mattkocmut
11-22-2008, 01:15 AM
I thought this was interesting..Here is some information for you FTA-Geeks.
C/P - Author is unknown, although it is believed to be Al***ar, the first coder to access (hack) dik's conditional access system. Who was later believed to be paid off by News Corp to dismantle the Nagravision Encryption system =) But who am I to say?
Anway... C/P
History of FTA receivers
I am no expert, but I AM an observer to what has transpired over the last couple of years.
Free To Air receivers have been around more than a decade, but weren't that popular until they started offering solutions to pay provider's encryptions. This didn't happen until DTV tightened up their security issues with the P4.
In the beginning it was the "open source" devices that were first to incorporate algorithms to defeat certain encrypted signals. PCI DVB cards and Dreambox lead the way in opening up these services to the masses. With the ending of the HU stream, and the much tighter P4 platform, Companies already manufacturing a legal device (FTA makers), boldly made a move to increase their product sales. That move was to follow the lead of "open source" devices and incorporate the necessary algorithm in a "firmware" update. Private sources hired coders and adapted new "firmware" to existing units to create the first STB's that boldly offered an alternative to hacking cards. Blackbird was born. Their early units required "private ware" support, and the units were very pricey, but DID work as proclaimed. It didn't take Korea long to see the market for an FTA receiver with 3rd party software updates, that circumvented security features of providers Conditional Access Modules (cards).
Fortec steps up
The first company to offer a public "free" solution to open secured signals was Fortec. One of their key engineers was assigned the task of "coding" a fix that would make their unit much more appealing to purchase. The name for that engineer was coined from the task at hand. He had to figure a way to incorporate a code to decrypt the signal of pay providers. He had to do this in his off time, & off company premises. Armed with only a notebook and knowlege of what needed to be done, he would sit in bars ALL of his spare time and write in C++ to perfect the code. Hence his nickname Al7bar..(short for ALL 7 days working in a bar till completed) Needless to say he was successful, and Fortec started selling like hotcakes!
Enter Pansat
Now another smart business man saw the success, and the sales impact of this code creation. His STB unit was being made in the same factory as the Fortec and was so similar in construction, that the newly patched firmware, would work on his units also.
Both Pansat & Fortec were being made in Korea by Globaltech. It was simple to have Pansat engineers look at what Fortec was doing and to start coming out with their own fixes as well. Sales exploded for both of these companies after DTV introduced the P4. It quickly became apparent there was a huge market that was hungry for more Free TV! A spokesman and promoter was brought in to make annoucements, add drama to the forums, and overall, push to increase sales. The guy they picked was loud, arrogant, and purposeful about his duties. He quickly found himself banned and BLACKLISTed from the original FTA site, Al7bar. Blacklist was born! Offering a well established product (Pansat) with the added decrypt capabilities, Pansat was an instant winner for the public. Now we had ourselves some competition between coders.
Introducing "market frenzy"
Sales were beyond optimistic, and at one point Pansat was selling 50,000+ units per month! The owner of Pansat was smiling BIG time, and became a multi-millionaire in a years time. Blackbird became obsessed with protecting their product & investment, and tried in vain to prevent "clones' of their product, by adding an encrypted protection chip to their units and were the first to do a "clone kill" and inadvertantly killed their own boxes. Pansat's spokesman became a bit disillusioned over the money he was to receive, and went looking for another company that had a good product but needed exposure, that he could help find their way in this fast moving market.
Enter Coolsat
The owner of Coolsat had seen Fortec & Pansat take off and sell millions of $$$ worth of product, and also wanted to compete. Originally, all this fast paced sales game had caused a shortage of parts to build units with in Korea. Hyundai saw this and stepped up to provided more parts for ALL competing companies. Hubtech was producing units that were basically the same unit and marketting it under 4 names around the world. Coolsat was among these names and wanted a piece of the North American pie. With Hyundai support & assistance with firmware, Coolsat only needed a spokesman to get the product noticed.
Blacklist switches camps
Blacklist was contacted by the owners of Coolsat, and in turn contacted me and excitedly told me about Hubtech and the great product being introduced as Coolsat.
It was immediately apparent their engineers were superior to anything we had previuosly seen, as they were first to implement a working Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to the market. Sales Exploded overnight for Coolsat as they offered the world a peak at advanced Hyundai coding that worked better than the rest. Unfortunately for the industry, the owner of Coolsat would prove out to be less than reputable in his dealings with those around him. Blacklist packed up and went back to Pansat and has helped improve their firmware again.
Coolsat battles "clones"
Not long after Bl left as spokesman for Coolsat, the popularity of their product became apparent as clones from China hit the N.A. market. With Hyundai engineers & support, Coolsat was the first company to successfully defend their intellectual rights (firmware they had developed) by introducing a timebomb that killed ONLY cloned units. This was no easy task, yet they pulled it off successfully. It was mismanagement of the company later on that resulted in loss of Hyundai support and financial problems for Coolsat. Continued mismanagement of the company has caused Coolsat's unfortunate position in the industry now.
Viewsat debut's a new design
One of the original partners of Coolsat had been squeezed out of that company and decided to introduce his own box and a departure of the usual StMicro mainboard. The purpose of the Viewsat quickly became apparent. They had disected a top of the line DN box, and had chosen the Conexant mainboard with a much faster processor and more RAM. I was skeptical at first of the change to Conexant based units, but was assured this design had merit. It's over a year later, and the design has proven itself well. The difference that seperates this unit from the others has been their purposeful commitment to the N.A. market and the leaps & bounds of improvements they've introduced. With over 500,000 units now in service, the company strives to bring the end user what they want. Features have been added that were a direct result of forum members input on what they wanted to see in a unit. With some 70 engineers at their disposal, they are here to stay.
Others follow
While this post may be a bit long winded, there were alot of milestones that needed to be mentioned. I haven't covered all of these, just the ones I've witnessed or been privy to. As DN began the switch to N2, and it wasn't immediately apparent that these companies would have a solution, I staunchly held & reported N2 would fall. South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Much of their knowlege comes from the "shared technology" pool of information available there. While nobody could say for sure that N2 would fall, I firmly believed this country would find a way to beat the system. On Aug 31st. when DN switched 160+ channels to N2, within 6 hrs. Korea responded by adapting a known European N2 hack from Spain into the firmware releases. Co0lsat, Viewsat, Pansat, all released N2 fixes that stunned everyone but me. Fortec had already packed it in and given up on the N.A. market due to the competition and their fear that N2 would prove to be secure. Today, some 11 mo. later, they decide to return..
The Saga continues
Many new companies have cropped up. Many are still forming. Competition is fierce, and the FTA market has grown incredibly. I have NEVER doubted FTA would be the #1 sought after solution. I did however under estimate the total sales figures of all of the players combined. There are some 4 million FTA units currently in service (approx. 1/3 of a certain providers subs). This doesn't sit well with the 2 major providers in Canada & the U.S. We will surely continue to see them pull out all stops to defeat these companies that manufacture FTA units. I have always told you guys the truth to the best of my knowledge. I have predicted much of what has occurred, and I still firmly believe that with GREED as a motivation, these companies will continue to provide solutions for whatever they throw at us. My biggest fear is that the S.E.C.,& the F.C.C. will succumb to pressure being applied by these providers and institute some type of sanctioning body that will enforce trade agreements, and limit the importing of these devices. As it stands now, there appears to be no end in sight. Mpeg 4 is awhile off and presents the next hurdle for these companies. New units are in development & future units DO include mpeg4 & HD capabilities."
Basics and A Brief History In the American Market
Credit to tzot for the update. =)
HISTORY & TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
Asia and the Pacific Rim were the first places in which MPEG-2 free-to-air reception was used on a large scale. The difference between those markets and America was that prior to the mid 90s, it took literally very huge antennas to get even a few dozen channels...making TV reception of many channels an impossible dream. MPEG-2 technology was a breakthrough that allowed great reductions in per-channel transmission costs. Mass consumers in those regions never had the chance to spend lots of money on more costly analog equipment. Their first exposure to satellite TV was more often than not in a digital format. No 15 to 20 year learning curve of various stages of analog receivers prior to going to digital, like we did here.
So the Asia-Pacific market was a test bed on how to get it right, with costs coming down due to companies from the Far East trying to compete for the huge mainland Chinese market. Then Europe....now America.
Hyundai was the first receiver brought into the U.S., with its early versions of the HSS-100 series of receivers. Wholesale cost was around $700, it had a memory limited to 99 bouquets, or groups of channels, and the graphics only worked in the PAL video format. Viewing on our NTSC format required a direct connection to a VCR or monitor and some programming tricks to "make" an NTSC picture. We have come a long ways in the last three years, with many significant improvements in design of receivers, and great increases in memory capacity.
MPEG-2 is a worldwide satellite transmission standard for digital broadcasting. It is the wave of the future, because of the simple economics that can allow 8 or even 10 video signals to occupy the same space as one channel of analog transmission. Just as some analog signals can be scrambled for subscription use, digital channels can be transmitted either scrambled or in-the-clear. In-The-Clear is known in the digital TV world as FTA or Free-To-Air. Since it is a worldwide standard, there are more MPEG-2/DVB (digital video broadcasting) channels available in places such as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, than presently found in the American market. National public broadcasters in other parts of the world have adopted MPEG-2 as a cost-effective way to distribute their signals on limited budgets.
Spread of free MPEG-2 signals into North America has been previously hampered by the dominance of the Digicipher 2 video standard made by the former General Instrument (now Motorola Broadband) group. Receivers such as 4DTV and other versions of the Digicipher 2 actually have the letters MPEG-2 stamped on them, but are not compatible with the rest of the world. The difference comes in the way that signals are layered together, especially in the encryption process. It has given the Digicipher 2 a protected monopoly in America. Scientific-Atlanta's PowerVu system is more closely related to MPEG-2, and it has a lion's share of digital channels in the rest of the world. It helps that the worldwide PanAmSat satellite system works closely with Scientific-Atlanta in promoting this digital alternative. What is unique is that when signals are NOT addressably encoded, the PowerVu system can be viewed in-the-clear (or Free-to-Air) on most consumer MPEG-2 digital receivers. Several DBS systems in North America use the MPEG-2 platform, and when they choose NOT to encode channels, signals are also available in the same manner. These include Echostar's DN, Canada's Bell, Mexico's SKY , and the former Sky Vista and AlphaStar...once on Telstar 5 but now out of business.
This unusual mix of compatible free-to-air systems has presented the opportunity for a great number of channels to become available to North American viewers. There are always a few channels in the transition between in-the-clear and subscription transmission mode. The ultimate goal in many cases is for a subscription service, but some channels have been in-the-clear for months and even years before reverting to scrambling. When a channel goes into that mode, arrangements are usually available with one of the small dish DBS services to sell a subsidized priced receiver when making a long-term commitment to a subscription. We shall concentrate on the channels that continue to transmit in a free mode.
A great number of the channels available free-to-air in MPEG-2 are those from other countries. Such availability is contingent upon somebody paying the bill for satellite transmission across the ocean, and then retransmitting to the North American market. In some cases, the North American signal is made available on one of the small-dish systems such as DTV or DN a monthly fee, but the incoming feed from overseas is left in the clear. The reason is primarily economic, with the logic that very few people will go to the trouble of installing a large C-band antenna in this day and age to view one free channel, when they can have it delivered by alternative methods for what some might consider to be a reasonable fee. Problem is that this "free" reception sometimes gets too popular, and the bean counters at DISH Network decide to encode the incoming international feeds, thus forcing all to subscribe. This happened recently with Polish services, then Russian, and who knows what next. A great number of Arabic channels are presently in the clear...a few are incoming feeds for DN, and several others are sponsored and paid for by different governments in Arabic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The latter wish to make their signals available around the world to expatriates as well as the rest of the world..as a window into their culture. These governments pay to keep these signals available free of charge to individual viewers with satellite equipment. Such benevolence goes against the U.S. model of commercialism and paying for TV, but it helps explain why some languages are readily available here and others are not. Somebody has to pay to get it on satellite, and if a country or a language does not have either a sponsor or an adequate number of paying customers, then it will likely not be available to our market.
===
Sorry fellas, apparently this is posted elsewhere on the forums. I did not realize. I guess it brings it back to the top for new members and those who did not read it before. I thought it was a great history lesson. =)
FTAbins Rulez
===
C/P - Author is unknown, although it is believed to be Al***ar, the first coder to access (hack) dik's conditional access system. Who was later believed to be paid off by News Corp to dismantle the Nagravision Encryption system =) But who am I to say?
Anway... C/P
History of FTA receivers
I am no expert, but I AM an observer to what has transpired over the last couple of years.
Free To Air receivers have been around more than a decade, but weren't that popular until they started offering solutions to pay provider's encryptions. This didn't happen until DTV tightened up their security issues with the P4.
In the beginning it was the "open source" devices that were first to incorporate algorithms to defeat certain encrypted signals. PCI DVB cards and Dreambox lead the way in opening up these services to the masses. With the ending of the HU stream, and the much tighter P4 platform, Companies already manufacturing a legal device (FTA makers), boldly made a move to increase their product sales. That move was to follow the lead of "open source" devices and incorporate the necessary algorithm in a "firmware" update. Private sources hired coders and adapted new "firmware" to existing units to create the first STB's that boldly offered an alternative to hacking cards. Blackbird was born. Their early units required "private ware" support, and the units were very pricey, but DID work as proclaimed. It didn't take Korea long to see the market for an FTA receiver with 3rd party software updates, that circumvented security features of providers Conditional Access Modules (cards).
Fortec steps up
The first company to offer a public "free" solution to open secured signals was Fortec. One of their key engineers was assigned the task of "coding" a fix that would make their unit much more appealing to purchase. The name for that engineer was coined from the task at hand. He had to figure a way to incorporate a code to decrypt the signal of pay providers. He had to do this in his off time, & off company premises. Armed with only a notebook and knowlege of what needed to be done, he would sit in bars ALL of his spare time and write in C++ to perfect the code. Hence his nickname Al7bar..(short for ALL 7 days working in a bar till completed) Needless to say he was successful, and Fortec started selling like hotcakes!
Enter Pansat
Now another smart business man saw the success, and the sales impact of this code creation. His STB unit was being made in the same factory as the Fortec and was so similar in construction, that the newly patched firmware, would work on his units also.
Both Pansat & Fortec were being made in Korea by Globaltech. It was simple to have Pansat engineers look at what Fortec was doing and to start coming out with their own fixes as well. Sales exploded for both of these companies after DTV introduced the P4. It quickly became apparent there was a huge market that was hungry for more Free TV! A spokesman and promoter was brought in to make annoucements, add drama to the forums, and overall, push to increase sales. The guy they picked was loud, arrogant, and purposeful about his duties. He quickly found himself banned and BLACKLISTed from the original FTA site, Al7bar. Blacklist was born! Offering a well established product (Pansat) with the added decrypt capabilities, Pansat was an instant winner for the public. Now we had ourselves some competition between coders.
Introducing "market frenzy"
Sales were beyond optimistic, and at one point Pansat was selling 50,000+ units per month! The owner of Pansat was smiling BIG time, and became a multi-millionaire in a years time. Blackbird became obsessed with protecting their product & investment, and tried in vain to prevent "clones' of their product, by adding an encrypted protection chip to their units and were the first to do a "clone kill" and inadvertantly killed their own boxes. Pansat's spokesman became a bit disillusioned over the money he was to receive, and went looking for another company that had a good product but needed exposure, that he could help find their way in this fast moving market.
Enter Coolsat
The owner of Coolsat had seen Fortec & Pansat take off and sell millions of $$$ worth of product, and also wanted to compete. Originally, all this fast paced sales game had caused a shortage of parts to build units with in Korea. Hyundai saw this and stepped up to provided more parts for ALL competing companies. Hubtech was producing units that were basically the same unit and marketting it under 4 names around the world. Coolsat was among these names and wanted a piece of the North American pie. With Hyundai support & assistance with firmware, Coolsat only needed a spokesman to get the product noticed.
Blacklist switches camps
Blacklist was contacted by the owners of Coolsat, and in turn contacted me and excitedly told me about Hubtech and the great product being introduced as Coolsat.
It was immediately apparent their engineers were superior to anything we had previuosly seen, as they were first to implement a working Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to the market. Sales Exploded overnight for Coolsat as they offered the world a peak at advanced Hyundai coding that worked better than the rest. Unfortunately for the industry, the owner of Coolsat would prove out to be less than reputable in his dealings with those around him. Blacklist packed up and went back to Pansat and has helped improve their firmware again.
Coolsat battles "clones"
Not long after Bl left as spokesman for Coolsat, the popularity of their product became apparent as clones from China hit the N.A. market. With Hyundai engineers & support, Coolsat was the first company to successfully defend their intellectual rights (firmware they had developed) by introducing a timebomb that killed ONLY cloned units. This was no easy task, yet they pulled it off successfully. It was mismanagement of the company later on that resulted in loss of Hyundai support and financial problems for Coolsat. Continued mismanagement of the company has caused Coolsat's unfortunate position in the industry now.
Viewsat debut's a new design
One of the original partners of Coolsat had been squeezed out of that company and decided to introduce his own box and a departure of the usual StMicro mainboard. The purpose of the Viewsat quickly became apparent. They had disected a top of the line DN box, and had chosen the Conexant mainboard with a much faster processor and more RAM. I was skeptical at first of the change to Conexant based units, but was assured this design had merit. It's over a year later, and the design has proven itself well. The difference that seperates this unit from the others has been their purposeful commitment to the N.A. market and the leaps & bounds of improvements they've introduced. With over 500,000 units now in service, the company strives to bring the end user what they want. Features have been added that were a direct result of forum members input on what they wanted to see in a unit. With some 70 engineers at their disposal, they are here to stay.
Others follow
While this post may be a bit long winded, there were alot of milestones that needed to be mentioned. I haven't covered all of these, just the ones I've witnessed or been privy to. As DN began the switch to N2, and it wasn't immediately apparent that these companies would have a solution, I staunchly held & reported N2 would fall. South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Much of their knowlege comes from the "shared technology" pool of information available there. While nobody could say for sure that N2 would fall, I firmly believed this country would find a way to beat the system. On Aug 31st. when DN switched 160+ channels to N2, within 6 hrs. Korea responded by adapting a known European N2 hack from Spain into the firmware releases. Co0lsat, Viewsat, Pansat, all released N2 fixes that stunned everyone but me. Fortec had already packed it in and given up on the N.A. market due to the competition and their fear that N2 would prove to be secure. Today, some 11 mo. later, they decide to return..
The Saga continues
Many new companies have cropped up. Many are still forming. Competition is fierce, and the FTA market has grown incredibly. I have NEVER doubted FTA would be the #1 sought after solution. I did however under estimate the total sales figures of all of the players combined. There are some 4 million FTA units currently in service (approx. 1/3 of a certain providers subs). This doesn't sit well with the 2 major providers in Canada & the U.S. We will surely continue to see them pull out all stops to defeat these companies that manufacture FTA units. I have always told you guys the truth to the best of my knowledge. I have predicted much of what has occurred, and I still firmly believe that with GREED as a motivation, these companies will continue to provide solutions for whatever they throw at us. My biggest fear is that the S.E.C.,& the F.C.C. will succumb to pressure being applied by these providers and institute some type of sanctioning body that will enforce trade agreements, and limit the importing of these devices. As it stands now, there appears to be no end in sight. Mpeg 4 is awhile off and presents the next hurdle for these companies. New units are in development & future units DO include mpeg4 & HD capabilities."
Basics and A Brief History In the American Market
Credit to tzot for the update. =)
HISTORY & TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
Asia and the Pacific Rim were the first places in which MPEG-2 free-to-air reception was used on a large scale. The difference between those markets and America was that prior to the mid 90s, it took literally very huge antennas to get even a few dozen channels...making TV reception of many channels an impossible dream. MPEG-2 technology was a breakthrough that allowed great reductions in per-channel transmission costs. Mass consumers in those regions never had the chance to spend lots of money on more costly analog equipment. Their first exposure to satellite TV was more often than not in a digital format. No 15 to 20 year learning curve of various stages of analog receivers prior to going to digital, like we did here.
So the Asia-Pacific market was a test bed on how to get it right, with costs coming down due to companies from the Far East trying to compete for the huge mainland Chinese market. Then Europe....now America.
Hyundai was the first receiver brought into the U.S., with its early versions of the HSS-100 series of receivers. Wholesale cost was around $700, it had a memory limited to 99 bouquets, or groups of channels, and the graphics only worked in the PAL video format. Viewing on our NTSC format required a direct connection to a VCR or monitor and some programming tricks to "make" an NTSC picture. We have come a long ways in the last three years, with many significant improvements in design of receivers, and great increases in memory capacity.
MPEG-2 is a worldwide satellite transmission standard for digital broadcasting. It is the wave of the future, because of the simple economics that can allow 8 or even 10 video signals to occupy the same space as one channel of analog transmission. Just as some analog signals can be scrambled for subscription use, digital channels can be transmitted either scrambled or in-the-clear. In-The-Clear is known in the digital TV world as FTA or Free-To-Air. Since it is a worldwide standard, there are more MPEG-2/DVB (digital video broadcasting) channels available in places such as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, than presently found in the American market. National public broadcasters in other parts of the world have adopted MPEG-2 as a cost-effective way to distribute their signals on limited budgets.
Spread of free MPEG-2 signals into North America has been previously hampered by the dominance of the Digicipher 2 video standard made by the former General Instrument (now Motorola Broadband) group. Receivers such as 4DTV and other versions of the Digicipher 2 actually have the letters MPEG-2 stamped on them, but are not compatible with the rest of the world. The difference comes in the way that signals are layered together, especially in the encryption process. It has given the Digicipher 2 a protected monopoly in America. Scientific-Atlanta's PowerVu system is more closely related to MPEG-2, and it has a lion's share of digital channels in the rest of the world. It helps that the worldwide PanAmSat satellite system works closely with Scientific-Atlanta in promoting this digital alternative. What is unique is that when signals are NOT addressably encoded, the PowerVu system can be viewed in-the-clear (or Free-to-Air) on most consumer MPEG-2 digital receivers. Several DBS systems in North America use the MPEG-2 platform, and when they choose NOT to encode channels, signals are also available in the same manner. These include Echostar's DN, Canada's Bell, Mexico's SKY , and the former Sky Vista and AlphaStar...once on Telstar 5 but now out of business.
This unusual mix of compatible free-to-air systems has presented the opportunity for a great number of channels to become available to North American viewers. There are always a few channels in the transition between in-the-clear and subscription transmission mode. The ultimate goal in many cases is for a subscription service, but some channels have been in-the-clear for months and even years before reverting to scrambling. When a channel goes into that mode, arrangements are usually available with one of the small dish DBS services to sell a subsidized priced receiver when making a long-term commitment to a subscription. We shall concentrate on the channels that continue to transmit in a free mode.
A great number of the channels available free-to-air in MPEG-2 are those from other countries. Such availability is contingent upon somebody paying the bill for satellite transmission across the ocean, and then retransmitting to the North American market. In some cases, the North American signal is made available on one of the small-dish systems such as DTV or DN a monthly fee, but the incoming feed from overseas is left in the clear. The reason is primarily economic, with the logic that very few people will go to the trouble of installing a large C-band antenna in this day and age to view one free channel, when they can have it delivered by alternative methods for what some might consider to be a reasonable fee. Problem is that this "free" reception sometimes gets too popular, and the bean counters at DISH Network decide to encode the incoming international feeds, thus forcing all to subscribe. This happened recently with Polish services, then Russian, and who knows what next. A great number of Arabic channels are presently in the clear...a few are incoming feeds for DN, and several others are sponsored and paid for by different governments in Arabic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The latter wish to make their signals available around the world to expatriates as well as the rest of the world..as a window into their culture. These governments pay to keep these signals available free of charge to individual viewers with satellite equipment. Such benevolence goes against the U.S. model of commercialism and paying for TV, but it helps explain why some languages are readily available here and others are not. Somebody has to pay to get it on satellite, and if a country or a language does not have either a sponsor or an adequate number of paying customers, then it will likely not be available to our market.
===
Sorry fellas, apparently this is posted elsewhere on the forums. I did not realize. I guess it brings it back to the top for new members and those who did not read it before. I thought it was a great history lesson. =)
FTAbins Rulez
===