MultiChoice decoder ‘hacking’ causes a stir

[rendan]

Get an FTA Decoder, about £100, a Dish with 4 LNBs and you'll pick up approx. 4900 channels. Fair enough, about 90% are a load of **** but the 10% will keep you going for ever.

If on the other hand you need upmarket programming such as MTV, BBC Prime, Sports Channels etc. get a DBOX2 decoder also £100, load a "Hacked" image in and you'll get majority of the top european channels.

But then if broadband was affordable, you could watch some decent progs through the net. Sad actually....

hmmm
I need to find out more about these things ur talking about, decoders etc. "hacked" image?

 

[magneto]

ROFL , know about that for years...
I had a website some where that list all the sat freq to tuning in to also states which is free service and which is not..
there r more than that impact say tune in to freq 11170 blah so many more...

 

[Tomasz-London]

rendan - let me explain... DBOX2 is a sat box which was a standard box released by a German (DSTV Like) Sat TV provider. A good couple of years ago, when Linux started to take real shape, some "enthusiasts", loaded the DBOX with Linux software and other goodies, emulators etc. Now, the images in question are software which can run on your DBOX and receive FTA (Free-To-Air) channels. However, if load keys and emulators into the DBOX, you are able to descramble 90% of the european satellites and view as you like. Sadly, the UK sat SKY is hard to crack, however, majority of movies on the Dutch and German sats have multi-audio channels and?........you can select the english audio track. easy

 

[Tns]

Get an FTA Decoder, about £100, a Dish with 4 LNBs and you'll pick up approx. 4900 channels. Fair enough, about 90% are a load of **** but the 10% will keep you going for ever.

If on the other hand you need upmarket programming such as MTV, BBC Prime, Sports Channels etc. get a DBOX2 decoder also £100, load a "Hacked" image in and you'll get majority of the top european channels.

it's just sad it's so difficult getting hold of some of these decoders.and they mostly will not deliver to SA

 

[Tomasz-London]

it's just sad it's so difficult getting hold of some of these decoders.and they mostly will not deliver to SA

Nah Mate, it's actually quite easy. Go to ebay.co.uk and search for DBOX2, then contact the seller and he'll give you more info on what he sells. But ask him about the Satellite boxes and not the cable ones. Other FTA Boxes, on the other hand, are between £80 and £290, the latter with build in hard drives for recording.

The biggest problem is to find out what satellites you'd be able to pick up in SA, 'cos as far as I know you can receive PAS7 and 10 but not sure about others. And there's about 15.

Got a mate in Sentech though, so I'll ask him.

 

[mavx]

PVR / Satellite / Free to Air

Hi Gents

You do realise that this is actually just the tip of the iceberg. There are various streams being broadcast on the satellites that cover this part of the continent. Granted a lot of them are encoded therefore only the decoders from that provider can "unscramble" the channels. BUT, if you have a quad LNB fitted to your dish and an additional cable run to your PC where a satellite receiver is fitted to your PC you effectivley have a PVR with the ability to tune to any of the signals your dish can receive. Have a look at these websites for more info.

http://www.technisat.com/
http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm

Edit: Just to second what Tomasz has stated. This type of thing is pretty big over there, tons of people in the know use it. Perhaps you can send me that list when you have Tomasz , used to have all that info when working at a Satellite bband place but obvisouly had no need for it here.

 

[Tomasz-London]

Have a look here too: http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/europe.html
The list gives you all sats above your head but you'll have to look into which are broadcasting towards SA and/or Southern Africa.

 

[noxibox]

The problem I have is that i do not watch sport on TV, if I do need some sport I do/play it myself.

I'm quite sure that most of the R400 covers the 13 sport channels on DSTV. And they are still planning to add more.

They offer 'light' packages which are about R100-200 cheaper but the bouqet is still crud.

I'd really like to see a combo of the movies/series, discovery/nat geo, bbc prime and maybe mnet (but not a necessity). The problem is that in that case they would only be able to charge about R24.99 for that package and nobody would support the sport endevours.

The cheaper package sounded intriguing until I discovered that a bunch of the channels were religious or sport.

The movie channels will never interest me unless they start showing movies in the correct aspect ratio. Rather get a contract from the local video store.

Discovery etc. are the most interesting.

 

[noxibox]

Is that worth the money? I am itching to cancel...

Cancel it. The more people who cancel their DSTV subscriptions the better.

 

[Slooth]

If my DSTV decoder is infact the property of Multichoice, do I get to charge them storage fees?

 

[rendan]

okay tomazc.. im not very clued up on linux. I have got it at home and know the BASICS of scripting etc. So is there a website you know that actually explains how to go about the things you mentioned?

 

[TivoZA]

Get an FTA Decoder, about £100, a Dish with 4 LNBs and you'll pick up approx. 4900 channels. Fair enough, about 90% are a load of **** but the 10% will keep you going for ever.

Unfortunately this is not the case as there are very few free-to-air channels available in SA (unless of-course you have a 2.4M mesh dish). The free-to-air channels available are Botswana TV, Mindset Learn, a couple of religious channels and the in-store adverts like Jet, etc. All of these can be picked up via the DSTV decoder (except the PVR) and as such there is no need to get a FTA decoder.

If on the other hand you need upmarket programming such as MTV, BBC Prime, Sports Channels etc. get a DBOX2 decoder also £100, load a "Hacked" image in and you'll get majority of the top european channels.

If you are looking at getting a FTA decoder, although the Dreambox is a good option, the Manhattan Plaza ST 120 is significantly cheaper and can even be used to receive DSTV as it has a built in Irdeto smart card reader. For more details on both the Dreambox and the Manhattan, see the "Anyone with a Dreambox working with DSTV" thread.

The other advantage of the Manhattan decoder is that it can perform a blind search and pick up all the available satellite broadcasts, as mentioned above this is not as exciting as it may seem.

 

[BTTB]

Cancel it. The more people who cancel their DSTV subscriptions the better.

Myself.

I am also itching to cancel.
If I had young children I would.

 

[Tomasz-London]

Unfortunately this is not the case as there are very few free-to-air channels available in SA (unless of-course you have a 2.4M mesh dish). The free-to-air channels available are Botswana TV, Mindset Learn, a couple of religious channels and the in-store adverts like Jet, etc. All of these can be picked up via the DSTV decoder (except the PVR) and as such there is no need to get a FTA decoder.

No dissing, but your opinion is based on what? Have you tested which Sats broadcast to Southern Africa?! I presume only on PAS7 and 10?! Right?! You have not taken other satellites into account, such as Eutelsat W3A, Hotbirds, BADR, Afristar etc. Well?

 

[TivoZA]

Not sure about all this hacking stuff, but I am getting frustrated with Multichoice.

I am paying over R400 a month to watch commercials!!!!

Although the pricing may seem expensive it's unlikely they will drop their prices any time soon, below is my reasoning as posted in the the "DVB" thread:

If multichoice cut there rates with say 75% they can easily have 10 times more subscibers

Multichoice currently has 1.25 million South African subscribers. When you consider the fact that there are only 7 million household in South Africa with a TV set, it makes it pretty difficult for them to increase their market share by any major amount.

If you take into account that Multichoice had an annual revenue of R8.9 billion, R2.8 billion of which was profit, they are sitting fairly pretty. At best, a drop in the subscription cost by 75% may double their subscriber base but this would hurt their bottom line rather then benefit it. It's also worth noting that their subscriber base increased by 103 000 (almost 10%) in the last year in South Africa alone.

Until new broadcasters threaten Multichoice's monopoly in the market and they start to see a decline in their subscriber base I don't see them lowering the monthly subscription fees.

Okay, i did not have the stats, BUT why is it so expensive abd they still only make 31% proffit? That is seriously just wrong

I suspect the majority of their costs are for content licensing (i.e. the cost of the channels), the actual infrastructure is pretty simple.

Channels are billed according to how many users receive the channel and not at a fixed rate, although this cost may be on a sliding scale reducing with higher numbers. As such, increasing the subscriber base does not defray the costs per channel.

On the infrastructure side of things they rent a number of transponders on a satellite, for broadcasting there is one satellite for South Africa and another two covering the rest of Africa and Greece. They also receive some of the channels via satellite but they do not require dedicated transponders for this as this can be shared with other broadcasters. Aside from this they have 700 staff which seems like quite a lot considering the content is provided and apart from splicing in adverts to the foreign channels, providing interactive services and an EPG, there isn't a significant amount of work that needs to be done (keep in mind M-Net who provide 12 channels & Super Sport who provide 7 channels are separate companies).

I think a profit of 31% is high for most companies and a profit of R2.8 billion must make them (or at least Naspers) one of the most profitable companies in SA. That said, dropping the subscription fees to even R300 a month would make them break even and we quickly see longer lead times between when prime time shows such as Lost, Prison Break, etc reach our shores.

Was trying to watch something on the History Channel last night and every flipping 10 minutes we get commercials.
...
Do Multichoice do this deliberately to frustrate their clients?

Advert intervals on all the foreign channels are not regulated by Multichoice. Multichoice simply receive a flag in the broadcast indicating that the channel is now broadcasting adverts at which time Multichoice inserts their own ads. Unfortunately there is very little demand for ad-space on the History channel (as well as many others) and as such Multichoice just fills this space with adverts for its other popular content (e.g. American Chopper).

You could always invest in a PVR/Media Center or TiVo and in so doing get to watch the programs you want, when you want and just fast forward through all the commercials

 

[TivoZA]

No dissing, but your opinion is based on what? Have you tested which Sats broadcast to Southern Africa?! I presume only on PAS7 and 10?! Right?! You have not taken other satellites into account, such as Eutelsat W3A, Hotbirds, BADR, Afristar etc. Well?

As mentioned above, my Manhattan FTA decoder is able to perform a blind search which allows it to auto-tune to all possible feeds provided by all available satellites (including those you listed plus many more).

As for those you listed:

• Afristar provides the WorldSpace radio feed which is not FTA and does not contain any video content.
  
• Eutelsat W3A provides 3 french channels (see bottom of the page) to Africa, none of which I was able to receive via my FTA decoder.
  
• None of the Hotbird satellites, nor the BADR satellite provide a footprint extending as far south as South Africa.

The topic of FTA channels in South Africa has been discussed in many threads, both on MyADSL and other forums. In all cases the final conclusion was that, other then BTV, there are no FTA channels worth receiving in South Africa. The "Extreme Sports Channel" was the one channel that use to provide entertaining content in South Africa and it was the main topic of discussion when it came to FTA but unfortunately it now makes use of Novacom encryption.

If you feel what I have stated to be untrue then I turn the question back to you and ask what channels have you managed to receive (in South Africa) outside of what I stated above. As mentioned previously, without a 2.4M mesh dish there is very little you can receive and certainly nothing justifying the purchase of a FTA decoder.

 

[telkomsuig]

Even with a C-Band dish doubt there is anything worthwhile to see down here in SA. Amercan Forces TV used to be availble here (C-Band) many years ago but it is encrypted now too

 

[Tomasz-London]

If you feel what I have stated to be untrue then I turn the question back to you and ask what channels have you managed to receive (in South Africa) outside of what I stated above. As mentioned previously, without a 2.4M mesh dish there is very little you can receive and certainly nothing justifying the purchase of a FTA decoder.

No I do not feel that what you have stated was untrue, but asked what you based you opinion on. You have stated some facts and this answers my query. So, many thanks.

Which Satellites have you actually scanned?
I'm looking at only 4.8E to 68.5E Satellites.

 

[TivoZA]

Which Satellites have you actually scanned?
I'm looking at only 4.8E to 68.5E Satellites.

There were literally over 50 different satellites that I tested (the Manhattan includes the settings for most satellites and I cross checked this with the lyngsat listings). I could only pick up a signal from about 5 of the satellites, 3 of which actually had FTA content. It's been a month or two since I did this as the results didn't yield anything I hadn't already seen by playing with the DSTV settings

 

[mancombseepgood]

Great work TivoZA. Thanks for sharing this - saves us noobs alot of time and effort. I have also suspected that there is very little worth getting a free to air box for - especially since I travel in Africa alot and get to see what the hotels have on their free channels... poop.
I often end up watching one of the pay for channels, but even they are ... well... poop.