[linux-dvb] Re: satellite newbie in the US looking for set upDVB on linux

[Holger Waechtler <holger@convergence.de>]

Michael Glaum wrote:
>    Considering DTV's legal action against card hackers, trying to
>    reverse engineer the actual RF would be a big mistake.
You don't need to reverse engineer anything to find out the modes 
they're using, just read the specs (ATSC? - not sure if these cover this 
topic, they are available at atsc.org but I didn't had the time to read 
them) and hardware datasheets.


>    Perhaps, however, HNS might be receptive to a LinuxDVB client for
>    the DirecPC service. I asked a former HNS employee that question.
>    He doubted we could reverse engineer the stream. 
>     While it is true that the Windohs install of DPC drivers give you
>    the keys for your data, who knows what else HNS did to encode the
>    data. Probably nobody ever pumped the RF into a modem to see what
>    showed up and how it compared to rekeyed data.
>
>    DVB-IP EU maillist readers might be interested in the flipping
>    though the SourceForge direcpc project. That being said I understood
>    that when you sign up for DPC service you agree to only use HNS
>    client software. Probably likewise with HNS hardware. There have
>    also been court cases over DPC reverse engineering stunts.
just to make it clear: we don't talk about providing tools to see pay-TV 
for free, the question was whether it makes sense to extend the DVB API 
so that it can be used for Linux-based STBs in the US too. IMHO a driver 
API should try to be as flexible as the underlying hardware is.

The changes should be minor anyways, maybe a few lines in the frontend 
include files and an additional ioctl to set the packet length in the 
demux API.

Holger




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