Who killed ITV Digital? Rupert Murdoch - but not the way you think

But Sky was hacked, too....

A few other posters have come close to this, but not touched on it.

Sky cards were comprehensively hacked in the early 90's. Back then one needed a "laptop" PC or an Amiga 1200, attached to the STB via a serial link, and a certain type of dodgy card. I can't remember the exact details as it was nigh on twenty years ago, but I do remember it being done in 1992/93.

To counter this, Sky would every 6-9 months issue a new series Sky card, though until the issue of Series 10 it had little effect. S10 cards however were a game changer, and as I recall proved impossible to crack for sometime, if ever.

So if piracy was to blame, how come widespread piracy didn't affect Sky in such an adverse manner?

And it hasn't gone away. Dreambox is an alternative STB (there are plenty, all based on Linux, such as SpiderBox, OnBox, etc). As an aside, a genuine dreambox 800HD costs £400, a clone costs £150... I digress. Without a subscription, Sky gives, what, 30-40 free-to-air channels. Now plug a Dreambox into the Sky dish, and get about 400 FTA channels.

It gets better - or worse if you are Sky - as a cheap £6/month subscription and an internet connection allows one to watch EVERY encrypted channel on that satellite; on Astra 28.2E thats approx 1400 channels, including every Sky channel. For £6 a month.

A motorised dish kit costs about £45. Mount your dish on that, and there are approx 35,000 channels available (ok, it takes 3 days to tune in!)

Instead of cracking the cards, this is even more insidious; its called card-sharing, and even more problematic for the broadcaster.

So how come piracy didn't take Sky down way back when?

somthing smells fishy...

and its not a rotten fish.....

I believe both stories have roots in regards to whether Murdoch and clan are fit and proper people to hold a licence to own a TV company....

The Guardian/panorama documentary has everything to do with proving he/they are not, and this story and many of the very similar ones around the web claim otherwise.

I do think that the level of piracy of on-digital / itv digital was way over 100,000 fake cards. There was one PPV football match that the numbers were release that that actual people that had paid for the game, instead of ITV digital paying for it, could have sent those people out to the game, paid for an executive box each and gave then £10,000 each spending money...

I knew of over half a dozen websites to get the codes from for smart cards, and I dont recall ever visiting thoic.com, and the monthly visits to the pages would have indicated way over 100,000 cards in circulation....

also, IIRC, it was well known that the encryption for on-digital was broken before the launch, but it was to late to change the encryption as boxes had already been manufactured and contracts in place. Also, as Canal+ described the encryption as "un-breakable" as it had been broken, surely on-digital could have a reasonable claim against them for the loss of business...

ITV digital was one of the most simple systems to bypass... once you had a "gold card" which you could buy for lass than £5, and a card programmer, another £10, then it was just a matter of updating the keys on the card once a month... Back in the day, you needed to make interface, run software on a dedicated PC that you connected to the sky box to decrypt the sky Analogue system.

even to date, sky digital is so tight that even though the encryption can be defeated, its not possible to produce a system that would make pirating sky a practical proposition. (if you exclude the card share systems that are out and about)