Videocrypt revival

orizatriznyak

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I just got my decoder back. I get "THIS CHANNEL IS EXPIRED" message with the card I have posted above. It looks like this card is deactivated.
But I also got this other blue coloured Multichoice card:

MultiChoice_Smartcard.jpg

My VC200 decoder works with this blue card so it is not reprogrammed (or reprogrammed as a pirate card) as my other blue card. But white cut-points are visible and the colour doesn't look nice at all.
 

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If you run HackTV at 14MHz, it will look fine. Add flag -s 14000000 to your command line.
 

orizatriznyak

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I am sorry I forgot this. Now it looks nearly perfect, but the white dots are still there.
Also my decoder loses lock for about a half of a second on every 20-30 second. Some of these cases I also get "incorrect card" message on the screen. This comes more often at 14MHz as I see.
Which channel and year are these ecm datas come from?
 

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Hm interesting. It came from Discovery - I think 1996. At the least the original ECMs. They are generated randomly on the fly, however, it looks like there's some bug there somewhere. Unfortunately, I don't have an official card to troubleshoot (unless you're willing to let me borrow yours). I should also be able to modify the stream to let it work with your 'expired' card - it's just a date that it checks.

I wonder if random bytes are causing some additional executions within the card - these are called nanos.

It works perfect with my 'unofficial' card so there are probably some bytes that it doesn't check.

For locking issue, can you try running it in free mode to see if it's the conditional access mode causing this or something else.

For white dots - not sure. Can you do a capture of what's happening? You could potentially mitigate this by adjusting the value of VC_OVERLAP on line 38 in videocrypt.h file.
 

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I will check and try it again and I will also capture the issue soon.
Unfortunately I don't have a capture card so I can only record it with my phone.
 

orizatriznyak

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This lock problem is not there in free mode. But there is a bigger problem right now. Now I am getting "THIS CARD IS BLOCKED" message with my blue card. :-(

These were the final seconds of my blue card I have recorded. You can see the lock issue on this video:

I set VC_OVERLAP to 19. No cut-points are visible anymore but the picture looks still quite noisy. It looks like I can faintly see the original scrambled picture under the decrypted one as well. Might this be a decoder issue?
 
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Captain Jack

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Ouch.. I did have that with my Sky cards but it was a matter of modifying the ECM stream. Wonder what caused it?
 

orizatriznyak

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If you or Phil doesn't know what happened nobody knows it. You are the experts of this. Maybe I should call the customer service... :)
 
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orizatriznyak

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Not especially videocrypt, but does anybody know the dalvi system? It is a cardless cut&rotate system with addressable receivers. This system was used on cable and MMDS systems. The scrambled image looks like videocrypt but PC softwares like moreTV or hvcplus were unable to decrypt it.
 

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Not especially videocrypt, but does anybody know the dalvi system? It is a cardless cut&rotate system with addressable receivers. This system was used on cable and MMDS systems. The scrambled image looks like videocrypt but PC softwares like moreTV or hvcplus were unable to decrypt it.
I've never heard of Dalvi but another system which looked very similar was Cryptovision. This was used by Cablelink in Ireland (on cable and MMDS), as well as SSVC/BFBS on Intelsat at 27.5 west; there's a video on YouTube of the latter. Cryptovision preserved the colour and didn't have the greyish hues that VideoCrypt does.
 

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I've never heard of Dalvi but another system which looked very similar was Cryptovision. This was used by Cablelink in Ireland (on cable and MMDS), as well as SSVC/BFBS on Intelsat at 27.5 west; there's a video on YouTube of the latter. Cryptovision preserved the colour and didn't have the greyish hues that VideoCrypt does.

Ah, yes! I saw it once while moving the dish to the west. I didn't know it was Cryptovision.

Smartcrypt would work the same for some French sat channels.
 

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What's the difference between Cryptovision and Smartcrypt? Some Syster decoders (notably German Premiere ones) do have a cut and rotate mode, which preserves colour and I always assumed this to be Cryptovision.

Looking at the video, it seems to have your data at the top of the screen, where it would traditionally be within VBI. It looks different from Syster and Videocrypt.

 

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Cryptovision, a PAL video scrambling system based on a modification of the active line rotation principle. The scrambling method does not modify the synchronization signals and can therefore be used with any standard broadcasting system. It does not degrade the signal quality due to the scrambling and descrambling process. It gives very good scrambling and hence high security against unauthorized descrambling. It can easily be modified to work with NTSC signals.
 

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My only experience with Cryptovision was Cablelink's version but I remember that the decoder had no card. I think it was a Tandberg unit. They had an interesting cable system; all channels were fed in VHF and because Irish TVs had VHF tuners (we used PAL-I on VHF as well as UHF), you could connect the cable connection directly to the TV and tune it as if it were a terrestrial channel. It also meant you could watch one programme and record another. Only the premium channels were encrypted in Cryptovision, all other channels were fed down the cable FTA.

MMDS was different though. All channels were encrypted in this case and the decoder was required at all times.
 

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I was looking into Sky viewing cards earlier and found a site which has a collection of smart cards from Sky as well as UK cable providers. One thing that caught my eye was a series 10 card with the text "SKY VIEWING CARD (R)" on the back. Normally, they'd be either (S) or (E). I always presumed that E was used for Irish-issued cards because E is on both of the Irish 11 and 12 cards I have, along with the old phone number for Sky Ireland which was (01) 475 1750. All of my other cards have S which I think was the standard for UK-issued cards, but I wonder what R indicated?
 

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I was looking into Sky viewing cards earlier and found a site which has a collection of smart cards from Sky as well as UK cable providers. One thing that caught my eye was a series 10 card with the text "SKY VIEWING CARD (R)" on the back. Normally, they'd be either (S) or (E). I always presumed that E was used for Irish-issued cards because E is on both of the Irish 11 and 12 cards I have, along with the old phone number for Sky Ireland which was (01) 475 1750. All of my other cards have S which I think was the standard for UK-issued cards, but I wonder what R indicated?
Maybe re-issue / replacement (a replacement for 1 of the many cards that were eaten by the pet dog during the 90's) ?
 

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I've no idea what issue number they were on but what were the Freeview from Sky cards like?
 

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I've no idea what issue number they were on but what were the Freeview from Sky cards like?
The digital ones? They look exactly the same as standard Sky cards, usually the white ones.
 

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Yes but could they be the ones with (R) on them? I did have one of them when they were first issued (I paid my £25!) but I couldn't put my hand on it for sure. It may even be in France at he moment.
 

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@fsphil - I see that the VideoCrypt-S implementation supports real hardware now. Did you get hold of a BBC Selector? Must be near impossible to find now.
 
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