How does sky cancel a viewing card

rasper · 01-10-2007 10:45PM #1

Just out of interest, if a sky subscriber cancels their subscription yet their digibox is not connected to a telephone line then how is this card deactivated, do the encryption keys change regularly but then how does this work with subscribers without phonelines. I know they can just don't know how.

byte · 01-10-2007 10:51PM

Done over the air. It'll stop receiving keys, though possibly can be deactivated OTA before keys change.

Either way, no phoneline is needed to disable card.

rasper · 01-10-2007 11:35PM

excuse my ignorance , but how is this done surely my €20 plastic LNB is incapable of doing much more than decoding a signal and their is no uploading of any data

conax · 02-10-2007 12:03AM

its a one way process, they send a signal to your dish which goes into your box to tell the card to stop working.

rasper · 02-10-2007 12:24AM

Hard to believe that a satellite can pinpoint a particular dish/house/area and disable it

conax · 02-10-2007 02:39AM

rasper wrote:

Hard to believe that a satellite can pinpoint a particular dish/house/area and disable it

your right, it would be impossible to believe. your card has a unique...we will say "name". now when Sky send a deactivation routine it is broadcasted via satellite, every Sky box receives this, but only your one box responds because it is only your card with its particular "name" is been addressed.

say if you were standing in a room full of people with different names, and somebody stood up and shouted....."Hey rasper.....your an idiot", everybody in the room would hear it, but only you would take offence by it.

rasper · 02-10-2007 12:57PM

Makes sense , cheers for the answers it was bugging me

sweetie · 03-10-2007 04:25PM

conax wrote:

your right, it would be impossible to believe. your card has a unique...we will say "name". now when Sky send a deactivation routine it is broadcasted via satellite, every Sky box receives this, but only your one box responds because it is only your card with its particular "name" is been addressed.

say if you were standing in a room full of people with different names, and somebody stood up and shouted....."Hey rasper.....your an idiot", everybody in the room would hear it, but only you would take offence by it.

classic

fat-tony · 03-10-2007 08:15PM

conax wrote:

say if you were standing in a room full of people with different names, and somebody stood up and shouted....."Hey rasper.....your an idiot", everybody in the room would hear it, but only you would take offence by it.

The pen is mightier than the sword;)

DMC · 03-10-2007 08:25PM

conax wrote:

your right, it would be impossible to believe. your card has a unique...we will say "name". now when Sky send a deactivation routine it is broadcasted via satellite, every Sky box receives this, but only your one box responds because it is only your card with its particular "name" is been addressed.

say if you were standing in a room full of people with different names, and somebody stood up and shouted....."Hey rasper.....your an idiot", everybody in the room would hear it, but only you would take offence by it.

Fantastic analogy. Plain english always wins:)

irishgeo · 03-10-2007 08:36PM

Its not done by the card reciving a signal to turn it off.

Its the opposite way around.

Your sky card needs to be told every so often what channels its allowded show. When sky want to cancel your card they just stop sending the signals to your card saying what channels its allow show and therefore you card is inactive as its not allowded show any channels.

conax · 04-10-2007 12:30AM

irishgeo wrote:

Its not done by the card reciving a signal to turn it off.

Its the opposite way around.

Your sky card needs to be told every so often what channels its allowded show. When sky want to cancel your card they just stop sending the signals to your card saying what channels its allow show and therefore you card is inactive as its not allowded show any channels.

That’s interesting, I had always assumed that they changed the entitlements of the card and as part of the deactivation changed the fuse byte to paired but deactivated.

Tony · 04-10-2007 10:17AM

conax wrote:

That’s interesting, I had always assumed that they changed the entitlements of the card and as part of the deactivation changed the fuse byte to paired but deactivated.

Thats my understanding too.

Dopey · 04-10-2007 02:41PM

Apologies in advance as this is slightly off topic.

Is it possible to view all FTA and FTV channels when you cancel your SKY subscription using the existing sky box and (cancelled card)?

I cancelled the News and Culture mix recently on sky. Now I get a blue screen with a phone number on any of those channels. Would this appear on all channels?

Tony · 04-10-2007 03:25PM

Dopey wrote:

Apologies in advance as this is slightly off topic.

Is it possible to view all FTA and FTV channels when you cancel your SKY subscription using the existing sky box and (cancelled card)?

I cancelled the News and Culture mix recently on sky. Now I get a blue screen with a phone number on any of those channels. Would this appear on all channels?

You will still receive FTA channels but not FTV as thats a UK system although i think there are one or two channels from sky which will still appear, I'm sure one of the other guys here can correct me on this.

AntiVirus · 04-10-2007 03:30PM

conax wrote:

say if you were standing in a room full of people with different names, and somebody stood up and shouted....."Hey rasper.....your an idiot", everybody in the room would hear it, but only you would take offence by it.

I love that example you gave!

Ulsterman 1690 · 04-10-2007 05:29PM

Encryption keys also play a part.

The encryption keys for the various channels (particularly premium ones) change every few days (hours in the case of PPV)

Sky transmit the current and forthcoming keys (for the channels being subscribed to) to each card using a secret algorithm which combines the actual encryption key and the serial number of the card.

When the viewer stops subscribing to a particular channel Sky will simply stop transmitting the update signals to their card.

How does sky cancel a viewing card

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