nagra 3-who will survive?

[ronster]

Funny thing is i dont even watch much tv

Its full of ****e

[Mike22]

I just found this article on another site and thought i would share, it makes for an interesting read...

Its dated 2 Dec 2008 and is entitled:

"The information in this message is not hearsay, speculation, or rumour, but comes direct from the heart of Virgin Media technical operations at Hook, passed on by a contact who is informed, reliable and will remain strictly confidential (his/her job depends on it)

This week we have all experienced a sudden change in the way Virgin encrypts its premium channels. This post explains some facts and what's to come very very soon. It probably won't cheer you up. Sorry :-(

Remember when Virgin pulled Sky channels off their feed? That was a tough choice for Virgin. It hurt Virgin and it hurt Sky. The reduced ability to convert Sky customers over to Virgin and loss of advertising audience meant that both companies wanted to renegotiate terms. Ulimately Virgin wanted to get Sky channels back for the Christmas period but this was not straight forward because Sky was concerned about the high number of non-paying customers able to view Sky channels via the Virgin network. To be fair Virgin have also been concerned, but Sky forced them via the Terms and Conditions of supply to implement a comprehensive encryption system to lock out all non-paying customers before Christmas.

Hence many months ago was born 'Project Santa'!! An internal Virgin project to provide to its customers Sky channels with enhanced encryption before Christmas. The project has several important phases. Firstly there is new advertising, which you may have seen, warning customers about the illegality of certain pieces of equipment. Then there is driect mail arning some customers directly to disconnect equipment and coupled with telephone hotline to report offenders.

The next phase was to get Sky back on the feed. This was turned on in November successfully and has put Virgin in a much better position to recruit new customers in readiness for their Christmas programming. The final phase is to address encryption. This is more complicated because they want to secure the network but with little or no impact on paying customers. What you have all witnessed in the last week is the first step of the program with an interim Nagravision software upgrade which will soon move the whole Virgin tv network over to Nagravision version 3. Enabling rolling daily code changes is merely an early side effect of this implementation. Virgin knew that it would be circumvented quickly, but it was designed to de-stabalise the illicit set-top-box before Christmas and wipe out a proportion of the existing usage for non-paying customers who do not have the expertise to remedy.

What you have not seen yet is the final step and cutover to full Nagravision V3 encoding. This requires all paying customers to be issued with a new card for their set-top-box and in some cases a firmware upgrade. This is no small operation. New cards are already in manufacture and a special Royal Mail contract for guaranteed delivery before Christmas has been signed. The recent change has enabled very limited testing of N3 to be started in about 1000 individually selected customer endpoints. So an exact date for cutover is not decided as yet and will be determined by the recarding and testing work in progress. The deadline should be before Christmas. Although contingency is in place in the event of unforseen problems.

The bottom line is that N3 will go onto the Virgin TV network very soon and this will render all non-paying cutomers set-top-boxes useless for probably quite a long while. N3 is currently in use in several european tv and has not been circumvented to date. Whilst nothing is unbreakable, it will be measured in months rather than weeks and may require bespoke hardware rather than just a software fix.

I have every expectation that this post will be heavily flamed and rubbished. But have in mind, many of the readers / posters here make a living from selling set-top-boxes and they are hoping for a busy December as people ready themselves for a rich Christmas programming selection on. The last thing they want is for potential customers to hear what Virgin have planned for what will become a very expensive freeview box. Utimately time will tell."

...i haven't received any letters from VM about a new card!!! Fictitious waffel hopefully!!

[ronster]

Originally Posted by Mike22

New cards are already in manufacture and a special Royal Mail contract for guaranteed delivery before Christmas has been signed.

Looks like theres gonna be a mass delivery mon/tue/wed then

aswell as engineers gettin their arse round here and replacing my ancient pace 1000

Read this a couple of weeks ago...bull**** then...bull**** now

We'll still be talkin about this in 12 months

[abaaba]

Ronster totally agree u there m8 its just BULL***T

[harpss1ngh]

lol this old thread is hilarious as whats being said is in fact coming true right now!

[Analoguesat]

Its only 12 months late

[TheCoder]

Originally Posted by Confused Stu

In order to switch over, Virgin will need to issue EVERY subscriber with a new card and possibly new boxes too. Until every subscriber has their new equipment Virgin won't be able to switch over. That means at least we'll have some warning as to when the other boxes will be going down!

They will likely do it by discrete areas rather than as a single change. Remember, Leeds is now fully N3 but the rest of us are still running N1. The Leeds area no longer has the N1 stream.

[optiplex007]

Funny i kept checking the dates on that post and thinking he had got them wrong .

However your right its exactly 1 year out . Wonder why its took them a further year.

[Analoguesat]

Originally Posted by optiplex007

However your right its exactly 1 year out . Wonder why its took them a further year.

The recession probably didnt help.

[pje]

Hi All
Sky subscribers have to pay for the privileges,
Virgin & other's subscribers have to pay or will have for the privileges.
Nagravision is employed to secure the data from theft so is it working "YES" you get what you pay for or not get anything.
End of the day would you rob the gas meter/electric get a taxi and not pay for it hello.
Like it or not it’s here. Will it be cracked Mmmm no time soon.
Best off getting a Sat and enjoy. Or download from the net.A sat with a dvr for the kid's,
As for the roll out of new card's ect ect ,they only need the post man
think if you were at the loss of millions why would any sane person let it go on for so long.