Is there speculation motorola can remotely brick our 4dtv receivers? Is that possible to remotely make the box totally unuseable?
since 4DTV may end...
- Thread starter truckracer
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 26
- Views 8K
- Status
In theory they can do anything since they can control the maps and firmware. They could allow the 4d to only operate as a analog receiver with basic satellite tiles in it like when you do a MR. Since there will be no data stream to update the maps etc, we could be screwed.
What will happen? Most likely they will just abandon the thing like with VC-2. I'm almost certain they will send out a global deauthorization hit though.
What will happen? Most likely they will just abandon the thing like with VC-2. I'm almost certain they will send out a global deauthorization hit though.
Since we own our receivers, anything they do that destroys them would lead to lawsuits. Nobody has any right to mess with someone elses property. All they can do is drop the support. If they send a deauthorization hit, then the "free" channels that we get would also be gone. If I remember correctly, a receiver needs to of been authorized to get any digital signals. So if that is taken away, they are effectivly destroying the box and that equals damages as there is still free to air signals that can be picked up such as Northwest News. Just my opinion. Have a great day!
I never got a 4DTV, partly because I was nervous about whether the boxes would still function if the authorization centers went away. Actually it lasted longer than I thought it would.
But relative to the "Since we own our receivers" comment, while I agree with what you are saying, I remember that when I got the box that my DSR-4200 came in, there was a big sheet glued to the outside of the box that in effect said that while we have purchased the rights to use the hardware, that General Instruments retained ownership of the receiver, or at least the firmware inside the receiver. I wish I had saved that sheet, because it may have been even more absurd. At the time, it made me so mad that I almost thought of sending the thing back, except for the fact that I had just made 7 hour round trip drive to pick the thing up at a small out of the house dealership in northern Maine. And since a couple years ago it became very difficult to dispose of electronics like this in Maine (they're tending to consider it as universal waste which should include things like monitors which contain mercury, even though the main problem with disposing them would be the lead in them), and until this year, I would have had to drive 80 miles round trip to dispose of the thing if it went bad, I was determined to send them a letter telling them to come and get their receiver off my property if it ever went bad.
Anyway, if the 4DTV had a similar sheet on the box, which is likely, then they probably think they still own the receiver. Ie I think that GI considered their receivers as sort of a lifetime lease of some sort, not an outright sale of the receiver, and they certainly think that they own the firmware, which is what they would be destroying if they did send out some killer code.
Again, I don't know how similar the 4DTV firmware is to the 4200 firmware, but I know for a fact that it's possible for them to remotely kill a 4200, and since the 4DTV are so similar that they have almost identical diagnostic screens, it's probably also possible for them to kill a 4DTV. Back in the late 90's, GI came out with firmware that effectively made boat anchors of any 4200 that tuned to a particular mux, which was an educational TV station out of Kentucky, by making it only functional on a transponder it was authorized to receive, which would have made it useless as a FTA receiver. There were a lot of angry letters to GI, and GI agreed to send out another set of firmware that would fix the effects of that nasty firmware.
Anyway, it almost certainly IS possible for them to kill all the 4DTVs, but they wouldn't do that. However the odds are that 4DTVs will probably become at least very difficult to use if not non-functional once they close down their authorization centers, particularly if you need to master reset the things. So they possibly don't have to send out commands to kill the receivers. They might just self destruct on their own, shades of mission impossible.
Last edited:
I don't trust Motorola as far as I can spit. They are big business and can screw the little guy and get away with it. We will have to see how it plays out. I think the best thing to do is keep the 4DTV out of any data stream for a few months while all the shutdown is going on. Eventually they will unplug the 486 that runs it and toss it in the dumpster. Then we will be safe to browse the skys and do whatever else we want to do to our receivers.
I plan on keeping my subscription active right up to the end. (I love my VH1 Classic!) They can't kill my 4DTV while I am a subscriber. Just to be safe, I will tune in a non DCII channel somewhere around December 31 just to safely park it where it isn't receiving any updates until I can hear if there is any sort of fallout from the datastream going away.
I would think the dirtier they play, the nastier 4dtv owners will get. I have a wiggler on the way and plan to back up maps, if possible, and also add generics to maps, and who knows what else...?
I bet my box will have coax removed before the clock strikes 12:00 New Years night!
I bet my box will have coax removed before the clock strikes 12:00 New Years night!
Guys you seem to be overlooking one thing. The DC2 like the VC2 can hold two months of program keys. They could embed something in the second month spot that would be used for January starting in December. My subs run out the end of Sept that's it for my 4D I will start to go into protect mode then.
My guess is that they will load the January set of keys into the receivers in December as if they were going to proceed with a normal January, and then simply turn off the stream after December 31, orphaning the set of January monthly keys. I really don't think that Motorola will take the time to write special kill code into the stream to disable the receivers, I think they'll just turn off the stream and let the receivers quietly stop decoding the DCII channels.
Isn't that for authorization? They publicize it happens on the last day of the month and is new for each month.
I'm thinking they would need to send new firmware down to change things drastically. If I see new target FW, I'll worry.
I thought channel mapping was in memory until it downloaded something more current?
I seem to remember the 10 year old satellites and generic tiles and old mailbox messages are present after a MR until current satellites are downloaded again.
They may not write a kill code but couldn't they do something in December to cause havoc? I remember on the VC2 + shutdown my VC was long from being subscribed like almost a year one night close to the end I tuned to a FP VC channel and I started getting hammered with HITS (It ran up 1500 in a few hours) When I saw that happening I quickly exited viewing. I don't know what they were doing, but didn't seem right.
They can in theory store the next months keys a month in advance. I never did a MR I can't remember if there were any generic satellites in my 4D when I got it new in 2006. I remember the channel count was way low like 500 though. Maybe someone who recently did a MR can shed some light on this.
LOL..."the 486 pc goes in the dumpster"....i remember the old x86 cpu's.... thats been a while LOL
Here's my thing - If C band subscriptions go the wayside for consumers i will be straight FTA and OTA digital. I live many years with analog tv antenna and was happy with it. I can watch plenty of informercials without paying for them.
i have never been a motorola fanboy. i even have an iphone to avoid motorola phones.
If and when motorola pulls the plug on c band ....no pizza dishes or cable in this house period.
I am not signing any lengthy contracts with my credit card on file for a bunch of watered down picture quality channels.
i have never been a motorola fanboy. i even have an iphone to avoid motorola phones.
If and when motorola pulls the plug on c band ....no pizza dishes or cable in this house period.
I am not signing any lengthy contracts with my credit card on file for a bunch of watered down picture quality channels.
The generics were written well after the 4dtv receivers came out.
A 4d receiver new out of the box still has the old "S2" satellite in there which was dead and gone even before the 4dtv even came out so you see how old the code is on a new 4dtv receiver. It only lists a few satellites and has no digital channels in it when it is new out of the box or after a master reset is done to the unit. Digital channels are added only after the unit is left to sit on the now Galaxy 18 at 123°W, I believe the receiver new out of the box or after a master reset lists it as G9 but after the new maps are sent it changes automatically to G0. Only after sitting on what is now "G-18" (G0) for you 4dtv'ers will the receiver pick up the new satellite/channel maps which include the generic maps.
Onto a few other things that some people may have forgotten or not know about....
Anyone remember back in 2002 when an attempt by Motorola to take away the ability to use the Generics for channels not mapped into 4DTV Models 905 - 920 - 921 – 922’s?
Nicknamed “KILLER CODE 74” where the diagnostic screen “B” would show up as “MI” (missing information) instead of FP.
This code was first sent out in 2002 on the Star Choice satellites to test this on the 921’s (with plans to use it on all the US models later on)
and anyone with a 920 or a 922 could pick up the code if they went to the Anik F1 satellite at that time and it rendered the receiver useless for picking up many “ITC” or “FP” digital signals. What’s to stop Motorola from doing this again after December 31st?
(That code also stopped the Canadian 921 receivers from getting the guide information from the US which they could do up till that time for free.)
That code stopped being broadcast on F1 in August of 2002.
Or how about the code that Motorola put into the 922’s for the “missing ratings information” that blocks out a channel that is FTA . If you have a 922 you only see the grayed out screen, which has been referred to in the past as the “gray screen of death”. This particular code was not sent out to the 920 receivers.
only to the 922 receivers.
One may have to park the 4dtv on a satellite like Intelsat 9 (P9) before December and leave it there till the data stream is turned off to avoid any new killer codes if they fear that Motorola would do such a thing.
I wasn't aware the genetics could be deleted by moto but it makes sense if they give you new firmware
GO was the old place for maps now it's G1-3.
So Motorola tried to kill the Generics in 2002, I didn't know that. My subs run out the end of Sept at that point I will be in protect mode till I know for sure there is no more consumer data stream from Motorola that could possibly take out my receiver. It's going to boil down to some smart cookie will crack there way into the digicipher and allow us manual functions. It's just a matter of time. I would post some other idea's but not here I'll do it in the WUT 4D thread that Motorola can't read.
I suggest no one that want's to use there receiver for a hobby box after Dec 31 subscribe past November. That's when it's all going to start hitting the fan.
This might explain why a neighbor could pick up more FTA channels on his 920
than I did on my 922! A few years ago I was trying to get him to upgrade to a
922 and he said, "Why should I when I get more channels ITC than you!!!"
This might explain why a neighbor could pick up more FTA channels on his 920
than I did on my 922! A few years ago I was trying to get him to upgrade to a
922 and he said, "Why should I when I get more channels ITC than you!!!"
In theory the 922 can receive more channels than the 920 because it recognizes more symbol rates. When the present firmware for the 920 there was no government mandate concerning ratings info. The original 922 firmware came out after that mandate. That is why owners of the 922 have problems with certain itc channels using the generics. I dont beleive motorola tried to trash the generics in the states. If they changed the firmware for starchoice it was because of starchoice not motorola (remember they are providing a service to their customers and starchoice was their customer not you or I). The dsr 905 can receive all the same symbol rates that the 922 can but it does have the ratings glitch . I have a genpix skywalker 1 and I can receive all of the fp channels without the maps. your 4dtv will still work as long as its authorized. I have a vc2 module in my receiver and I can still get analog (no one killed it). After a master reset you may have a problem unless motorola allows someone to reauthorize it for you. Hmm what about Net tv its pbs and its free why cant they authorize it for you. The ahnenberg channel used to authorize commercial units until they left dc11.
I paid $200 dollars for a 920 and a corotor2 about three years ago and I got my moneys worth. If I lose authorization on the receiver, It will still move the dish and control the polarity (the firmware will actually find satellites for you after you program in a few positions, can you do that with your gbox?). And the genpix will still find the channels as long as they are there.
My Skywalker-1 will NOT play FP channels. It only plays ZK channels. Yes, it will technically "receive" FP channels, but it receives them as encrypted channels, and unless you have some software to bypass the encryption, you can't play them.
So I'm curious with respect to what you are using to play FP channels received by the Genpix? Ie, is there some software out there that uses the GI/MOT fixed key used by the FP channels?
Since you brought up the NET channels, I'm curious about why they have most of their channels ZK, but have a couple of them in FP mode. My 4200 plays all but the HD channel. My Genpix plays the HD channel, but doesn't play the couple of FP channels. It's just strange that they have a couple channels in FP for some reason.
- Status
