All Chipped Cable Boxes Going Down

[muppetman11]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Somebody will.

I can remember a quite a few years back when there was only Sky, a guy were my mum and dad worked built his own sky box and dish, and he got a better picture that people who had a genuine sky box.

He built the dish out of a metal dusbin lid and fixed that to his wall, at that time our council was very anal about satellite dishes on houses, and didn't like them going up, so told him to remove his "dish", but he responded it's a dustbin lid, not a dish and they never came back to get him to remove it.

I bet that put thousands on your house prices LOL :-)

[Hom3r]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

I bet that put thousands on your house prices LOL :-)

Yep £100,000

[Felim_Doyle]

Originally Posted by Mikey1981

Just arrived was really quick swapping it out like 2 mins, I take it the upto 30 mins part is maybe for really old boxes only.

You can always help a slow box along by warm (or cold) rebooting it or you could just do something useful like empty the dishwasher while you wait for it to register the new card.

---------- Post added at 12:42 ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 ----------

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Somebody will.

I can remember a quite a few years back when there was only Sky, a guy were my mum and dad worked built his own sky box and dish, and he got a better picture that people who had a genuine sky box.

He built the dish out of a metal dusbin lid and fixed that to his wall, at that time our council was very anal about satellite dishes on houses, and didn't like them going up, so told him to remove his "dish", but he responded it's a dustbin lid, not a dish and they never came back to get him to remove it.

Someone, who was very anti dishes, once told me that legally they were classed as 'sky signs' (nothing to do with BSkyB), just as billboards are, and so required planning permission. Admittedly, in those early analogue days, they tended to be larger Andrews, Canal+ or Televes dishes with the company logo and name on them which would make them a billboard-like advertisement.

These days the more common 58cm mini-dish is probably more discreet than a roof-top mast of DTT beams, an FM folded dipole loop and a dipole for DAB.

[chamoan]

I have not read all 65pages of this thread so maybe this has already been answered, for which I apologise if this is the case.

These "dodgey boxes" that are talked about, they have been around for a long time so I hear, and every time Virgin do whatever it is they do and knock them off, before long they are back up and running. My question is, why is everyone so excited about this now when they maybe up and running again soon? Or is something really being done this time and they won't come back? I am not a "dodgey box" owner, in fact it cheeses me off to think people have got TV for free when I and many others, have to pay! I am not technically in the know about this stuff so please forgive my lack of knowledge in this area.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by chamoan

I have not read all 65pages of this thread so maybe this has already been answered, for which I apologise if this is the case.

These "dodgey boxes" that are talked about, they have been around for a long time so I hear, and every time Virgin do whatever it is they do and knock them off, before long they are back up and running. My question is, why is everyone so excited about this now when they maybe up and running again soon? Or is something really being done this time and they won't come back? I am not a "dodgey box" owner, in fact it cheeses me off to think people have got TV for free when I and many others, have to pay! I am not technically in the know about this stuff so please forgive my lack of knowledge in this area.

The new cards use NAGRA3 which has been out around the world for around 3 years and as yet no one has cracked the encryption, so all sellers of dodgy boxes are now desperate to offload them onto unsuspecting fools.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by chamoan

I have not read all 65pages of this thread so maybe this has already been answered, for which I apologise if this is the case.

These "dodgey boxes" that are talked about, they have been around for a long time so I hear, and every time Virgin do whatever it is they do and knock them off, before long they are back up and running. My question is, why is everyone so excited about this now when they maybe up and running again soon? Or is something really being done this time and they won't come back? I am not a "dodgey box" owner, in fact it cheeses me off to think people have got TV for free when I and many others, have to pay! I am not technically in the know about this stuff so please forgive my lack of knowledge in this area.

This is a full encryption change, not just the change of the keys which has been all that's happened previously. As Masque says this new encryption is currently used on the european sats with a larger customer base than VM will ever have and in 3 years it's not been cracked apart from card sharing which isn't a way of breaking the encryption

[chamoan]

Great news then at last, they will have to pay like the rest of us . Thanks for the explanation, makes me a happy camper

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by chamoan

Great news then at last, they will have to pay like the rest of us . Thanks for the explanation, makes me a happy camper

The is a lot more information in this thread http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/11...l#post35055743

[Digital Fanatic]

Good bye to all freeloaders

[goblin]

Speaking as someone who doesn't watch tv. I have a Samsung box that was provided as part of my contract it supplies the Virgin Freeview channels. Everytime I phone Virgin of late, it gives me this whole 'We recently sent you a tv card to our great new tv channels ....' it says something else, but I'm usually staring at the ceiling by the time its quoted the first sentence and waiting for the 'Hello Virgin Media how may I help you?' voice.

Anyway, my question is, will the fact that I choose NOT to insert the cards into my tv box have any effect on my account overall? I may eventually goto the trouble of messing around with the whole TV thing in the future and may even insert the tv cards at a later date but right now TV doesn't interest me so I'm not planning on inserting the cards anytime soon, but don't want it to effect my broadband connection in anyway with me choosing to not use the Samsung Freeview Box. It maybe worth pointing out that the TV box is NOT installed near the tv at this point, instead its on top of a cupboard in the bedroom still in its box.

Also, should I choose to install the TV cards at a later date say in 6 or 12 months after the roll out of your secret encoding thing has been deployed. Will the cards still work, or will I have to apple for new cards for instance?

Finally, for those that will conclude that I'm doing something dodgy Virgin Media are free to come around and check my installation anytime they so wish to ensure that it's not using any equipment that I shouldn't.

I did try asking the Customer Services\Broadband Tech Support people the above questions, but unfortunately none of them could answer my questions and by the time they had transferred me to TV Tech Support, I had literally forgotten the question I was going to ask, yes it took that long I should have written it down obviously

Thanks for your time.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by goblin

Anyway, my question is, will the fact that I choose NOT to insert the cards into my tv box have any effect on my account overall?

No, it will just stop the TV working

Also, should I choose to install the TV cards at a later date say in 6 or 12 months after the roll out of your secret encoding thing has been deployed. Will the cards still work, or will I have to apple for new cards for instance?

No but you would need to contact Virgin to send approriate signals to the cards as the systems used as part of the current card swap won't be needed anymore so will have been removed.

[Digital Fanatic]

also worth noting... the stb while unplugged will be getting no software updates, this could cause problems for the box in the future, but if it doesn't work when plugging back in, then just call faults.

[goblin]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

No, it will just stop the TV working

No but you would need to contact Virgin to send approriate signals to the cards as the systems used as part of the current card swap won't be needed anymore so will have been removed.

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

also worth noting... the stb while unplugged will be getting no software updates, this could cause problems for the box in the future, but if it doesn't work when plugging back in, then just call faults.

That's fantastic news, I was hoping it would be something simple like that.

Thank you both.

[krazy]

although boxes are going off up and down the country, Belfast has yet to be touched.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by krazy

although boxes are going off up and down the country, Belfast has yet to be touched.

Oh it will be.