[raj2001]

Last night I was watching Starz! (East) on my DirecTV system, they had "Tomcats" and some other movies I think. But, much to my annoyance, at random intervals (5-10 mins) the audio would cut out for 3 seconds on my RCA DRD450RG (Dolby Digital) receiver, and about 1 second on my second DRD430RG (bedroom) receiver. I checked the signal strength using the "DirecTV control" utility (with the receiver hooked up to my serial port) and the signal never dropped, it was always between 94 and 97.


What could be causing this? I saw in another thread that someone saw a message about access cards. Could it be that DirecTV was ECM'ing cards last night? (Incidentally I am a legit, paying US subscriber).

 

[jdk]

Seems to be doing it to me now too on 520 StarZ East


Sound drops out, picture feezes, and then ~3 seconds later, it starts up again on my UltimateTV...

 

[raj2001]

Quote:

Originally posted by jdk Seems to be doing it to me now too on 520 StarZ East Sound drops out, picture feezes, and then ~3 seconds later, it starts up again on my UltimateTV...

I saw no picture dropout, just sound dropout..... But it did go on for a while, and it is annoying,

 

[Ray H]

Yep. And the hackers are howling. DirecTV's sending them an ECM, and we poor hapless legitimate victims are "suffering" temporarily. ("collateral damage from friendly fire") While I agree it's annoying, my annoyance is temperd by the satisfaction I take in the knowledge that the signal thieves have it even worse and DirecTV is taking a more aggressive stance against them these days.

 

[raj2001]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ray H Yep. And the hackers are howling. DirecTV's sending them an ECM, and we poor hapless legitimate victims are "suffering" temporarily. ("collateral damage from friendly fire") While I agree it's annoying, my annoyance is temperd by the satisfaction I take in the knowledge that the signal thieves have it even worse and DirecTV is taking a more aggressive stance against them these days.

In that case, I don't mind ;-)

Strange, since it came just after the Canadian court rulings and the release of P4.

 

[Ray H]

Quote:

Originally posted by raj2001 In that case, I don't mind ;-) Strange, since it came just after the Canadian court rulings and the release of P4.

Not really. The P4 is in limited distribution so far, and those that are functioning are doing so in a native HU card mode. Not until the H and HU card activation packets are shut off and a real P4 activation packet stream is initiated will the hackers know just how gloomy their situation is. (hence the current nonsense among chat rooms and news groups that the P4 has been hacked) So, in the meantime, hackers with H and HU cards are carrying on essentially business as usual. And, DirecTV continues to send them periodic "greetings". While it is now illegal in Canada to black market receive (and "gray market" is now, "black", up there), there are Charter of Rights and Freedoms cases being prepared. It's also possible for the time being the authorities are holding back on wholesale raids for their own reasons. One positive note is that the injunction granted in Ontario on the heels of the Supreme Court decision was quashed just a week later. The Canadian hackers have no statutory protections at all any longer (except the right to quit hacking . . . ). There's another hearing of something related sometime next month (June 21 comes to mind, though I'm not absolute on this date.). It'll be interesting to see whether things start popping after that date. In the interim, Star Choice is offering a trade-in amnesty program (dish, LNB, and receiver) to hackers, and, Bell ExpressVu is doing something similar with receivers, indicating that it's alright to use their current dishes and LNBs once they're re-aimed. If DirecTV is able to complete their swapout by December, 2002, as they announced, it's just a matter of tic-toc tic-toc tic-toc before the bozos get gonged.