Can I capture & descramble satelite signal

[FARQALL]

Does anyone know if its possible to capture and descramble a satelite TV signal. If so could you tell me where to read up on it. I am using a Winfast TV 2000 XP tuner and capture card? It has a setting for Arial and cable. I have a dish hooked up but no decoder specificaly for what I am trying to get.

[mategal]

I think this topic is a bit hot nowadays ))))

[Gazorgan]

Ahhhhhhhhhh, the veteran Cable TV Engineer.....

Yes it's possible, but not the way you think. You aren't going to do it with a TV capture card, not from sattelite. You have to de-crypt the video stream while it's still digital, before it's output as a video signal or RF signal. This means you need to tap into the reciever and mod it. Let's stop at this point because that's waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond this website, and well covered elsewhere

Digitally encrypted Cable TV, same thing.

Analog encrypted cable TV, this is another story. If you don't know if you digitally encrypted or analog encrypted, bypass you cable box. Look for a distorted image that you can sort of see, typically shifter 1/2 way across the screen or wildly waving color.

As far as analog cable TV, it is typically done with 'sync-supression', that is the horizontal aync pulse is supressed 10, 6, 0 db. This doesn't osund like much, but it cause your TV to 'lose sync' and cause the video to crawl all over the screen. Some systems never change, so you cna manually adjust your TV to get a 1/2 picture. Others change with each scene change(it is noticable to see it happen on a static picture if you are looking for it).

Now, what you need to do use a video capture card that can sync to the vertical sync pulse instead, and make it capture all 240/288 lines at 1/50th or 1/60th of a second, divide them evenly, and store them as a frame.

Lost ya, didn't I? this means most out fo the box video capture cards aren't going to be able to do it. I'm not sure most of the cards using the cheapo chipset can do it at all. I would surmise from a little research, you aren't going to do it with WDM or VFW drivers, ever. There are some articles on Linux boxes and Sattelite receivers, but this is a completely unrelated method.

In short: No, you aren't going to get Scrambled TV over your capture card. It has to do with the physics of how the capture card works. Definately no digital signals. Analog signals can be done, but nost likely you will need to mod your capture card(about $40 US for the universal sync chip last magazine I looked in); How good are you with a soldering iron and a schematic? (This is really the hard way to get scrampled TV signals)

Don't PM me on this, just do a WWW search

[Don2050]

Gazorgan, would it be too much to ask the Veteran to comment on this..

http://exotv.de/lan/eng/index.htm

http://theforum.de/cgi-bin/UltraBoard.cgi?action=Headlines&BID=18&SID=23811

The reason I ask is cause it seems that in Europe and some other countries they have succeeded in using TV Cards to descramble cable(not sure about satellite ?) I was just wondering what your comments would be. If it is possible there, is really that difficult here ?

[The village idiot]

I scanned the first link, and they are not using the cards for digital satellite. However, in Europe, they use the same standard for digital broadcast and digital satellite. This is the DVB standard.

In the US we do this differently. Digital satellite, (DTV, DISH) use QPSK modulation. So does digital cable in most areas. For broadcast digital TV, we are using the standard set by the ATSC, and commonly reffered to as ATSC. These all require a decoder, and in the case of DTV and DISH, need an conditional access module card. Digital cable also requires the decoder and CAM to demodulate the signal.

Now you can, with the newer series of tuner cards, and a faster computer, get broadcast digital TV from an antenna. You could also use these new cards to get analog ku band satellite. And apparently VC2 encryption. But I don't know about that stuff.

So to answer the first post yes and no.

[FARQALL]

Thanks very much for all that. My knowledge of these signals is no where near the level your talking. All I know is I live in Sydney Australia in an estate that has a dish for satelite TV, internet and an arial all hooked up to all the houses in the estate whether you want satelite TV/internet or not. If you decide you would like satelite TV you ring up the pay TV company they give you a decoder box and smart card then you can watch. It costs a fair bit however if I can descramble the signal without their equipment obviously I'll save a bit of money and it wouldn't be illegal either. The RG9 quad cable that I have running my free to air tv into my capture card also carries the pay tv signal I believe the only reason I cant see it is because of the scrambling. My card is reasonably new its a Winfast TV 2000 XP Deluxe "with fuzzy dice" is that going to do the trick
Thanks once again.