I have a starview2 "the box". Doesn't work anymore with NTL in Galway. Is this box now totally useless or is there new firmware on the way ? Also, can anyone explain or point me to a link that explains why certain boxes are working and others don't ? What is ntl doing different now than 6 months ago that is making things harder to decrypt ?
Cheers
I would not expect to see a new firmware for that box.
Certain boxes are working because coders have written firmware to handle the change in encryption.
UPC/NTL were deploying an encryption method known as Nagra & this is the system that was in place when all the well known boxes were working (Replay, Eurovox, Starview etc).
Then they changed to a more difficult encryption called Nagra2. Many of the powers who provide the firmware decided not to release an updated firmware.
Why? well the jury is still out on that one!!! Personally I believe it was a on purpose so as to make a nearly saturated market empty again. Think about it? lets say there were 1,000000 working boxes in use? & overnight they all stopped working. Now you have a million users who have become dependent on the amount of channels they have been receiving, it's like any addiction, they need their fix, along comes a box that had been around for a long time but not that widely known about, and guess what? it works on the new Nagra2 encryption? Nice sales figures don't you think?
The only boxes to my knowledge working on the new Nagra2 encryption are
1. Kryptview
2. ITGate
3. Starview USB 4
It is looking like UPC/NTL will be moving to a newer encryption known as Nagra3 & that's apparently a very difficult encryption to decode. It's a wait & see game for now.
You can get a better insight into what Nagra is & how it works from this video.
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