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[Derek K]

But again to my point, it actually was never at all "hard" to obtain hackable satellite hardware, particularly of the DTV variety. Box stores were loaded with the stuff. It only required money, but a few 100 was nothing to someone salivating over getting all of those channels unlocked. Dealers were getting pallets of the stuff and some were separating cards from rx's and hacking themselves or sending them out. They had customers willing to pay ~$1,000.00. Hacking was at one time so synonymous with DTV that it was common water cooler fare.

Again for DiSH I seem to remember there was some kind of a circuit board adapter that would be inserted into the card slot to use a card "emulator," rather than simple hack and reinsertion of stock card. Not simple, not unobtrusive, and not widely deployed. DiSH fought its own piracy though a series of card swaps, but I don't think it was because the cards themselves were being hacked and reinserted like with DTV. DiSH had an advantage in its security being inherently harder to crack. I believe that really the only reason it was at all was from a Nagra insider selling secrets.

FTA was "sold all over the place" but was still never mainstream in any way close to volumes of DTV & DiSH.

Yes but the days of going to Radio shack, Circuit City or even Best Buy to buy hardware for unethical purposes was in the early 2000's

As installations became more complex, and we got into multi room systems with free installation under the lease model, most big box stores went to an installation certificate model. You either went to one of these stores, either signed up in the store and a DIRECTV/DISH installer would being out and install your hardware with a contract, or you bought a piece of paper with an 800 number on it which allowed you to sign up for service. There would be a promotion code on the piece of paper, which would give the store credit for making that sale.

As far as DISH's system eventually being broken, there was rumor going around that it was DIRECTV who broke their system to take the pressure off DIRECTV about doing something about their own issues, With both systems being compromised, there was no more finger pointing. Besides by the late 2000's DISH was the more desirable service to have.

I am not going to get into the different methods out there, but when several FTA manufactures where importing equipment by the hundreds of thousands that was perfectly legal, we will really never know how bad the problem really was at the time.

DISH was never really able to shut down the FTA boxes, or they would have done so. Instead DISH's way of shutting down these boxes was through litigation, and through their signal integrity department which did nothing except threaten people with lawsuits and try to get people to settle with them for a few thousand dollars and then post a press release on their sat scams website.

 

[navychop]

there was rumor going around that it was DIRECTV who broke their system to take the pressure off DIRECTV

Didn't a court make such finding, and then awarded something like $1 in damages?

 

[telstar_1]

Yes but the days of going to Radio shack, Circuit City or even Best Buy to buy hardware for unethical purposes was in the early 2000's

As installations became more complex, and we got into multi room systems with free installation under the lease model, most big box stores went to an installation certificate model. You either went to one of these stores, either signed up in the store and a DIRECTV/DISH installer would being out and install your hardware with a contract, or you bought a piece of paper with an 800 number on it which allowed you to sign up for service. There would be a promotion code on the piece of paper, which would give the store credit for making that sale.

As far as DISH's system eventually being broken, there was rumor going around that it was DIRECTV who broke their system to take the pressure off DIRECTV about doing something about their own issues, With both systems being compromised, there was no more finger pointing. Besides by the late 2000's DISH was the more desirable service to have.

I am not going to get into the different methods out there, but when several FTA manufactures where importing equipment by the hundreds of thousands that was perfectly legal, we will really never know how bad the problem really was at the time.

DISH was never really able to shut down the FTA boxes, or they would have done so. Instead DISH's way of shutting down these boxes was through litigation, and through their signal integrity department which did nothing except threaten people with lawsuits and try to get people to settle with them for a few thousand dollars and then post a press release on their sat scams website.

So are you saying that you can today simply purchase an FTA rx and watch DiSH on it, with relative technical ease? If so, please note that we don't want to discuss any details on how to steal TV in 2026, which would violate terms of this site. If this is so then a yes would be about as far as that could go.

I saw the arising of DBS piracy as a sort of follow-on to C-band piracy, though that had been largely squelched by 1994 when DTV debuted. There was definitely a public mindset linking satellite to hacking. Then DTV debuted and it was much the same paradigm of buying a system for, typically $100s, wherein to that mindset the viewing then ought to be for free. That it turned out to be easily hackable only fueled all of that along. So then DiSH comes out, also initially wanting $100s to buy in, but then it wises up and starts the move to 'leased" hardware, which discouraged piracy both by the low entry cost and the non-owning of the system. Then the increasing demand for multi-room viewing along with the hardening of systems against hacking pretty much spelled the end of it on any kind of broad basis.

 

[telstar_1]

Didn't a court make such finding, and then awarded something like $1 in damages?

To my memory a guy at Nagravision, which was DiSH's security provider, sold out a hack on what was otherwise considered a very secure system for a sum of $50,000.00. I don't recall the money as having come from DTV but rather from a hacking interest.

 

[Derek K]

So are you saying that you can today simply purchase an FTA rx and watch DiSH on it, with relative technical ease? If so, please note that we don't want to discuss any details on how to steal TV in 2026, which would violate terms of this site. If this is so then a yes would be about as far as that could go.

I saw the arising of DBS piracy as a sort of follow-on to C-band piracy, though that had been largely squelched by 1994 when DTV debuted. There was definitely a public mindset linking satellite to hacking. Then DTV debuted and it was much the same paradigm of buying a system for, typically $100s, wherein to that mindset the viewing then ought to be for free. That it turned out to be easily hackable only fueled all of that along. So then DiSH comes out, also initially wanting $100s to buy in, but then it wises up and starts the move to 'leased" hardware, which discouraged piracy both by the low entry cost and the non-owning of the system. Then the increasing demand for multi-room viewing along with the hardening of systems against hacking pretty much spelled the end of it on any kind of broad basis.

I explained that already. Dish pretty much killed off the FTA boxes, not by securing their signal, but rather suing the FTA equipment manufacturers. It later came out that the FTA manufactures where going on the pirate TV sites, writing and releasing the files to load on to a thumb drive to program the FTA box. Once the software was no longer being updated and released on a regular basis, it was game over.

I can tell you during the late 2000's there was a lot more FTA boxes on the market than satellite equipment that could be used for other purposes.

I do not know if any satellite service today in the united states that has a hacking problem today.

Again all satellite piracy these days is pretty much non existent. With the jail broken fire sticks out there and other illegal IPTV services, the focus is going after the IPTV TV providers and shutting down their streams and services. Password sharing for streaming services is also high up on the list these days also.

I don't want to discuss piracy on this site either, as long as we don't discuss how to program a smart card, or where to buy and modify equipment, I don't think there is an issue

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[telstar_1]

Well, all right, but this does contradict my instincts as to what went on. To state that there (at one time) were more FTA rx's tuning DBS providers' signals than providers' own proprietary rx's in homes seems wildly off.

 

[jsmit86]

I'm so old that I can remember when this thread was about Boost Mobile!