I wouldn't worry about if its hackable or not. I would worry about manufacture support. What your gonna wont is good blind scanning and the ability to edit your channels and sats. If knew more about fta'ing I wouldn't have gotten a pansat 2700a, its bugy. The new firmware fixes and creats more bugs and the channel edit isn't a 100%. But hey at least pansat is trying! I've paid more for hardware that would've been good if it had support but end up being junk!