Fox News FTP

L1011

For those of you with a high tolerance to spin and bull****, Fox News is currently FTP. Free To Pace. And some others maybe

Since the EPG reshuffle a lot of boxes are decoding Fox News all by themselves with no cards, or unsuitable cards; but its neither FTA or FTV... Interesting anomoly, pity it gave us such a terrible TV station.

Charlie

Yeah but its fair and balanced . The O'Reilly Factor can be worth a watch for a laugh or two.

Zaphod

It's possibly some form of "soft-encryption" i.e. a Videoguard enabled receiver will decode it.

When Channel5 was first on analogue, it was soft-encrypted in Videocrypt, so only those with a Videocrypt decoder could view it. As there were no FTV cards at the time, and Videocrypt decoders were mostly in the UK, it was probably the easiest way of satisfying copyright obligations.

Many of the Nordic D2-MAC channels were also soft-encrypted in Eurocrypt - no card required.

Apparently the current Sky HD tests on 28E are also soft-encypted in Videoguard, but a few users with Pace HD boxes or Humax HD systems and dragon cams are able to view them.

watty

Yes there is a feature to encrypt just to need the Videoguard CAM without a card.

Soft encrypt on Videocrypt was used two ways. One was for c5, which didn't need a card but did need a decoder. The other was MTV Germany which worked without a decoder, but was scrambled if your box did do videocrypt. Some boxes especially eariler ones had an advanced per channel menu to either disable decoder or select external. With external and a loop back scart or TV plugged into "decoder" SCART you could then watch MTV germany. Maintained for a while even after Sky Analog closed, as was C5 transmission.

L1011

But its not available across the board, only to Pace it seems from D:S. So its not genericly soft crypted. Very strange.