On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Tony Grant tony@tgds.net wrote:
Hello fans of British TV.
At the moment I watch the FTA channels on 28.2/28.5 E I am thinking of investing £20 in a FTV card for the new freesat service.
Is anyone using the card (or the sky card for existing service) with VDR? What kind of DVB-S card do you have (budget or FF)? What brand?
Hi Tony,
You can use a Dragon or Diablo CAM with your pay tv card and a FF / budget card with CI interface, in fact I have tried this with my Freesat card and it does work. There will be neglible impact on performance. However, you will need to put your card in an original Set Top Box once a month to update the card. This will work for all channels, including HD.
It is also possible to do the whole thing in software using a phoenix interface (no piracy involved here, just using the phoenix interface to communicate with your original smart card). This will have more impact on performance but will still probably be OK. However, the broadcaster may at some point decide to change the CAM encoding format, rendering all but original set top boxes useless (although this hasn't happened in 2-3 years).
BTW: You do not need a smart card for the forthcoming new FreeSat service from BBC and ITV, it is all unencrypted (Channel 4 will be FTA next month, Five to follow suit sometime over the year), including BBC HD, C4 HD and ITV HD.
Hope this helps,
Morfsta