Bell TV strikes back at satellite pirates

Bell TV strikes back at satellite pirates
Friday, 14 November 2008

Bell TV strikes back at satellite piratesIn the spring of 2005 Bell TV (formerly Bell ExpressVu), proudly announced that effective July 1st 2005 the company would be introducing comprehensive anti-piracy measures that would stop satellite pirates in their tracks.

Sadly, within a year, Bell's new encryption scheme was laid to waste by a group of satellite thieves who had learned how to defeat Bell's encryption scheme using modified Free-to-Air (FTA) satellite receivers.


This week, without any fanfare or press releases, BellTV quietly turned on a new signal encryption system which the company hopes will thwart pirates from stealing its satellite television signals.

Bell TV would not respond to questions by Digital Home about the implementation of the new encryption scheme, however, knowledgeable industry insiders tell Digital Home Canada the latest encryption scheme, dubbed Nagravision 3, has effectively knocked out Bell TV satellite pirates using modified free-to-air (FTA) satellite receivers throughout North America.
Encryption De-mystified
Simply speaking, encryption is the digital process of modifying data to prevent unauthorized access or viewing of the information. The process of transforming the data back into a format that is readable is called decryption.

To defeat pirates from stealing their broadcasts, digital cable and satellite television providers, such as Bell TV and Dish Network, encrypt television signals prior to transmission. Once the signals reach the subscribers homes, the encrypted signals can only be decrypted by an authorized digital set top box or satellite receiver.

With BellTV, the SmartCard essentially holds the magic key that allows your satellite receiver to decode the encrypted signal. Without a properly authorized SmartCard, subscribers won't be able to watch television.
Nagravision 3 - the new hope
After the summer of 2005, satellite pirates had devised a way to re-program Free-to-Air satellite receivers so they could illegally decrypt Bell's Nagravision 2 encryption scheme.

The only way to stop the pirates was to develop a new encryption scheme. Once a new scheme was developed, implementing it was a costly and expensive endeavour for the company that took place in three stages over the last year.

In the first stage, Bell issued new firmware updates to all ExpressVu direct-to-home (DTH) satellite receivers. These firmware updates were sent out by the company at night to selected receivers without any intervention by the subscriber.

In the second stage, ExpressVu (as BellTV was know at the time) sent its subscribers new upgraded Conditional Access (CA) SmartCards along with instructions on how to swap out the old card from their satellite receiver.

In the third and final stage, which began last week and ended on November 12th, Bell changed the encryption scheme used to transmit television signals. Once the change was made, only Bell subscribers with valid subscriptions, valid receivers and updated smartcards could properly decrypt the new Bell TV signals.

By November 13th, satellite pirates with modified Free-to-Air (FTA) satellite boxes suddenly found they could no longer watch Bell TV signals.
How many pirates were affected?
The number of satellite pirates is unknown, however, in the middle of 2007, the Carmel Group estimated that over 2.5 million North Americans pirated Bell ExpressVu and Dish Network signals. Their research also indicated that the number was growing at a rate of 50,000 or more a month.

Digital Home estimates that by the time of this week's shutdown, more than 300,000 North Americans were pirating Bell TV using Free-to-Air satellite receivers.

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Testing: Sonysat DCR5500, pansat 9000hd, sv4k, sv360premier, pansat 2700a, coolsat 6000 and satopia ST1100-UT