Free netflix & others Tv over the air

Here in the Uk a receiver box appeared on a popular Tv program called 'dragons den'.
Basically it looks like a Sdr dongle type gizmo that connects to a Tv or Pc, and receives pay for tv channels over the air.
The inventor claims that the people providing this service also have to transmit the signal over low power standard Dvb channels, I suspect the only channels you'd be able to watch would be the free basic ones, as the premium ones will be encrypted.
I'm not sure if this is a load od cobblers or not, can anyone throw some light on it.

In the US, it is a complete violation of copywriter laws to rebroadcast content copyrighted content without permission (and I assume payment) to the creators. Even BBC wants their cut of content value so I doubt it will last long as a commercial product if it is a real product.

It doesnt sound right does it.
At first I thought they were intercepting the uplink or from the studio to transmitter or something, but the sellers claim its on standard dvb channels and its legal.
I have no idea why they would want to broadcast a signal freely watchable on a service you'd normally pay for.

The entire story makes no sense - at least as you've explained it, and probably as they did?.

They mention standard low power DVB channels, there are currently a couple of low power multiplexes on a very few transmitters only - and the low power drastically reduces their range. However, these are only temporary, only available to a small part of the UK, and will disappear as 5G coverage progresses.

IF any pay broadcasters wanted to use such a highly limited system, they would certainly encrypt the signal in order to ensure their payment.

The UK is VERY, VERY strict about copyright and piracy, the only such systems I've heard of were in Spain etc. where they transmitted pirated British TV programmes using microwave transmitters as a fee paying service, using microwave receivers to connect to the TV's. This was relatively short lived, as the Spanish Police eventually took action, and broke up the piracy ring.

The entire sounds unlikely, more likely would be yet another Firestick type device, where you watch TV via the Internet, but again any copyright infringements are soon shut down.

Yeah probably right

If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. You can't trust anyone these days too many scams. Could be a take the money an run scam.

Could the dongle be a broadband xcvr, basically a cell phone, and is using standard internet streaming?

ak

dr pepper said:

Here in the Uk a receiver box appeared on a popular Tv program called 'dragons den'.
Basically it looks like a Sdr dongle type gizmo that connects to a Tv or Pc, and receives pay for tv channels over the air.
The inventor claims that the people providing this service also have to transmit the signal over low power standard Dvb channels, I suspect the only channels you'd be able to watch would be the free basic ones, as the premium ones will be encrypted.
I'm not sure if this is a load od cobblers or not, can anyone throw some light on it.

Click to expand...

Do you know what episode it was on?, perhaps I can find it on iPlayer etc.

gophert said:

In the US, it is a complete violation of copywriter laws to rebroadcast content copyrighted content without permission (and I assume payment) to the creators.

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there's also FCC fines for operating an unlicensed TV transmitter in the USA... the minimum is $10,000...

unclejed613 said:

there's also FCC fines for operating an unlicensed TV transmitter in the USA... the minimum is $10,000...

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Well there didn't seem to be any suggestion of anything like that, in fact it appeared to specify use of Freeview, which is the UK Digital Terrestrial Network.

Nope sorry dont know what episode it was, only it was recent.
I found out second hand, I was told the service provider was obliged to transmit the signal over the air, and that the format was similar to dvb.
Sounds like a load of trash.

Edit found this, they claim its 'low frequency', sounds like someone doesnt know what they are talking about:

As far as I'm aware, the cable companies provide (or did provide) the standard 5 channels free on their networks - and some TV's have suitable tuners to receive them - the vast majority of channels are encrypted of course, and can't be received. While it's 'low' frequency, that just means it low compared to the UHF used in the UK. I can't remember what it actually is (I've seen it on a few TV's but never taken any notice as it's useless here), but it obviously requires a cable connection anyway.

I've presumed the requirement was simply because of cabling areas and blocks of flats, with 'no aerial allowed' restrictions, so they have to provide a free alternative.

But the link you posted is one of the many American scam adverts that are been posted all over the Internet, and completely misleading in any country, never mind in the UK - anothe rcomon one if the useless set-top aerials claiming to get all the channels for free

I dont get ads on this pc I hate them, but the works pc's are always comming up with annoying ads, I'm sure I've seen that one.
I dont watch much Tv anyways for the ad reason.
Situation forgotten.

reminds me of the kits sold back in the 1980s here in the US. there were some stations in the US that ran over the air pay TV content that was "encrypted" by inverting the horizontal and vertical sync signals. very quickly, there were "sync stabilizers" being marketed that contained a UHF tuner and a TV IF strip. the demodulated video was passed to a pair of phase locked loops, and some logic that regenerated and level shifted the sync, which was then added back into the video signal. the boxes were illegal in some states, and to bypass some of those laws, the manufacturers turned to selling them as kits.

For many years there was ways to get free cable TV and 1 by 1 cable TV found ways to stop it. The newest way to get free cable TV that I know about is a decoder box. A friend use to have this I have seen it work but that was years ago. This is how it works. You sign up for basic cable TV they send you the box in the mail. You buy a decoder they use to be available by mail from Canada. You connect the cable TV coax cable to the decoder box. Connect decoder box to pay cable TV box. Connect pay cable TV box to your TV. You have basic cable TV turned on the decoder box records the signal that turns on the pay cable TV box. Once cable TV box is on you have cable TV. If you cancel cable TV they send an off signal to turn off the pay cable TV box. Your decoder box is sending the ON signals every 30 seconds to the pay cable TV box so the pay box comes on again and you have free cable TV.

After signing up for basic cable TV your contract is only for basic. You can call cable TV company add 1 or several or all movie channels you waat to test for 1 month. When signal is sent to turn on your pay cable TV box the decoder records the on signals. Cancel the extra programs a month later the decoder turns the pay cable TV box on again. Now you have all the pay channels you cancelled free.

From time to time cable TV company will sent your pay cable TV box the off signal and your decoder turns it on again in about 30 seconds.

Canada law use to say, if Satellite TV signals fall on my yard I have the right to use them other wise satellite TV company needs to get that signal off my property. I'm not sure that is still true do Google search see what you find. I had a decoder for free satellite TV once but stopped watching pay TV and got an OTA antenna then built a much better antenna for free OTA TV.

dr pepper said:

It doesnt sound right does it.

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That about covers it. Over the years I have watched what amounts to ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) and Counter Measures to Counter Measures at about every level but the ongoing war between consumer and cable company has always been interesting to watch. Around here (Spectrum Cable) it's pretty simple. Each set top box has it's own MAC address. The system know which MAC address goes with which account. The system also knows which accounts get which channels. The same is true for my wireless router from the cable company.

About once a year the local over the air stations do battle with the cable company. Even though they transmit over the air the cable company needs to pay them to run their programming over cable. The last few years the battle resulted in losing local channels on the cable system. So I made a makeshift antenna and let my TV go sniff out whatever was out there. I actually found 31 stations of all sorts of stuff. I could likely do better with a real antenna.

Anyway, no it doesn't sound right. Additionally while many may view the cable company as public enemy #1 with cellular carriers right beside them nobody is arm twisting to use either service. Stealing from the cable company is no different than stealing from anywhere else.

Ron

gary350 said:

After signing up for basic cable TV your contract is only for basic. You can call cable TV company add 1 or several or all movie channels you waat to test for 1 month. When signal is sent to turn on your pay cable TV box the decoder records the on signals. Cancel the extra programs a month later the decoder turns the pay cable TV box on again. Now you have all the pay channels you cancelled free.

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You know this is theft of service, or in other words stealing, right?

No actually the program they were shown on to my knowledge said it was perfectly legal.
So do you know it is or is not?
Anyway like I said in #13 forgotten.

I was referring specifically to Gary's post, which described a way to defeat the cable company's billing.

After all the flak given to a poster who wanted to copy his own code out of a copy protected chip ("There's no reason you would need to copy your own code out of a chip unless you're stupid or a crook...") and how that could not possibly be discussed here, a blatant description of how to steal cable (Gary's post) seems off the board too.

Visitor said:

I was referring specifically to Gary's post, which described a way to defeat the cable company's billing.

After all the flak given to a poster who wanted to copy his own code out of a copy protected chip ("There's no reason you would need to copy your own code out of a chip unless you're stupid or a crook...") and how that could not possibly be discussed here, a blatant description of how to steal cable (Gary's post) seems off the board too.

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Gary's instructions to "steal" cable are useless with modern cable boxes. As Reloadron said, modern cable boxes use MAC addresses in set top boxes or central boxes with itegrated DVRs. Gary's cheat was figured out by the cable companies in the mid-1990s. If your cable company is still using that equipment, you might want to move about 25-years into the future.