http://www.msnbc.com/news/884359.asp?0cv=CB20 THE DEVICES, which look like small coaxial cable couplers, actually do work — but only for a short while. In a twist, would-be pirates end up feeling cheated when they are stuck with big cable bills. “Plug into your cable box and receive PPV movies,” shouts one of the hundreds of ads now on eBay. “WWE wrestling events! Boxing & sporting events. Adult / Playboy / Spice channels. If you can order PPV through your remote, then this filter will work for you!” Prices for the devices, which are also available at local electronics stores, have plummeted since they first appeared some two months ago for around $200. Now, they are selling for around $10. HOW THEY WORK The filters temporarily delay billing of pay-per-view selections because they block two-way communication with the cable company. When a movie or sporting event is ordered, a signal is sent from the customer’s set-top box to the cable firm’s billing computers. The filter allows the unscrambled signals to stream to the TV set, but prevents that transmission back to the cable company, said Nilda Cid, assistant director of the Office of Cable Signal Theft at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. But only for a few days. Every two or three weeks, cable firms “poll” the boxes, and if they don’t reply, they are shut off. “And (cable firms) know where the box is,” she said. Making matters worse, the box also stores all pay-per-view orders that haven’t been transmitted. So some customers end up with very large cable bills, she said. Word is slowly getting out. “A lot of people are being victimized through this type of scam,” said Matt Race, a buyer who contacted MSNBC.com. Race even posted a fake ad on eBay to warn other would-be pirates. “I am selling advice. Today it is free. If you don’t listen it could cost you,” the ad says. “Do not buy ... or you will be wasting your money. I do not work for the cable company. Don’t be the next one who ends up with a huge cable bill.” E-mails sent to several dealers of the device weren’t returned. Cid said the filter would appear to work for anywhere from seven to 21 days, based on how often the cable system checks its customers’ set-top boxes for a response. She wasn’t particularly sympathetic to those who get “cheated” by purchasing the device. “The problem here is consumers conveniently don’t employ common sense,” she said. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
this is why satellite piracy is the best...dish companies can't contact your receiver unless you plug in the phone line...so unplug it. However, dish companies can still fry your receiver's card by looping it. Easy solution, get an unlooper for around $40, and unloop it and enjoy hundreds of channels including nba league pass...espn fullcourt, p*rn, blockbuster pay per view etc... NOTE: I don't pirate satellite tv...I just know this info because most of my friends have it. I figure, they have it, so there's no need for me to have it. Whenever a big nba game or the next tyson vs lewis match is on...I'll come over and watch it
True story. When I was married, me and the ex deceided to go with Dish network. In the living room, we had the receiver hooked up to the phone line all the time so we could order whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, but in the bedroom, if we wanted to order something, I had to hook up the long phone cord to the back of the receiver, order, and then unplug and roll up the cord again. It was a hassle. Then I noticed that we had never gotten billed for the movies. As I checked the order history, I noticed like 4 movies and a ppv event still on the memory. I did some research into how these push button ppv's work and discovered that the receiver send out a phone line signal to the company late in the night when no one is typically using the phone. By plugging in to order and disconnecting immediately afterwards, our movies never got charged. I don't know if it's still done that way. In retrospect, it was cheaper than buying a reprogrammed card, but a bigger pain. Maybe I should have sold the instructions on ebay...
Unloopers work for first generation cards, and even some 2nd generation cards, but the newest cards have yet to be broken from what I understand. Now, reprogramming is a different story, or so I've heard.
FT, That sounds about right...I had a Direct TV setup with the same schema you describe...I couldnt run a phoneline to my second reciever and we ordered 5 movies before I realized they werent showing up on the bills. But if you went into the order history on the box, they were listed. The only problem was that eventually they shut off our ability to order PPV because our boxes never checked in with them, but it took them about a year before they finally did that.
this is why a lot of the older cards are very rare and some can be very expensive. There are plenty of people out there with satellite card programmers that will be more than happy to reprogram teh card for you I don't think reprogramming is hard. It's just a hassle to keep unlooping it though. A lot of cards get looped almost every month. Depends on how much you watch though i guess.
