5 ms·

Growing up in Belgium in the 80s and 90s I also remember Canal Plus and their encryption scheme - and trying (rather fruitlessly) to watch through a movie regar

Growing up in Belgium in the 80s and 90s I also remember Canal Plus and their encryption scheme - and trying (rather fruitlessly) to watch through a movie regardless - but of course, without the sound, that was a fool's errand. I always wondered how the decoding worked, and for its time, using the serial number of the equipment as part of this calculation was a good one. Also brings to mind the stories in the US of DirecTV pirating and how they put a stop to scores of pirates on Black Sunday - https://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-the-black-sunday-hack/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-the-black-sunday-ha...

anthk 6y ago
> to watch through a movie regardless Ahem, yes, "movies".
- dnpp123 6y ago
  I guess that's the closest you can get of an 'insider joke' on HN.
  - anthk 6y ago
    Nah, Canal + in Europe was infamous because one kind of movies on Friday nights. You can guess which ones, male teens loved them. When BT848/878 PCI TV cards arrived, a few years later everyone tried to decode C+, for two (maybe three) reasons: - Movies. - Sports. - Often, music videoclips. The TV schedule quality of that channel was light years ahead compared to the ones you could watch in almost any European countries for free.
    - dnpp123 6y ago
      TIL. I really thought it was only a French thing. Thanks.
      - anthk 6y ago
        At first, maybe. But they expanded really early in the 90's to the rest of Europe. Also it was something "for the middle-upper class". Not for a loaded guy, but for someone with some degree of freedom in order to spend your salary, such as a College guy/group living alone with no family. If you had a TV deco, for sure you have some elder brother/sister with a job or your parents were from a relatively good position. Everything changed in the middle-late 90's, OFC, as everyone began to buy multimedia PC's so kids at home could do their homework with word processors and the Encarta. Then the Avermedia TV arrived, cracking tools were widespread and with Linux and xawtv-nagra you had a really easy and secure way to watch a record C+ with no issues, except a huge 13GB file per hour, which you encoded into MPEG/XVID for convenience.
      - CloudNetworking 6y ago
        I can confirm it was a thing in Spain too.
    - arkh 6y ago
      End of the 90, you got Evangelion and South Park there.
    - phtrivier 6y ago
      I going to take the bait, out myself as a former teenager (spoiler: I'm old) and restore thruth: the kind of movies you're thinking about were notoriously aired on Saturday nights. (At least in France.) But I swear I was just video-taping late evening TV to get the summaries of soccer games. (Yes, video-taping. Did I mention I was old ?)
      - anthk 6y ago
        In Spain it was on Fridays, it's almost the same thing. On soccer, ditto. There is an HN-like news somewhere, when some people broadcasted the world soccer series in ASCII over telnet around 2007 I think.
        tangue 6y ago
        > some people broadcasted the world soccer series in ASCII over telnet around 2007 Out of curiosity I watched the 2006 world cup final https://ascii-wm.net/doc.php https://ascii-wm.net/doc.php It's... refreshing
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- wil421 6y ago
  Spice Channel “movies” for the US people.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Real American pirates pointed to the Canadian systems that had... less restrictive policies for PPV.
  - anthk 6y ago
    Was Spice Channel a full porn dedicated one, or just a paid channel? C+ was just a monthly paid channel with a diverse TV schedule, not just porn. You got blockbuster movies years earlier than in the free TV channels. You could basically watch The Matrix just months after the release on the theaters.
    - wil421 6y ago
      It was 100% porn. HBO had blockbuster movies during the day and softcore porn at night. Spice TV: https://youtu.be/B89oftmlOuI https://youtu.be/B89oftmlOuI
      - dillonmckay 6y ago
        So, not sure if you used to watch The Movie Channel, but Joe Bob Briggs has a show on Shudder.
readarticle 6y ago
That linked story is fascinating enough to be its own post, I’d love to hear of others like it. It’s never gotten traction on HN before either, or that specific article hasn’t anyways. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.codinghorror.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F001125.html https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.codinghorror.com%...
baud147258 6y ago
I've heard that a former employee at the company where I'm working was assembling pirate decoders on the side, but I don't really how they did for the keys, maybe shared between friends and family?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  This scheme turns the serial number + the numerical code entered into it into a global decryption key. So you can calculate and distribute that.
blincoln 6y ago
If it was decoding a broadcast signal, how could the unique serial number of an individual decoder play any useful part in the decryption key? I didn't see any discussion of this in the article. Sorry if I missed it.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  That months encryption key was "encrypted" with your serial number, and then mailed to you. You typed it into your box, and the box would decrypt it - knowing its own serial number - and then use the result. This prevented you from copying your neighbors codes, they wouldn't work.
bulgr0z 6y ago
This brings back so many memories, in the late nineties my dad brought a PCI TV Tuner card for the family computer and ditched our real TV in order to avoid paying the French TV Tax ("redevance"). It also allowed us to pirate Canal+, decrypting the video stream with a program called Moo TV (if I remember correctly). The audio stream required another program. It was all a bit janky, frames were frequently dropped, and sometimes you had to tweak a few parameters to get a proper audio stream but the fact that it was (mostly) working was simply amazing to my brother and I. Good times :)
- rtsil 6y ago
  > Moo TV (if I remember correctly). Meuh Meuh TV. In the earlier version you had to use TV cards with special chips to use it. Good times. I think it pretty much died with the advent of digital TV.
  - bulgr0z 6y ago
    > Meuh Meuh TV That's it ! Thank you so much for the rabbit hole of memories i'm about to go in
    - rtsil 6y ago
      Well, your username brought back a flood of memories of its own, so we're even.
  - tangue 6y ago
    "Meuhmeuh TV" ... brings back some greats memories. Finding a TV card, downloading a key on a strange website called "bellevache.com". I miss beige computer and PCI cards...
- anthk 6y ago
  Here we used MoreTV+Wilma under Windows/Xawtv-Nagra under Linux.

anthk 6y ago

> to watch through a movie regardless Ahem, yes, "movies".

dnpp123 6y ago
I guess that's the closest you can get of an 'insider joke' on HN.
- anthk 6y ago
  Nah, Canal + in Europe was infamous because one kind of movies on Friday nights. You can guess which ones, male teens loved them. When BT848/878 PCI TV cards arrived, a few years later everyone tried to decode C+, for two (maybe three) reasons: - Movies. - Sports. - Often, music videoclips. The TV schedule quality of that channel was light years ahead compared to the ones you could watch in almost any European countries for free.
  - dnpp123 6y ago
    TIL. I really thought it was only a French thing. Thanks.
    - anthk 6y ago
      At first, maybe. But they expanded really early in the 90's to the rest of Europe. Also it was something "for the middle-upper class". Not for a loaded guy, but for someone with some degree of freedom in order to spend your salary, such as a College guy/group living alone with no family. If you had a TV deco, for sure you have some elder brother/sister with a job or your parents were from a relatively good position. Everything changed in the middle-late 90's, OFC, as everyone began to buy multimedia PC's so kids at home could do their homework with word processors and the Encarta. Then the Avermedia TV arrived, cracking tools were widespread and with Linux and xawtv-nagra you had a really easy and secure way to watch a record C+ with no issues, except a huge 13GB file per hour, which you encoded into MPEG/XVID for convenience.
    - CloudNetworking 6y ago
      I can confirm it was a thing in Spain too.
  - arkh 6y ago
    End of the 90, you got Evangelion and South Park there.
  - phtrivier 6y ago
    I going to take the bait, out myself as a former teenager (spoiler: I'm old) and restore thruth: the kind of movies you're thinking about were notoriously aired on Saturday nights. (At least in France.) But I swear I was just video-taping late evening TV to get the summaries of soccer games. (Yes, video-taping. Did I mention I was old ?)
    - anthk 6y ago
      In Spain it was on Fridays, it's almost the same thing. On soccer, ditto. There is an HN-like news somewhere, when some people broadcasted the world soccer series in ASCII over telnet around 2007 I think.
      - tangue 6y ago
        > some people broadcasted the world soccer series in ASCII over telnet around 2007 Out of curiosity I watched the 2006 world cup final https://ascii-wm.net/doc.php https://ascii-wm.net/doc.php It's... refreshing
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
wil421 6y ago
Spice Channel “movies” for the US people.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Real American pirates pointed to the Canadian systems that had... less restrictive policies for PPV.
- anthk 6y ago
  Was Spice Channel a full porn dedicated one, or just a paid channel? C+ was just a monthly paid channel with a diverse TV schedule, not just porn. You got blockbuster movies years earlier than in the free TV channels. You could basically watch The Matrix just months after the release on the theaters.
  - wil421 6y ago
    It was 100% porn. HBO had blockbuster movies during the day and softcore porn at night. Spice TV: https://youtu.be/B89oftmlOuI https://youtu.be/B89oftmlOuI
    - dillonmckay 6y ago
      So, not sure if you used to watch The Movie Channel, but Joe Bob Briggs has a show on Shudder.

readarticle 6y ago

That linked story is fascinating enough to be its own post, I’d love to hear of others like it. It’s never gotten traction on HN before either, or that specific article hasn’t anyways. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.codinghorror.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F001125.html https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.codinghorror.com%...

baud147258 6y ago

I've heard that a former employee at the company where I'm working was assembling pirate decoders on the side, but I don't really how they did for the keys, maybe shared between friends and family?

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
This scheme turns the serial number + the numerical code entered into it into a global decryption key. So you can calculate and distribute that.

blincoln 6y ago

If it was decoding a broadcast signal, how could the unique serial number of an individual decoder play any useful part in the decryption key? I didn't see any discussion of this in the article. Sorry if I missed it.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
That months encryption key was "encrypted" with your serial number, and then mailed to you. You typed it into your box, and the box would decrypt it - knowing its own serial number - and then use the result. This prevented you from copying your neighbors codes, they wouldn't work.

bulgr0z 6y ago

This brings back so many memories, in the late nineties my dad brought a PCI TV Tuner card for the family computer and ditched our real TV in order to avoid paying the French TV Tax ("redevance"). It also allowed us to pirate Canal+, decrypting the video stream with a program called Moo TV (if I remember correctly). The audio stream required another program. It was all a bit janky, frames were frequently dropped, and sometimes you had to tweak a few parameters to get a proper audio stream but the fact that it was (mostly) working was simply amazing to my brother and I. Good times :)

rtsil 6y ago
> Moo TV (if I remember correctly). Meuh Meuh TV. In the earlier version you had to use TV cards with special chips to use it. Good times. I think it pretty much died with the advent of digital TV.
- bulgr0z 6y ago
  > Meuh Meuh TV That's it ! Thank you so much for the rabbit hole of memories i'm about to go in
  - rtsil 6y ago
    Well, your username brought back a flood of memories of its own, so we're even.
- tangue 6y ago
  "Meuhmeuh TV" ... brings back some greats memories. Finding a TV card, downloading a key on a strange website called "bellevache.com". I miss beige computer and PCI cards...
anthk 6y ago
Here we used MoreTV+Wilma under Windows/Xawtv-Nagra under Linux.