All Chipped Cable Boxes Going Down

[frogstamper]

Originally Posted by carol_s

They are depriving Virgin of income - which could be construed as theft (at least in my eyes)

Well said Carol, I would imagine most people would see it that way. Whatever way you look at it its taking/accessing something you've no right to, in my book that's called theft.

[Hiroki]

I still don't know why this thread is still going.

You can't do anything about these boxes and whinging on about people having the boxes doesn't change the situation because people will still get them no matter whats said and I bet a lot of people on here have them.

Hopefully when Virgin changes to hosting the stations on a vod style the situation will change.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by danielf

Does that mean if you dishonestly appropriate someone else's property, but you have the intention of giving it back (say in 25 years), it's not theft?

Luckily the theft act clarifies it to say:

A person appropriating property belonging to another without meaning the other permanently to lose the thing itself is nevertheless to be regarded as having the intention of permanently depriving the other of it if his intention is to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of the other's rights; and a borrowing or lending of it may amount to so treating it if, but only if, the borrowing or lending is for a period and in circumstances making it equivalent to an outright taking or disposal.

So that is still theft as you taking it for 25 years is clearly a period equivalent to the outright taking. If you only took it for a short period that doesn't breach the others rights over it, it's not theft.

For instance, if you left your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition (so as I don't have to break into it) and I found your car and whilst you're asleep I drove your car around and then returned it (with any fuel I used replaced) that's not theft. However if I didn't return it before you woke up and needed to go to work, that is theft, even if I retuned it the same day as I breached your right to use it as you wished.

Originally Posted by carol_s

They are depriving Virgin of income - which could be construed as theft (at least in my eyes)

To say that they were depriving Virgin of income (which would actually be theft, the theft act specifically mentions money as a physical possesion) you'd have to beable to prove beyond all resonable doubt that if they didn't have the box they'd actually pay for the service, which is pretty much an impossibility.

Originally Posted by frogstamper

Well said Carol, I would imagine most people would see it that way. Whatever way you look at it its taking/accessing something you've no right to, in my book that's called theft.

Still doesn't mean that it is theft though.

In my book an elephant is called a giraffe and a giraffe is called an elemaphasinama. My book is wrong, as is yours.

There are specific laws made to cover unauthorised reception of broadcasts precisely because it's not theft, if it was they'd just charge you with that as it has a far greater sentence.

If a card is a spade there is no point trying to claim it's a club because no matter how much you think it is and how many times you say it is it's still a spade and you're just wrong.

You may think it doesn't really matter and if you think it's theft then it's allright to call it theft and anyone that does it a thief, but there's another legal word for that, libel.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by TheDon

Luckily the theft act clarifies it to say:

So that is still theft as you taking it for 25 years is clearly a period equivalent to the outright taking. If you only took it for a short period that doesn't breach the others rights over it, it's not theft.

For instance, if you left your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition (so as I don't have to break into it) and I found your car and whilst you're asleep I drove your car around and then returned it (with any fuel I used replaced) that's not theft. However if I didn't return it before you woke up and needed to go to work, that is theft, even if I retuned it the same day as I breached your right to use it as you wished.

Credit where it's due. Good answer!

[Virgin Bride]

Originally Posted by Hiroki

I still don't know why this thread is still going.

You can't do anything about these boxes and whinging on about people having the boxes doesn't change the situation because people will still get them no matter whats said and I bet a lot of people on here have them.

Hopefully when Virgin changes to hosting the stations on a vod style the situation will change.

So, are all modded boxes up and running despite the recent key-changing or something by VM?

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by Hiroki

I still don't know why this thread is still going.

You can't do anything about these boxes and whinging on about people having the boxes doesn't change the situation because people will still get them no matter whats said and I bet a lot of people on here have them.

Hopefully when Virgin changes to hosting the stations on a vod style the situation will change.

The thread is still going as it's a point of interest to quite a few people...

Why would a VOD style system work, unless you scrap scheduled systems, but then everyone would have gone that way including sky....

What is needed is for VM to get off thier fat backsides, open up thier wallets and actually change thier encryption system to those proven to be secure.

NDS/Videogaurd and also now Nagra 3 are proven as such with the only people getting past the systems are those who are card sharing (where the initial account holder is put at risk)

What does suprise me especially as cable unlike broadcast sat is a two way system is that they havn't put in a authentication loop back to the central servers ID'ing the box/account/location. Surely a simple cross reference would then inhibit all duplicate boxes or ones not on thier system. Computer games have used this method for years and although people can copy the games they can't play online with them and duplicates keys are soon invalidated on the system.

Kymmy

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Why would a VOD style system work, unless you scrap scheduled systems, but then everyone would have gone that way including sky....

A VOD style system would work because it's possible to do linear on demand channels. Only the current channel you're watching then gets sent to your box rather than all of them, and when you change channel a signal gets sent to the headend to send you the different channels stream.

That way 3rd party boxes wouldn't work as they have the upstream blocked, if they talkback they get detected, and if they don't they can't request a channel to watch. VM then wouldn't even need to encrypt the channels as it's a multicast system rather than broadcast and if the channel isn't on your package then you wont beable to request it anyway.

Originally Posted by Kymmy

What does suprise me especially as cable unlike broadcast sat is a two way system is that they havn't put in a authentication loop back to the central servers ID'ing the box/account/location. Surely a simple cross reference would then inhibit all duplicate boxes or ones not on thier system. Computer games have used this method for years and although people can copy the games they can't play online with them and duplicates keys are soon invalidated on the system.

Any system like this fails to work whilst you're still sending all the channels down the cable anyway. You'd need an authentication system that only sent the channels when your box had authenticated, at which point you may as well be switching to the VOD model anyway as it offers huge bandwidth savings as unwatched channels don't take up any bandwidth.

[Hiroki]

@Kimmy:- TheDon pretty much answered why a VOD style system would be better.

Originally Posted by Virgin Bride

So, are all modded boxes up and running despite the recent key-changing or something by VM?

The only ones that are still affected are those who haven't upgraded because a lot of sites have been shut down and the keys are harder to find now but most people upgraded the firmware on the boxes to adapt to the key changes....Virgin basically left clues in the coding as to what was coming next and the hackers basically developed from there....it's quite interesting to read about.

[Kymmy]

Yep Hyroky but this does beg the question that you'd need a real-time distribution server, although less bandwidth it does mean more control servers, more to go wrong and probably hard to achieve with current levels. Just look at the Phorm system the only reason as to why BT and other ISP's havn;t implemented it yet is purely the amount of resources taken up ny the system, surely VOD would be doing exactly the same thing but with video instead of simple images...

I think though something to agree on is that until VM and other broadcasters do something about thier systems then some people will illegally recieve or sell illegal recieving equipment.

[Hiroki]

But Kimmy I thought Virgin were pushing towards the direction of making the whole network VOD style.....or did I read that wrong?

Either way they are making a step in the right direction by changing the keys and looking into new encryption to improve the network and to stop illegal boxes and that can only be a good thing

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by Hiroki

But Kimmy I thought Virgin were pushing towards the direction of making the whole network VOD style.....or did I read that wrong?

No idea, perhaps someone TheDon or someone else can point us in the direction of more info... I for one didn't really think about the VOD option at first and yes it would work as long as VM think it out properly and not thier usual half hearted measure.

Knowing VM if they do go VOD then the saved bandwidth will be farmed out to thier BB sections and pushed to the limits. If they do then the VOD service will suffer and if the VOD system goes down then it'll impact on more people than todays compartmentalised system going down.

So is there any data/docs out there??

Kymmy

[Stuart]

Kymmy has raised a good point..

Virgin will gain from a reduced number of chipped boxes (increased subscriptions assuming people do pay for the service). However, we will only benefit if VM decide to invest this extra money in their service, rather than pay it out in dividends.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

No idea, perhaps someone TheDon or someone else can point us in the direction of more info... I for one didn't really think about the VOD option at first and yes it would work as long as VM think it out properly and not thier usual half hearted measure.

Knowing VM if they do go VOD then the saved bandwidth will be farmed out to thier BB sections and pushed to the limits. If they do then the VOD service will suffer and if the VOD system goes down then it'll impact on more people than todays compartmentalised system going down.

So is there any data/docs out there??

Kymmy

This video is a good introduction to what the benefits are, and here is a fair bit of information about it.

There is alot of technology out now that lets them do this quite easily, and it's all headend based they don't have to touch the last mile network at all.

As for them pushing all the bandwidth onto broadband, the end of the video talks about the new applications that will come from it, and one of the main ones is QAM sharing, which means that QAM's can be shared between switched video, vod, and data, so you could have a range of QAM's for each, and then some shared ones for overflow capacity which would be used by the service which had a higher bandwidth requirement at the time. You could probably also QOS the shared QAMs so switched video would take priority over vod which would take priority over data.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Hiroki

But Kimmy I thought Virgin were pushing towards the direction of making the whole network VOD style.....or did I read that wrong?

Either way they are making a step in the right direction by changing the keys and looking into new encryption to improve the network and to stop illegal boxes and that can only be a good thing

The IPTV plan is probably what you are thinnking about.

[Hiroki]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

The IPTV plan is probably what you are thinnking about.

Yes that's what I was thinking about, thank you