[geeks] Virtualization-supporting Celeron

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 03:43:43PM -0500, nate at portents.com wrote:

>You also have the Cable Card decoder option (Cable Card being a PCMCIA
>card your rent from your cable company for anywhere from $1-$5 per month
>that has some unique decryption keys that your cable company records and
>then permits to decrypt the digital stream).  Cable Card *used* to only be
>an option available to OEMs (meaning you had to buy a complete "Media
>Center PC" from an authorized box builder for a significant premium),
>which was restricted by the company Cable Labs by putting additional keys
>in the BIOS of those PCs that authorized the use of the Cable Card
>decoder.  Then members of the public figured out where those keys were
>stored, and also figured out how to inject those keys into modified BIOS
>files in standard motherboards so anyone who wanted to build their own
>HTPC and use a Cable Card decoder could, so I think as a result of that
>Cable Labs decided to release their restrictions recently and the last I
>heard they were going to let anyone use a Cable Card decoder on a custom
>built PC - you'll just have to also use Windows Media Center, as I don't
>think there is any support for Cable Card decoders in MythTV.  Windows
>Media Center also imposes even more stringent DRM that solutions such as
>TiVo, where last I checked there was no way to transfer shows off Windows
>Media Center and play them back or transcode them on another PC.

Here, you can buy a Satellite TV receiver that includes the decryption
hardware for most of the standard packages and downloads its (bootleg)
keys over the Internet. 

They sell for around $1000 dollars. At one time the importer gave away
the keys free for life, now because he can, he charges 100 NIS ($25) a
month for them after the first year.

The sick thing about it is that people actually think they are legally
buying the keys. 

It's in a way ironic, because at the time I was looking into them, I found
that the local DBS provider (called "YES" of all things) would give me free
instalation and three receivers for a 100% legal setup. 

We went with YES. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM