Mark Holmes of ViaSatellite recently tackled the latest issues around content piracy and theft of service in Asia. While analog cable systems are the biggest target for piracy, satellite pay-TV operators are certainly feeling the impact of service theft. Quoting the deputy CEO of CASBAA, “The nature of the satellite business is that it doesn’t [...]

My compliments to Andrew Glasspool and his colleagues at Farncombe Technologies for two important, closely argued white papers published this year that are barometers of the changing times we live in.
Their most recent paper, published this  week, on the Common Scrambling Algorithm (CSA) mandate that many pay-TV deployments must accommodate illustrates very succinctly how technical decisions that once were wholly supportable [...]

Traditional pay-TV operators have always been highly focused on revenue security by way of theft of service prevention – for two main reasons. Subscriber fees are obviously a significant revenue source and piracy through theft of service is very prevalent, particularly in certain markets (See CASBAA for country-specific piracy rates). Smart cards were really the [...]