October 13, 2009

Virgin to update set top box smart cards UPDATED

Looks like there's an upgrade on its way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn3tfH-WYkM
Another attempt to block those households with pirate cable boxes.

UPDATE: Official confirmation on the Virgin site that new smart cards are on their way: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/help/smartcard/

6 comments:

Tom Chiverton said...

What I don't get is why now ? This is a massively expensive undertaking, has the problem crossed some threshold or did the recession cause a mass uptake ?

Tom Chiverton said...

Oh, and the URL ( http://www.virginmedia.com/smartcards ) just goes to a plain black and white username/password prompt. WTF.

Hermes said...

I'm sure it's also needed for their future tv platforms !



H

Tom Chiverton said...

@Hermes - unlikely to be *required* as it's just a cryptographic module...

Nialli said...

I understand it's been on their list for some time. It appears that Nagra 3 is as secure as they come so this is a rollout of that, shutting the door on the pirate boxes.
I've no idea how much revenue is lost through the pirated boxes but it's probably significant. Of course, there's no guarantee to Virgin that these customers will sign up for legit services if they can't get them illegally.

lee said...

I think for us to argue the merits of a pirated box is a bit moot really.

If it's illegal, then VM, or anyone, has every right to do this kind of thing - we can't really complain at them doing this if we have illegally obtained content!