[mythtv] DVB patch for Freeview/Xtraview

[Ivor Hewitt]

>
>> The second more important issue is the legality. I have read a lot of
>> postings
>> about this and as far as I can see it is legal. There is no encryption on
>> the
>> channels. They are simply sent is a way which most boxes are unable to
>> pick up
>> the reception (the streams pretend to be subtitles).
>>
>> All the Xtraview site says is:
>> "XTRAVIEW uses proprietary Top Up TV technology. You must not attempt to
>> decompile, disassemble, modify or reverse engineer this technology."
>> That's fine. I didn't.
>>
>
> I haven't had chance to try the patch yet, but, on the legal side it
> does raise an interesting question.
>
> For anyone unfamiliar with "Xtraview", it is an attempt by a UK DVB-T
> operator to broadcast pay tv, without the use of real conditional
> access/encryption technology. Instead of encrypting their broadcast,
> they remove all valid references to it in PMT table in the DVB stream,
> and do not correctly label the PIDs as MPEG video and audio. Instead,
> the viewer is redirected to a set of PIDs carrying no/invalid data, and
> an interactive MHEG application is launched.
>
> The application generates a serial number, and hashes it to create
> another number, which the user finds out by dialing a premium rate
> number. If he/she then enters the correct number, the interactive
> application directs the receiver to the correct PIDs, and they can then
> watch.
>
> While effective for MOST set top boxes that do not allow manual PID
> entry, anyone with a DVB-T PCI card, or even some set top boxes that do
> allow manual PID entry, the system has a gaping hole in that all you
> need to do is be told of the PID numbers or analyse the transport stream
> yourself to find out what the numbers are.
>
> So then, is this decompiling, disassembling, modifying or reverse
> engineering this technology? I don't think so, as you are at no point
> reverse engineering their key generation algorithms etc., you're just
> manually tuning in a channel, which circumvents their application, but
> doesn't actually 'hack' the service as such.
>
> Their is the legal argument of intent though; as by doing this you are
> still technically stealing the service, regardless of the technical
> arguments of how you did though.
>
> As far as MythTV is concerned though, all this patch does is allow Myth
> to manually decode video streams on xtraviews pids. I guess its the same
> argument as for BitTorrent et al., they don't break any laws; it may
> allow you to do so, but manually entering the PID values is still valid
> way of receiving any other broadcasts legally or otherwise; it doesn't
> break the law in itself. But writing a patch to Specifically get around
> this one scenario.... seems like a grey area!
>

Excellent, thanks for that explanation. I wondered how consumers would access
the service.