Sky Box and Subscription but , not from Sky ?

uncle_sam_ie

First off, this is not a question on how or where to get this. I don't watch TV.

I was at the in laws over christmas and they had this clearly illegal SkyBox but, what amazed me is it was a box with SkyBox on it, had it's own interface and you pay a very cheap yearly subscription. This is not some guy that you give 50 euro to and he opens up the box and does his magic. This guy advertises it, has a fake box made and a subscription service where he is making a lot of money of off Sky's back.
Question:

How the hell is he getting away with it??????

Sky has to be aware this is going on.

whirlpool

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

First off, this is not a question on how or where to get this. I don't watch TV.

I was at the in laws over christmas and they had this clearly illegal SkyBox but, what amazed me is it was a box with SkyBox on it, had it's own interface and you pay a very cheap yearly subscription. This is not some guy that you give 50 euro to and he opens up the box and does his magic. This guy advertises it, has a fake box made and a subscription service where he is making a lot of money of off Sky's back.
Question:

How the hell is he getting away with it??????

Sky has to be aware this is going.

Without knowing a single thing about what you're referring to, I would imagine that it is simply not happening to an extent to which Sky believe it is worth spending any of their time or money investigating.

MrFrisp

Sounds like Cardsharing which cannot be discussed on here.

That will be coming to an end in Ireland soon anyway. Sky are very very well aware of it.
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Fanny Brioscaí

sounds like cardsharing which is a lot more wide spread and not just in Ireland. Not sure if sky can do anything to stop it.

MrFrisp

Quaint wrote: »

sounds like cardsharing which is a lot more wide spread and not just in Ireland. Not sure if sky can do anything to stop it.

They have already put a total stop to it in Australia, and if I'm correct of late, they have now done so in Italy as well.
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MrFrisp

MrFrisp wrote: »

They have already put a total stop to it in Australia, and if I'm correct of late, they have now done so in Italy as well.
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Have they cut off the internet in Italy and Australia?
If they haven't then there is no way to stop card sharing. You can raid the person sharing but someone else just pops up in their place.

Fanny Brioscaí

MrFrisp wrote: »

They have already put a total stop to it in Australia, and if I'm correct of late, they have now done so in Italy as well.
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I haven't read or come across any article which confirms the above. I wasn't saying it's not possible for them to do it just that it's a lot more wide spread then just Ireland.

I was in a pub at beginning of last year and noticed a pub with the same box mentioned above using Card sharing service.

MrFrisp

Quaint wrote: »

I haven't read or come across any article which confirms the above. I wasn't saying it's not possible for them to do it just that it's a lot more wide spread then just Ireland.

I was in a pub at beginning of last year and noticed a pub with the same box mentioned above using Card sharing service.

I'm not totally sure about he Italy one, but I'm fairly well sure it went off in Australia, but not sure if they got a work-around for it or not to get it back up and running.

Funny that you mentioned about the Pubs, as I too have seen a few more with the same setup.
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uncle_sam_ie

I suspect Sky could come down very hard on a Pub using one. I told my in laws they were crazy giving money to something that has no guarantee of lasting.

Peter Rhea

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

. . . it was a box with SkyBox on it, had it's own interface and you pay a very cheap yearly subscription. This is not some guy that you give 50 euro to and he opens up the box and does his magic. This guy advertises it, has a fake box made .

It isn't a specially made 'fake' box. It's just a generic satellite receiver with certain 'abilities'. There are plenty of others like it.

uncle_sam_ie

Peter Rhea wrote: »

It isn't a specially made 'fake' box. It's just a generic satellite receiver with certain 'abilities'. There are plenty of others like it.

Well it's a generic one with SKYBOX pressed into it. The packaging it came in was blue with SKYBOX on it. So, it was bit more than an off the shelf unit. But, yeah I know what you mean.

Peter Rhea

About as 'off the shelf' as they come. Models include the F3 & F5.

uncle_sam_ie

After researching this a bit more it looks like this has been going on for awhile now.:o
Like I said before I don't watch TV. Don't even own a TV set.

TouchingVirus

It has been going on for a few years all right, it's called card sharing and the mechanics of it can't be talked about on Boards. You do make the point that some point in the future without warning your relatives' "subscription" could just stop working. If you're feeling particularly law-abiding you could report the sellers to Sky, they've taken cases against people for both selling the receivers and for cardsharing before with some success.

seanbrady49

Ah yes this old chestnut, Sky are planning to bring out new viewing cards to combat this, the viewing cards will only work with the box they have been paired to,As for your in laws if they were ever to be raided (unlikley)all the have to do is plug out the lan cable, and its an fta box.

Sky have some operation in place to track down cardsharers but these guys are are so good that sky have to go through alot of international red tape just to catch them.

White Heart Loon

Sky can eliminate this overnight, but it's not that simple. Sky already have brought out new cards which only pair with the new firmware in the newest HD boxes, therefore they will eventually eliminate eliminate cardsharing on HD channels. In order for Sky to fully combat this they will need to upgrade every single SD box in the UK and Ireland to a new HD box, this isn't likely where the customer owns their box and Sky are charging extra for HD.

TAFKAlawhec

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Sky can eliminate this overnight, but it's not that simple. Sky already have brought out new cards which only pair with the new firmware in the newest HD boxes, therefore they will eventually eliminate eliminate cardsharing on HD channels. In order for Sky to fully combat this they will need to upgrade every single SD box in the UK and Ireland to a new HD box, this isn't likely where the customer owns their box and Sky are charging extra for HD.

You can have a Sky HD receiver to view Sky services in SD without a HD sub. You can also get HD services that (a) are both FTA and on the Sky EPG e.g. BBC1 HD, and (b) services that are part of a Sky subscription but where the HD equivalent is available as standard and not needing the extra HD sub e.g. RTÉ Two HD.
There's also a cost analysis from Sky's part - the cost of upgrading the receivers for those subscribers who have SD receivers only e.g. those with early non-Sky+ receivers may be given a single-tuner HD box, may in the longer run give returns in terms of using only MPEG4 video streams with DVB-S2 (needing less transponder capacity) for example.

icdg

Yeah look we allowed a thread on this recently and it really ran its course. I'm not really comfortable with it being discussed at all.