FTV CARD: BBC1NI not available

mmc

i Just got my ftv card. got it activated 3 hours ago. i know that bbc1NI takes a long time to come on. ive got the rest of the channels now. but can anyone tell me is it normal for bbc1NI to say "This Channel is UNAVAILABLE" before it comes through.

John mac

YES. (in my case)

It took about 20 hours for BBC1 to come through for me!

Mossy Monk

it took 1 and a half days for my BBC1 to come through. the rest were there in about 20 minutes

Our man in Havana

Actually I had to ring them up again, got fed up of waiting for BBC1 to appear. Then came on straight away.


Does anyone know why it takes so long for BBC1 to appear?

James

watty

Theory A:
To discourage commercial operators buy a Digbox and getting FTV card and selling pack to whole of Europe.

Theory B:
The card update / activation signals for "Married" channels are sent less often and some channels very less often.

Only read more it you want technical musings:

Interestingly the card updates only on encrypted channels. Leave it on a not part of Sky FTA channel for several days WITHOUT using EPG or putting it to "Standby" and it will start to "lose" channels.

Almost all encryption systems do this. Change back to an encrypted channel and the card will fully update after a few minutes or hours.

I'm NOT saying here (or anywhere) how to Pirate. But you can see what "auto update" and "manual update" on a Pirate card means. The disadvantage for pirate of "Autoupdate" is that the provider can throw a command that kills the card. The manual card ignores "blocking commands" but as a result goes inactive till new codes put in manually via a programmer.

There are no Pirate Sky cards. Though it has been "ALLEGED" that BSKYB's encryption company has paid huge sums to make sure people can get Pirate cards for "other providers" :-)

One way to "crack" a system is to log data (can be done on PC Satellite cards and some Nokia NOT-SKY boxes). You then analyse it for the Card management data. For BBC1 it seems you have to find a needle in a very very big field full of haystacks! That is what the very slow update / card activation time suggests.

Or this is simply how often the ordinary keys are changed.

Curiously the most secure systems are ones where "how it works" is public knowledge. Sky *MAY* have a very good system. but is dangerous to rely on "security by obscurity".

Don't bother to Email me.. I have no code files, no pirate cards nor links. I'm just by background in Programming, HW, and Comms for over 25 years. I have written encryption software that is easy to write and UNBRAKEABLE!
Over 50 years ago it was proven a code scheme using random key the same length as the "message", only used once CAN NEVER BE BROKEN!!
The problem for most applications is the size of the "keys" package and securely distributing the Keys. My solution for unbrakable PC Email is to give the key(s) on a indentcal CD copy to recipient. For regular email a piece to the CD is used each time. Before CD is used up you make and distrubite a new CD.
Anonther name for theis scheme is the "one time PAD". It is obviously unsuited to video/Audio / Images due to size and quantity of key(s).

mmc

bbc1 NI is still not available aftet 24 hours.

i dont want to ring them up again cause she was acting really suppiscious when i phoned up to get the card activated. she asked me for the serial number and the version number three times and told me it didnt come up on the system. then she put me on hold for 10 minutes. when she came back again she asked me for the same informatio again. then she said that i should get all the channels within a few hous but still no bbc 1 NI. anybody have any ideas.

watty

see my suggestion in other thread.

If it isn't sorted by tommorow night ring again.
Sometimes the cards simply need replaced.

Why would they be suspicious? People ring all the time with problems. A Yorksire accent might help though