4 ms·

A few comments mention how trivial this must have been to bypass; yes with today's internet, youtube videos, online tutorial, open-source hardware and the ubiqu

A few comments mention how trivial this must have been to bypass; yes with today's internet, youtube videos, online tutorial, open-source hardware and the ubiquitousness of technology in general, of course this seems trivial. However, in the context of the 80s, this was far from being trivial; there was no internet, no google. It probably didn't even occur to most people they could try to bypass this, and even if it did, who would they have asked?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pvg 4y ago
Really makes you wonder how they built the internet without googling a tutorial. One possibility is that they just faked it.
- Banana699 4y ago
  What did the poor Stackoverflow devs do when they encountered an exception :( ?
Thervicarl 4y ago
My high school had an electronics training course that was building decoders as a practical work. It was good training for supply chain management and manufacturing. And they were selling them (illegally, obviously) and sharing the revenue between students and teachers. Over the years and hundreds of decoders sold, they probably contributed to a significant loss of revenue for Canal+ in my hometown.
- nicolas314 4y ago
  At my electronics engineering school we had access to everything we needed to mass-produce those decoders and did so at a reasonable scale to pay for our studies. That was a lifeline. Knowledge of TV signals gave me my first job, during which I got to work with the guy who designed the scrambling system and had a chance to thank him in person. Small world.
rwmj 4y ago
Books! I had a side project that brute-force decoded VideoCrypt[1] in software back in the day, and I found out about how it worked from a book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt
stackbutterflow 4y ago
You knew a guy who knew a guy.
cm2187 4y ago
Even in the 90s, having a video input port was quite rare. It was actually a big plus of the mac of the time, they came by default with a lot of ports that were optional and required addon cards on PC: 16bit audio jack, scsi, RCA ports, etc. Ironic given that it is now the other way.
- sgerenser 4y ago
  In the 90s only a very few “AV” model Macs had RCA input jacks (2 Quadra’s using 68040 CPUs and later a couple early PowerPC machines).
sofixa 4y ago
Minitel, an Internet precursor if you will, was launched in 1982, and in the 1990s there were 9 million of terminals at households. So there kind of was Internet, with message boards, chat, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
speedgoose 4y ago
It was well known that pirate decoders existed and were available on the black market. I was a child at the time and I knew that some classmates had such things at home.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Yep. For premium cable TV channels in the US, the decoders were known as "black boxes" (because they were, literally, black boxes) and everyone knew about them.
Kuinox 4y ago
They did bypass it. IT students built and sold unscrambler devices.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pvg 4y ago

Really makes you wonder how they built the internet without googling a tutorial. One possibility is that they just faked it.

Banana699 4y ago
What did the poor Stackoverflow devs do when they encountered an exception :( ?

Thervicarl 4y ago

My high school had an electronics training course that was building decoders as a practical work. It was good training for supply chain management and manufacturing. And they were selling them (illegally, obviously) and sharing the revenue between students and teachers. Over the years and hundreds of decoders sold, they probably contributed to a significant loss of revenue for Canal+ in my hometown.

nicolas314 4y ago
At my electronics engineering school we had access to everything we needed to mass-produce those decoders and did so at a reasonable scale to pay for our studies. That was a lifeline. Knowledge of TV signals gave me my first job, during which I got to work with the guy who designed the scrambling system and had a chance to thank him in person. Small world.

rwmj 4y ago

Books! I had a side project that brute-force decoded VideoCrypt[1] in software back in the day, and I found out about how it worked from a book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCrypt

stackbutterflow 4y ago

You knew a guy who knew a guy.

cm2187 4y ago

Even in the 90s, having a video input port was quite rare. It was actually a big plus of the mac of the time, they came by default with a lot of ports that were optional and required addon cards on PC: 16bit audio jack, scsi, RCA ports, etc. Ironic given that it is now the other way.

sgerenser 4y ago
In the 90s only a very few “AV” model Macs had RCA input jacks (2 Quadra’s using 68040 CPUs and later a couple early PowerPC machines).

sofixa 4y ago

Minitel, an Internet precursor if you will, was launched in 1982, and in the 1990s there were 9 million of terminals at households. So there kind of was Internet, with message boards, chat, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

speedgoose 4y ago

It was well known that pirate decoders existed and were available on the black market. I was a child at the time and I knew that some classmates had such things at home.

jaywalk 4y ago
Yep. For premium cable TV channels in the US, the decoders were known as "black boxes" (because they were, literally, black boxes) and everyone knew about them.

Kuinox 4y ago

They did bypass it. IT students built and sold unscrambler devices.