DSTV Will Marry Your Smartcard to Decoder

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Skeptik

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DSTV have announced that, this month, your smartcard will be officially 'married' to your decoder. In a TV advertising campaign, they are urging people with more than one decoder, in your second home or caravan :p , to contact them so that they can organise the links.

This is allegedly happening "because of piracy".
 
Skeptik said:
DSTV have announced that, this month, your smartcard will be officially 'married' to your decoder. In a TV advertising campaign, they are urging people with more than one decoder, in your second home or caravan :p , to contact them so that they can organise the links.

This is allegedly happening "because of piracy".
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I heard this as well...What kind of piracy exactly?
 
My decoder has already expressed a desire to divorce from my DSTV smart card once there is competition. ;)
 
Isnt this an anti-competitive practice as there are many other Satellite decoders in SA that dont run their software
 
bwana said:
My decoder has already expressed a desire to divorce from my DSTV smart card once there is competition. ;)
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LOL:p
Not much news about that yet. All very hush hush in these parts.

RichardP said:
Isnt this an anti-competitive practice as there are many other Satellite decoders in SA that dont run their software
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Has to be. Now we need a volunteer to contact the Competition Ombudsman/Commission. (Hint ..)
Your Dreambox is going to complain. Need a box-key?!
 
Skeptik said:
LOL:p
Not much news about that yet. All very hush hush in these parts.


Has to be. Now we need a volunteer to contact the Competition Ombudsman/Commission. (Hint ..)
Your Dreambox is going to complain. Need a box-key?!
Click to expand...

Dont have DSTV anymore :-P I can get re-runs from the internet :D
 
I'm hearing now that Irdeto 2 is hacked and a Euro channel Nova is open on a Gamma card.
I guess DSTV is just closing a gap.
 
There are some dubious key sharing sites outthere too. One person buys a smart card and makes it available over the net.... think this will stop that that practise..
 
DSTV are doing this for no other reason than the fact that very soon another entertainment service provider will be licensed.......the actual licensing of the channel/service provider/whatever its called has been decided, and now all they have to decide is the specifics. FOr a while they have been debating whether or not the new provider should be able to simpy use the DSTV hardware, wiht maybe just a simcard swap....

DSTV argue that they took the risk and that the infrastructure which htey have was put in at their expense....to now allow another pervice provider to come in and simply use their decoders would be a huge unfair advantage. They say that decoders are sold for less than what they are worth with a view to recouping the funds on monthly subscription.

This is why, they want to amrry your decoder with your smart card. so when the new serice provider comes is..they simply can't use the dstv decoder.....this is also one of the reasons they recently ahd that whole BBE shaer issue transaction. If there are two service providers in the market and you can only afford to subscribe to one, who are you going to go with?!!?!?! The service provider in whom you own shares!!! thats who
 
Talk about a marriage of convenience. Can it be prevented?
 
Natas said:
.....this is also one of the reasons they recently ahd that whole BBE shaer issue transaction. If there are two service providers in the market and you can only afford to subscribe to one, who are you going to go with?!!?!?! The service provider in whom you own shares!!! thats who
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Marrying the smartcard to the decoder is an anti-competitive practive yes but don't tie the share-scheme issue into this. Multichoice have these BEE share initiative every 5 years; in fact, the most recent one was their 3rd one.
 
The fact that your smart card is married to your decoder does not preclude you from inserting another providers smart card per se. (They could change its software to prevent that though). The effect of the new policy is that you can't insert your smart card into another decoder ie. holiday home etc without notifying DSTV.
 
Vote with your wallet if you don't like it. For me TV is not an essential service in my life so I would have no problems dropping dstv if I don't like their practices.

The only way to stop companies from doing this is for enough people to stop buying their services. Until they will do whatever they want.
 
So now this means the following.

I cannot take my bussiness Smart card home and watch it there @ night and over weekends... That just sucks.
 
Pitbull said:
So now this means the following.

I cannot take my bussiness Smart card home and watch it there @ night and over weekends... That just sucks.
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I think you can but you have to get it arranged with Multichoice. Might be a bit tricky explaining that to the business account holder though. ;)
 
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