I second this statement. Developers generally sign a contract stating anything they come up with while working on projects at work, or with company resources, and sometimes even after-hours development that is reasonably close in subject mater to projects at work, are owned by the company.
Indeed, some CAMs can be emulated, some are a mixed (compiled/linked with the software in flash), then you enter the realm of smartcard cracking (or cablecard, or dcas) in order to get the keys.
I work on set top boxes, and not every platform we port to has a good debugger (hell, its been years since I've seen a good debugger). Our logging system is all in house; multiple "levels" for each log statment, (noise,information,warnings,fatals,etc), with each module creating its own log id and setting its "preference level". It works well, but:
1) Useless logs. Engineers not taking the time to write logs that are useful. "Got to here", "Value=1", etc. A few of us write enum-to-string functions and pass them to the logging system for cleaner output. 2) Running at the speed of 115200. We've only got a serial port most times, with multiple threads trying to access it, there's got to be some synchronization, and this generally affects threads of any priority. Using a logger that caches and outputs logs at its own pace is nice.
You've got to have encryption support. The hardware that goes into this (cablecard or smartcards) require a conditional access module running on the settop box. Encryption providers will not be handing out their modules to just any homebrewer when they make money off their box certifications.
Another thing to point out is the license holders wont be to happy. A major part of the STBs cost is in MPEG2, Macrovision, and a number of other technology licenses!
No, they wouldn't. Moto and SA (and other companies, i.e. Thompson, HDT, DMT, etc) all have zero incentive to cost reduce their already razor thin margins.
The people making money on the boxes are the liecnse holders; MPEG2, Encryption (Nagra,SA,Motorola), Macrovision, and pretty much anything else in the box.
I'm not worried about the OP as much as the person saying "I rent space from you, so I can do anything I want, like starting a meth lab, and you can't come in with out asking first".
Guess what? When you rent out a house to other people, you don't have the right to snoop on your renter's. You can't just access their house whenever you please. There's an expectation of privacy and I think the same applies here.
And here's where the analogy fails. The owner in fact does have a right to come in and fix something if its urgent (such as a water heater broke and is now flooding other apartments). They can also enter, with advanced notice, to repair and up keep the property. Its all in the fine print of the lease.
This guy asked for their help. When you go to the doctor or hospital with a problem, they run run a few tests in order to aid in their diagnosing you. Sometimes they are wrong; you still pay for the tests though.
Indeed, and those companies looking to switch to Mpeg4 to save bandwidth are also paying the price to upgrade all those STBs in the field. DirecTv decided to go with Mpeg4 out of the gates.
There are two things at play here. There is the Transport Stream (data transmission) and the Content.
All HDTV's are only required to have a MPEG2 video decoder (content). They still have to parse the Mpeg2-TS and the ATSC PSIP data that describes the channels and EPG.
How long have we had analogue signals? When broadcasters wanted to start using color streams, they were required to make the signal backwards compatible so older black & white tv's would work. We've had that same technology for years; with every new feature tacked on (closed caption in the VBI lines). By mandating the _only_ video format required by a settop box be Mpeg2 video, they have started yet another long running demand for "backwards compatibility".
Now, there might be hope; the FCC might mandate that only the first program on the transport be "mpeg2", and that might only need to be a SD version of the HD stream in mpeg4. You would still lose 4Mb/s to the SD stream, but allow everyone that has bought TV's and converter boxes that handle "first gen" ATSC signals to still view programs.
As for standards becoming obsolete; the Mpeg2 transport stream has been working fairly well for a long time. Part of the reason for this success is that it is content agnostic.
The FCC mandated that the HD video be encoded in Mpeg2 only; never planning ahead using Moore's law and allowing different formats, such as Mpeg4! Had they allowed Mpeg4, several HD channels could have been fit into the 19Mb/s channel bandwidth, along with other SD channels as well.
Bad code, no matter how well-commented it may be, is still BAD CODE. I've worked with a few female coders, and I've not been terribly impressed. One was the most hackish and inefficient I'd ever seen, lacking creativity to solve complex problems.
Men write just as bad; there are just more of them writing so the stats are skewed.
School/Education,Background & Experience are good indicators of a good engineer - male or female.
You would believe it was dead. There are only 2 engineers, myself and another fellow in a different office, that use UML for design. The opposite in the company is no design at all, or very loosely worded documents.
If I get hit by a bus... at least someone will be able to understand what the hell I was working on.
Its still a tuner + demod! It conforms to the DTTB spec; Chinese Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting (DTTB) System Standard (GB20600-2006). A quick look at the LegendSilicon website shows that it decodes QAM signals as well as the core TDS-OFDM for DTTB - but no mater what, it outputs a MPEG2 Transport Stream for the "Device" to decode (be that a laptop, pmp, ultra portable, etc).
What ever the case, this device performs _exactly_ the same operations as an ATSC or DVB-H or DVB-S usb dongle; tune & demultiplex. These devices have been ready and on store shelves in the Americas and Europe for a while now, thus refuting the articles claim of "can't have!".
They have a USB HDTV dongle listed as something "you can't have"... seriously, do these people get out to the stores much? There are at least 5 brands of USB HDTV dongles at my local fry's!
Would someone please inform them that these do _not_ "decode" HDTV; they are simply a silicon tuner, [ATSC|DVB|ISDB|] demodulators (qam, qpsk, 8vsb) slapped together with a usb interface. The PC does all the packet filtering, stream reconstruction, and finally video and audio decoding.
I remember joking about "stray alpha particles from the sun" screwing up code for class projects. Now Intel is trying to take that one away, all we'll be left with is "my dog ate it".
So the knowledge of how to open a lock is illegal? Are you seriously advocating security through obscurity? Knowledge isn't a crime; acting on that knowledge is. Just because I know how to open locks doesn't mean that I'm going around opening up my neighbors homes.
If you spend time and money to discover a weakness in someone else's design, you deserve to get paid for it. Time is money.
The TV's were being used during speeches (though there were a few TV manufactures showing off technology as well) and on stage; I doubt you would notice a 1/4" square of black electrical tape over a generally _black_ IR window.
I think the article has the wrong answers; speaking for 5+ years in the digital tv / set top box industry. I believe to many managers / bosses place unrealistic deadlines and projects on their engineers. Far to often have I been told "It should take just 15 minutes!" for something they have no damn clue about. This stems from the fact that most of the bosses I've dealt with are from the dot-com era, they sold the company in the past and what worked for them their they believe works today, even when the technology requirements are vastly different. Hire good engineers and let them do their job; don't let sales take control of your development cycle and force you into unrealistic deadlines.
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I second this statement. Developers generally sign a contract stating anything they come up with while working on projects at work, or with company resources, and sometimes even after-hours development that is reasonably close in subject mater to projects at work, are owned by the company.
Indeed, some CAMs can be emulated, some are a mixed (compiled/linked with the software in flash), then you enter the realm of smartcard cracking (or cablecard, or dcas) in order to get the keys.
Good info all around!
I work on set top boxes, and not every platform we port to has a good debugger (hell, its been years since I've seen a good debugger). Our logging system is all in house; multiple "levels" for each log statment, (noise,information,warnings,fatals,etc), with each module creating its own log id and setting its "preference level". It works well, but:
1) Useless logs.
Engineers not taking the time to write logs that are useful. "Got to here", "Value=1", etc. A few of us write enum-to-string functions and pass them to the logging system for cleaner output.
2) Running at the speed of 115200.
We've only got a serial port most times, with multiple threads trying to access it, there's got to be some synchronization, and this generally affects threads of any priority. Using a logger that caches and outputs logs at its own pace is nice.
You've got to have encryption support. The hardware that goes into this (cablecard or smartcards) require a conditional access module running on the settop box. Encryption providers will not be handing out their modules to just any homebrewer when they make money off their box certifications.
Another thing to point out is the license holders wont be to happy. A major part of the STBs cost is in MPEG2, Macrovision, and a number of other technology licenses!
No, they wouldn't. Moto and SA (and other companies, i.e. Thompson, HDT, DMT, etc) all have zero incentive to cost reduce their already razor thin margins.
The people making money on the boxes are the liecnse holders; MPEG2, Encryption (Nagra,SA,Motorola), Macrovision, and pretty much anything else in the box.
218 ends in 80, its digikey's fax.
404 is for McMaster-Carr parts(?): http://www.mcmaster.com/#contact
Note: The 800 number is digikey :)
Anyone else dial the numbers in the "last 10 phone calls"? One is from here in Atlanta!
2186813390 (80?)
4046296500
8003444539
6464653692
I'm not worried about the OP as much as the person saying "I rent space from you, so I can do anything I want, like starting a meth lab, and you can't come in with out asking first".
Guess what? When you rent out a house to other people, you don't have the right to snoop on your renter's. You can't just access their house whenever you please. There's an expectation of privacy and I think the same applies here.
And here's where the analogy fails. The owner in fact does have a right to come in and fix something if its urgent (such as a water heater broke and is now flooding other apartments). They can also enter, with advanced notice, to repair and up keep the property. Its all in the fine print of the lease.
This guy asked for their help. When you go to the doctor or hospital with a problem, they run run a few tests in order to aid in their diagnosing you. Sometimes they are wrong; you still pay for the tests though.
Indeed, and those companies looking to switch to Mpeg4 to save bandwidth are also paying the price to upgrade all those STBs in the field. DirecTv decided to go with Mpeg4 out of the gates.
There are two things at play here. There is the Transport Stream (data transmission) and the Content.
All HDTV's are only required to have a MPEG2 video decoder (content). They still have to parse the Mpeg2-TS and the ATSC PSIP data that describes the channels and EPG.
How long have we had analogue signals? When broadcasters wanted to start using color streams, they were required to make the signal backwards compatible so older black & white tv's would work. We've had that same technology for years; with every new feature tacked on (closed caption in the VBI lines).
By mandating the _only_ video format required by a settop box be Mpeg2 video, they have started yet another long running demand for "backwards compatibility".
Now, there might be hope; the FCC might mandate that only the first program on the transport be "mpeg2", and that might only need to be a SD version of the HD stream in mpeg4. You would still lose 4Mb/s to the SD stream, but allow everyone that has bought TV's and converter boxes that handle "first gen" ATSC signals to still view programs.
As for standards becoming obsolete; the Mpeg2 transport stream has been working fairly well for a long time. Part of the reason for this success is that it is content agnostic.
The FCC mandated that the HD video be encoded in Mpeg2 only; never planning ahead using Moore's law and allowing different formats, such as Mpeg4! Had they allowed Mpeg4, several HD channels could have been fit into the 19Mb/s channel bandwidth, along with other SD channels as well.
I lost my wife in a car accident that could have been avoided by a defensive car.
Bad code, no matter how well-commented it may be, is still BAD CODE. I've worked with a few female coders, and I've not been terribly impressed. One was the most hackish and inefficient I'd ever seen, lacking creativity to solve complex problems.
Men write just as bad; there are just more of them writing so the stats are skewed.
School/Education,Background & Experience are good indicators of a good engineer - male or female.
You would believe it was dead. There are only 2 engineers, myself and another fellow in a different office, that use UML for design. The opposite in the company is no design at all, or very loosely worded documents.
If I get hit by a bus... at least someone will be able to understand what the hell I was working on.
Its still a tuner + demod! It conforms to the DTTB spec; Chinese Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting (DTTB) System Standard (GB20600-2006). A quick look at the LegendSilicon website shows that it decodes QAM signals as well as the core TDS-OFDM for DTTB - but no mater what, it outputs a MPEG2 Transport Stream for the "Device" to decode (be that a laptop, pmp, ultra portable, etc).
What ever the case, this device performs _exactly_ the same operations as an ATSC or DVB-H or DVB-S usb dongle; tune & demultiplex. These devices have been ready and on store shelves in the Americas and Europe for a while now, thus refuting the articles claim of "can't have!".
They have a USB HDTV dongle listed as something "you can't have"... seriously, do these people get out to the stores much? There are at least 5 brands of USB HDTV dongles at my local fry's!
Would someone please inform them that these do _not_ "decode" HDTV; they are simply a silicon tuner, [ATSC|DVB|ISDB|] demodulators (qam, qpsk, 8vsb) slapped together with a usb interface. The PC does all the packet filtering, stream reconstruction, and finally video and audio decoding.
I remember joking about "stray alpha particles from the sun" screwing up code for class projects. Now Intel is trying to take that one away, all we'll be left with is "my dog ate it".
So the knowledge of how to open a lock is illegal? Are you seriously advocating security through obscurity? Knowledge isn't a crime; acting on that knowledge is. Just because I know how to open locks doesn't mean that I'm going around opening up my neighbors homes.
If you spend time and money to discover a weakness in someone else's design, you deserve to get paid for it. Time is money.
What stops someone from installing a 'keylogger' (albeit for a track ball)? Its a cute idea, but slight of hand only goes so far.
The TV's were being used during speeches (though there were a few TV manufactures showing off technology as well) and on stage; I doubt you would notice a 1/4" square of black electrical tape over a generally _black_ IR window.
Nice try.
putting electrical tape over the TV's IR sensor...
I think the article has the wrong answers; speaking for 5+ years in the digital tv / set top box industry. I believe to many managers / bosses place unrealistic deadlines and projects on their engineers. Far to often have I been told "It should take just 15 minutes!" for something they have no damn clue about. This stems from the fact that most of the bosses I've dealt with are from the dot-com era, they sold the company in the past and what worked for them their they believe works today, even when the technology requirements are vastly different.
Hire good engineers and let them do their job; don't let sales take control of your development cycle and force you into unrealistic deadlines.