
I've had DirecTV installers come out to my house twice... both times they said the sats were obscured by trees. Which trees? Well, since they gave me different answers I don't know. I'd be willing to cut down the trees in the way (70-80' tall southern pine), but I'm not going to cut down more than I need to. I know the direction and inclination of the sats, but that really doesn't help much -- there's a half dozen or so trees that could be an issue and a vague compass reading isn't going to help.
So I, and many others, are stuck with cable.
There's also the issue that this is going to be very harmful to the satellite business -- in a few years you'll be able to use cable directly with your TV, no box. Sat. vendors will still be using boxes, and they're a serious negative for the public both in expense and increased complexity. Both Echostar and DirecTV have already lambasted the new standard for being set without their input.
Look, here's the deal. In the United States, the Set-Top Box (STB) market is dominated by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta. Between the 2 of them, they have about 90% of the total STB sales here. This is for mostly historical reasons, but the way they hold onto it now is that they have monopolies on the conditional access (content protection) systems, which are hardwired into the boxes.
The cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, et al) want to open up the standards provided to set top box manufacturers so that consumer electronics companies (Sony, Samsung, et al) can compete with Moto and SA for the business, driving the prices for STBs down. STBs are one of the largest capital costs/subscriber acquisition costs for a cable company. The secondary goal (beyond lower STB prices) is moving the STB purchase into the retail chain, so that cable companies don't have to carry that burden unless they want to). The way they plan to do that is a conditional access module in the form of a PCMCIA card (more or less), which the user purchases or leases from their cable company, and repurchases or leases if they move with the STB they own.
So "Open" is only "Open compared to the current system, which is completely closed." It doesn't mean what the typical slashdot reader would think it does.
It is not illegal for you to own a digitial cable box. However, the manufacturers of digitial boxes do not sell to consumers, and cable companies have so far only been renting boxes to customers. Therefore, it is very difficult to own a digital cable box legally, but the act itself is not illegal.
Explain to me HOW it costs them $55/mo to send me 70 channels?
simple.. 4.8 billion dollars in the headend in equipment.
EVERY ONE of those channels you bitch about FORCES the cable company to pay for "carry rights" from $100.00 a month to over $1500.00 a month per X subscribers for the popular stations. and then you have channels like Discovery that REQUIRE you carry the other 10 crap channels of theirs if you carry Discovery.
It's fricking expensive. and it's a fricking legal nightmare as well as PHB's trying to see how much more they can squeeze out of the customers just so they look like they do something at the company.
bottom line? Get a DISH + DSL if you can. Espically in a Comcast area.....
spoken anon by a insider... I wouldnt have my companies services if I didnt get them for free.. It's horribly overpriced.
In the UK, we have Smartcards tied to the customer, plugged into the set-top box. I believe that it is impossible for the Set top box (STB) to decrypt the signal comming in, without accessing the key from the smartcard. The smartcard is fed encrypted packets that the STB cann't understand, but these packets are decrypted and recognised by the card to mean things like 'Active channel' or 'suspend service', or 'Key for the next 10 seconds on this channel is xxxx'.
With this setup, I can't see why open source can't be used. The only way the open source program can decrypt a particular channel, is by access to the key, which it does by querying the card. This card is under full control of the cable/satellite services, who will still be able to dictate if you are able to watch a channel or not.
Now, if you had full control over the box's hardware, how difficult could it be to rig something up that grabs any channel you want it to?
Very difficult if the system is setup correctly and you have two-way communication plus neighborhood segmentation.
Step 1. Encrypt each block of channels on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.
Step 2. Distribute smart cards with unique private keys signed by the cable company.
Step 3. Change channel block keys once per hour.
Step 4. Setup key distribution system whereby the cable box requests a new channel block decryption key once per hour using its private key to sign a request.
This system makes it fairly difficult to steal cable. If you try to clone someone else's cable box private key, the cable company will see a duplicate channel block key request.
You can't modify your cable box to ask for say, the HBO channel block key because your private key itself won't be authorized by the key distribution servers at your cable company.
You could setup an online key distribute system to dup your key out to other people in your neighborhood, but it would be limited to people in your neighborhood (since other neighborhoods have different keys).
Hell, this is how the wireless encryption/authentication WPA/802.1x EAP-TLS works come to think of it (minus the smart card itself since technically it isn't needed for anything but a handy storage device).
Of course I could be missing something obvious.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
No, you've missed the point! I wrote the email that was quoted in this article, so I have a vested interest in clearing this up.
OpenCable has gone through great lengths to decouple the decoding/display/application stuff from decryption and access control mechanism. Encryption and Access Control is handled by the cable company's POD (Point Of Deployment) module which will take the form of a removable PCMCIA card or similar. Each cable company could implement different encryption and access control systems by using different POD modules, so even if one system is hacked there would be others.
The main point here, though, is that you're not handing the "hackers" the "keys" to the decryption system any more than you are by giving them a modern digital cable box. It's just a shame to build a system that would otherwise be so perfect for an open-source implementation and then lock it down due to DRM (instead of technological) concerns.
Chris
This is just taking the authentication module out of the digital box and standardizing it. This way, a costumer can purchase whatever set top box they want and use it with any cable company. Additionally, costumers will have the option to purchase televisions with digital tuners built in so they don't have to have an external box cluttering their entertainment center.
If you can create an opensource box that will communicate with the card as well as modulate and demodulate MPEG-II QAM and QPSK signals, go to it.
As for the copy protection issue: headends have planned for this for a long time. The option already exists in the headend's interface to copy protect a stream and has been there for years. I'd assume the reason they don't currently use it is due to the backlash they'd get from their customers.