pay-TV channel of Freeview

Unless I am mistaken (since I don't live in Aus and am only taking what I have learnt from other forums). Optus Aurora uses Irdeto 1 & 2, Foxtel / Austar use Irdeto 2 & NDS. Austar being Irdeto 2 and Foxtel being NDS. Again taking a punt, as no one who was / is on the beta for Tivo in aus is talking. I expect it was going to work the same way the Tivo has always worked. With a STB provided by whoever (either a freeview/Optus Aurora + Smartcard or Foxtel/Austar (Sky) subscriber box) with connections from the STB to the Tivo. Then the Tivo would dialup or use your broadband to pickup the EPG and then record by changing the TV STB's channel to record / watch the channel you want to. The only Tivo box I think had the CAM / Smartcard support was the Series 3 Directivo in the US. However direct TV has dumped the Tivo in favour of using the Pace (MySky/Foxtel IQ) based STB's with NDS encryption. The advantages of the newer series Tivo boxes as being able to plug it into your LAN and interface straight into your Tivo. This was good and bad, good since then users could access their own recorded content, bad since once users access the content it went straight up on Torrent sites....

The upsides for the Pace NDS based boxes (MySky/Foxtel IQ/Sky+ in UK) is that the content on the internal HD is encyrpted, and isn't accessible. this means providers are assured that the content will never get out in raw digital format. However due to News Corp / NDS being excessive in regards to protection of the NDS Encryption, the only "real" hack to the MySky equivlant boxes is Copy+ which allows end-users to upgrade the Harddisk to a larger disk. This is only relevant in the UK due to end-users owning the Sky+ boxes, and happily voiding the warrentee when they open it up and put in a larger disk. This doesn't apply in NZ/AUS since you don't own the box, and I havn't found anyone game to open a box they paid $700 to get installed that they don't own just to put in a bigger disk.

The upsides to the Tivo is the interface is awesome, *very* idiot friendly. Plus savvy users are able to access their content off the HD, and put content up on the HD as well. Tivo however learnt a lot of mistakes from their Series 1 Tivos, hence why there isn't a Series 2 / 3 support in OzTivo or other "Community driven Tivo Servers" worldwide.

I would love to see the Tivo in NZ... However with High Def DTT, and Dreamboxes there isn't much advantge to the Tivo, apart from the really nice UI IMHO.

BarTender

mcraenz

BarTender