satallite TV

[texas slacker]

I have satallite TV and am charged monthly by the number of receivers on line. I can readily buy the receivers and got to wondering how does the satallite company know how many I have hooked up?

[Grumpy]

HMmmmmm How they know how many receivers you have, how about for you to think that they maybe watching you, making whoopee on front of TV make sure that your TV don't have hiding camera built in to it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gfretwell]

They don't care how many you hook up but they will only authorize the ones someone is paying for. There used to be ways to hack the card but they got smarter, changing the codes all the time so it got so cumbersome that I haven't heard of anyone doing it lately.

[ps56k]

I'm pretty sure each receiver has a card with a unique address - sort of like an ethernet card - and that card enables the features you have paid for.... Therefore, each receiver has it's own decoder that is enabled by the sat company. Even if you buy a receiver, you still need the "card" to be turned on, enabled, and authorized by the sat company.

[G. Morgan]

In their last update that fixed it for them (DTV) they left a message for the hackers at the end of the ROM, it read "game over". Lol...

It appears Nagravision 3 (Charlie) is holding up its encryption. The FTA community predicted a hack a long time ago, still no hack. The best you can do now is IKS, which IMO is a great way to get busted. I'm not sure how the 'plastic' guys are doing, that is outright theft so I never got involved with that.

My experiment ended a long time ago. I had a DVB-S card and did decoding on-the-fly with my PC. I really just wanted to see if it was as easy as what I was reading, and for the most part it was pretty easy. I learned a lot, then just scrapped the project. When I saw the Charlie people were suing people, I decided I learned enough. It was never about free TV for me, it was the ease of decoding the stream in real time that was the interesting part. Watching local channels from anywhere in the US was interesting too, they should offer that as a service for ppl. that want to keep up with local news stations from their hometown or whatever.

[krw]

I have to connect mine to the system with their receivers.

[G. Morgan]

They don't. That is why they charge $5 extra if your box does not "phone home" every month.

You can take the receiver anywhere, and as long as the antenna/LNBF is peaked for the correct network it will work.

They have a special package for RV's, that expects the receiver to move around.

[krw]

DISH doesn't. Mine has never phoned home. OTOH, my DirectTV is connected to my router.

I was thinking about taking one of the receivers from out other house and install it here (during our prolonged move) but decided to go with DTV instead of DISH. DISH pissed me off. That's the great thing about capitalism.

[bob haller]

I WAS a happy dish subscriber, but dropped it when they got greedy.

I bought all my boxes, and installed them myself. I was a dealer at one time, and even attended the echostar 6 launch as a VIP, signed the launch banner and met charlie and jim. I had suggested they put up a special channel and they did. I WAS a insider, or perhaps a dish groupie......

but i dropped dish when they raised the extra receiver fees for 5 bucks each to 17 bucks.....

this began the multi year period of shrinkage or small growth.... that increase all at once..... THEY DESERVED TO LOSE ALL THEIR CUSTOMERS!

for the last few years direct tv has grown steadily but not dish....

I now have the comcast triple play with TIVOs.

dish DVRs are well know to be buggy, comcast and tivos have been rock solid!

[krw]

The DISH DVR is certainly buggy. The Comcast DVR I had for a few months (an apartment here) was just as buggy, though. So far the DirectTV DVR is a lot better. OTOH, I'd much rather have cable. I'd switch in a minute.

[G. Morgan]

Me too. Luckily I moved and they could not get line-of-sight at the new location. Contract cancelled! :-)

[Doug]

My Directv doesn't call home ever and I don't pay the $5 extra. They can of course check thru the satellite if my receiver is legit or not.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Why is that?

After 30 years, I dumped our cable company. DTV offered more for less. I could not get some of the HD stations I wanted from the cable company I see no reason to go back to cable even though they have caught up.

I have DSL for internet but cable is faster and costs about double. Not worth the hassle of changing email address.

[Grumpy]

Their you go

[krw]

Satellite TV sucks. Total signal loss every thunderstorm. Just lost 25 channels, but still paying for them. No Internet. Many reasons.

Maybe le$$, but certainly less.

DSL sucks. All I can get in the AL house is 768K, which is in reality 300K, on a good day. Here they sold me 6Mb, but it's really 2Mb. Terrible. I'd gladly pay the extra $5 for real Internet service.

I haven't changed email address for 15 years (still pay for the POTS ISP).

[krw]

Not check, rather they send out authorization codes which the receiver matches. The satellite link is only one-way.

[Metspitzer]

One thing that annoys me about Satellite is you have to use converter boxes. I have more remote controls than I can keep up with. My TV goes from 2-999 and I keep it on channel 3. Also I have 7 TVs. It sucks to have to share channels.

[krw]

I don't have to share channels (I don't think) but each has to have its own box ($6/mo).

[George]

That was the card the cable companies played for a long time. "You don't need equipment for each TV". They quietly dropped that when they started removing analog converted stations and encrypted almost all of their digital content.

[George]

They quietly back off on that because they realized lots of folks don't have POTS lines anymore. After you hit a certain dollar value the receiver will not let you choose paid programming.

There is nothing can can check remotely since satellite as used by DTV is unidirectional.