A Plea to Echostar

[Mr Tony]

Yeah, and if you weren't a staff member you'd have had your posts edited by now. You've been throwing insults at me because you don't seem to care what I have to say. I'll continue to respond based on the topic, not your insults.

no they wouldn't. I just call it like I see it. you are a Dish (Uncle Chuck) fan and I am a FTA fan

I make my own judgments, but I also see both sides of the argument. You might think it ineffective, he believes it will be and so it's done. I never said I agreed with it, I never said I thought it would work. It's not hard to ascertain his thoughts from his actions though, since he couldn't have possibly thought such a decision would go over well with retailers or general populace alike.

but it seems weird he is going after the wrong companies. If someone is really a good Dish dealer, its highly unlikely they are doing underhand deals by setting people up with hack boxes. On the other hand the companies that don't do anything with dish and just sell FTA and 18-20" dishes and that's it...now those are the ones he should go after.

The Nagra issue, yes, it's a pain. Admittedly so, but it costs more to fix it than to do this, so he does this. My expectation is there's more to the internal chips than is known and that will resolve the next security push, but we'll have to wait and see.

something we can agree on. Hopefully they do figure out a way to nuke the hackers.

As far as suing people, American courts don't tend to favor the poorer defendants of late. Just an observation, take what you will from that. Legal and illegal are redefined daily if not hourly. Don't be surprised if his next move is a trip to Capitol Hill to make FTA illegal in fact. Likely, dunno, possible, yes.

FTA isn't illegal though. Thats the issue. Take any box that comes from the factory and hook it up to Dish and tell me what you get. You get NASA, Angel One, Dish 101 and the PPV preview channel (103, 500) because those are unencrypted. The other 500-600-1000 whatever channels say "scrambled". So if you can't pick them up, why wuld they make it illegal?

What's next...DVD Burners illegal? CD Burners illegal?

 

[Stargazer]

Perhaps they should try to force the manufacturers to where they will make the receivers not receive encrypted content.

 

[Mr Tony]

but the issue with that is some channels log as encrypted but are not. For a while, the religious channels on AMC4 showed as $ (scrambled) but were in the clear as they shuld be

 

[duchen]

FTA will not likely be outlawed...

This country has a long history of favoring the reception of unencypted signals. So, I don't see FTA being legislatively outlawed.


FTA is valid competition for DISH; it allows people to receive satellite programming which DISH does not sell. Let me draw an analogy to cars: If you want a car, you can choose a Ford or a Cadillac (GM). simiilarly, if you want satellite TV, you can choose FTA (and get RTN's, religous programming, feeds, international, FTA network shows etc.) or the Dish lineup (which includes different programmming, except where they also sell FTA).

Remember, DISH tried to acquire DIRECTV awhile back. So, it comes as no surprise they would declare war on any alternative product.

The debate above got a little heated; there is no need for name calling.

 

[RVD420]

I love FTA.

G10 is a must.

newsfeeds, backhauls fta has plenty of tv for me.

 

[John W]

The FTA statement by Charlie sounds more like him trying to be a bully and attempt to scare dealers into not selling FTA equipment as well as attempting to scare the general public into thinking they may be doing something illegal by buying or owning an FTA Box. I can tell you that I installed an FTA system for my inlaws and they as well as my wife think that they are not totally legal. I tell them that it isn't any different than putting up an set of rabbit ears but they seem to think that it is more along the lines of those cable boxes you used to see that would get you free cable. Of course as long as the FTA boxes has not been tampered with it is perfectly legal and in many parts of the world it is what is used to subscribe to the satellite services (or was not long ago, haven't looked into it recently). They would just provide a card or code or whatever to access their systems. One that comes to mind was Globelcast (sp?) or at least thats what I understood it to be, never interested in their programming so I didnt look into it much.

As already stated in this thread, E* could do a lot to solving their problem by securing their system better. If I remember correctly wasn't their Nagra 2 stream compromised within about a week of the time that they flipped the switch at E*. I don't know if it is the same system but didn't they use an encryption that was already in use in other parts of the world? Didn't that give the "hackers" a head start on breaking the encryption? Maybe this threat E* has issued is a way that they are showing potential buyers of the company that they are trying to do something to stop the hackers to help up the value of the company (no evidence on my part, just kinda pulled that one out of my a** ).

Personally I believe that anything is "hackable" and I doubt I stand alone on this. When D* was being pirated wasn't E* considered unhackable? At the very least I think it was not widely accessible. If E* comes up with something to actually stop the pirating I'd bet D* would become available again. All these hackers would probably need to buy new recievers and who knows what else they would need to buy (I don't know the difference in the systems only there they are different). Sounds like a dream come true for whoever would would stand to make money off of hacked systems.

I was really shocked by the place that I bought one of my FTA Dishes from. I was standing in the guys store and he was on the phone explaining to one of his customers how to get his box set up for stealing the signal. I was appalled.... I would have walked out and probably just reported the guy but I wanted to buy a fairly large dish ...> 100 cm and I was finding that it was difficult to find those online and if I did it was very expensive for the shipping. I couldn't find any other local retailers that sold dishes that large. When I told him what I wanted he asked what I was trying to get, he said something like " are you trying to get the PPV systems the hotels use or C-band or what?". He just expected that I was trying to get a hacked system. I told him no, I sub to everything that I possibly can on E* so I have no reason to pirate, I just want a fairly large dish to try and see what I can pick up out there. Once he realized I had no interest in hacking he treated me like an idiot and pretty much blew me off. As far as I know he is no longer in business.

 

[jayn_j]

Perhaps they should try to force the manufacturers to where they will make the receivers not receive encrypted content.

Hmmm. Back in the '70s during the CB craze they used to sell a broadband RF amplifier that would take a 5 W input signal and put out 75-250 W.

The feds got involved because the device could be used on 11M CB radios to exceed maximum power, so they dictated that the manufacturers place a 26 MHz notch trap in the input path.

The manufacturers added this trap and also added to their manuals something like the following statement:

"It is illegal to use this product to amplify 11M CB signals. This device has been equipped with a circuit that will prevent the use on the 11M CB band. It is illegal to tamper with this device. Under no circumstances should the user place a 22 gauge wire between TP1 and TP2 as this will disable the trap."

The point is that any attempt to limit a FTA receiver in this way will just advertise iits capabilities and add to the problem.

 

[Stargazer]

If they don't advertise that they are limiting the capabilities then they are not advertising the capabilities that it has.