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An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC
Talinom writes "AnandTech has a writeup on how ClearQAM appears to be headed for an early death. From the article — 'At this point there's no reason to believe that cable companies won't deploy Privacy Mode across their networks, so it's a matter of 'when,' not 'if' this will happen. It goes without saying that if you're currently enjoying the use of a ClearQAM tuner to receive EB tier channels, you'll want to enjoy what time you have left, and look in to other solutions for the long-haul. At this pace, it looks like cable TV and computers will soon be divorcing.'" Update: 08/27 23:59 GMT by T : "EB" here stands for "Expanded Basic (cable service)"; Wikipedia as usual has a time-sucking, digressive, fascinating explanation about the tiers of cable TV service in the US.
DVB-S cards can use smart cards to get premium (encrypted) channels as long as you have a subscription. They don't lock you out like cable does.
But the key changes every 2 minutes or so. You can't watch tv if you can't break it in much less than that.
It is called ANSI/SCTE 52.
http://www.scte.org/documents/pdf/Standards/ANSI_SCTE%2052%202008.pdf
Actually there is a way and it is supposed to be provided by your cable provider on request by law if you are a subscriber. Just get a tuner that takes a cable card. What's that you say, your cable provider doesn't have that? well now is the time to start screaming to the FCC. Make the Cable companies follow the existing law.
Why bother
Most of us probably download most all our shows anyway, and with RSS it really doesn't take much effort to get everything you want. It'll help send a message to the cable companies, you'll save money, etc. The only catch is you're less likely to run across new shows by accident, but a little effort on the internet will give plenty of suggestions (e.g. look at number of seeds on a torrent). Cable is obsolete (sorta).
CableLABs, the guys that control cable card, refuse to allow pci/pci express cards to be sold to the public that accept cable cards. There is 1 model made by ati, but officially you can only buy it in a premade htpc from someone like Dell. The card even scans the dmi info of the bios to make sure it is an authorized system.
Also, the card only has Windows drivers.
DVB-S cards can use smart cards to get premium (encrypted) channels as long as you have a subscription. They don't lock you out like cable does.
Unfortunately for American viewers, there is no legal way to do this. Although DVB-S is an international standard and widely adopted, current laws within the US prohibit using off the shelf hardware to decrypt the video signal. Doing this is considered signal theft.
Dish Network uses Nagra 3 encryption, as do some other providers in Europe. There are no legal conditional access modules available for this crypto system, so any use of these smart cards in devices other than what the provider supplies is considered theft, as well as a violation of the DMCA.
DirectTV uses it's own proprietary system and can only be legally used with their hardware.
It really sucks paying to loose control.
CableCARD is dead. (You can tell because it was supposed to be integrated into TVs so that no set-top box would be required at all, but if you go to Best Buy or somewhere you'll find exactly zero TVs that actually have a CableCard slot.) Comcast and the other cablecos did everything in their power to sabotage it, and succeeded. Not only were there tons of "compatibility problems," but the cablecos constantly whined about how it didn't support bullshit like "On Demand." So now there's a "new" cable card standard called "Tru2Way" that's going to be available Real Soon Now (and if you believe it'll ever see the light of day, I've got a bridge to sell you...)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hulu Stargate SG 1.
We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States.
Hulu Stargate Atlantis.
We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States.
Sigh!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Encrypting after multiplexing would make it difficult for the provider to authorize individual STBs for individual channels.
Each channel typically has a different key, thus allowing the provider to ensure that you can only watch the channels you have paid for, with a high level of granularity. If you call and order another channel, they simply authorize your STB for the new channel on their back-office system, and then whatever entity distributes these keys puts another key in the list it sends to your STB.
Just another proletarian malcontent.