Viaccess is a conditional access system edit by Orange S.A. There are six versions in use today, Viaccess PC2.3, Viaccess PC2.4, Viaccess PC2.5, Viaccess PC2.6, Viaccess ACS3.x/Prime Sentinel, Viaccess ACS4.1, Viaccess ACS5.0, and Viaccess ACS6.x/Adaptive Sentinel.
Viaccess was developed as the digital version of the EuroCrypt system used with the hybrid MAC system,
The first version is sometimes referred to as Viaccess 1, and the latter three, although different, as Viaccess 2. PC2.3 and PC2.4 are known to be ineffective, and many set-top boxes can be 'patched' to decrypt Viaccess signals without payment, however PC2.5 and PC2.6 are secure, with PC2.5 remaining secure two years after its first commercial deployment. PC2.6 was introduced at the end of 2005. PC3.0 was introduced during mid-2007.
There are two modifications of Viaccess PC2.3 in use. The first, known as TPS Crypt, is used by TPS. Despite being compromised also, the TPS Crypt system has been further modified to use Advanced Encryption System (AES) keys. These AES keys were originally updated once weekly, however after this inconvenienced unauthorised viewers little, a second TPS crypt system was introduced, by which keys are changed every 12 minutes, with keys being sent over TPS's internal Open TV system. This therefore meant that only TPS receivers could receive the new AES key, and not the insecure TPS subscription cards. Monitoring and analysing of the keys by hacking groups, however, has brought about key lists, where the AES keys have been successfully predicted. Implementation of this procedure of automatically updating keys has proved difficult, if not impossible, to implement on many satellite receivers, rendering the TPS Crypt AES system a general success.
In 2008, Viaccess acquired Orca interactive and in 2012 they merge under the name Viaccess-Orca, [1] which specializes in video content security and anti-piracy, OTT & IPTV platforms and targeted TV advertising.
The second Viaccess modification, called ThalesCrypt, is used by Canal Satellite France to protect its contents on the transport network to the head-ends of the cable networks; it is an over-encryption mechanism of the original protocol encryption keys.
Viaccess is currently used by a large number of providers. These include:
Viaccess is the 3rd largest conditional access system provider in the world (in 2004).
Viaccess is also a subsidiary of Orange S.A. which offers pay TV and digital rights management enabled software.
Orca Interactive is a subsidiary of Viaccess which offers IPTV Middleware since 2008.
Bell Satellite TV is the division of BCE Inc. that provides satellite television service across Canada. It launched on September 10, 1997. As of April 2017, Bell Satellite TV provides over 700 channels to over 1 million subscribers. Its major competitors include satellite service Shaw Direct, as well as various cable and communications companies across Canada.
Cisco Videoscape was a majority owned subsidiary of News Corp, which develops software for the pay TV industry. NDS Group was established in 1988 as an Israeli start up company. It was acquired by Cisco in 2012 before being sold back to the private equity company Permira in 2018 for US$1 billion. The company is currently headquartered in Staines, United Kingdom.
Pirate decryption is the decryption, or decoding, of pay TV or pay radio signals without permission from the original broadcaster. The term "pirate" is used in the sense of copyright infringement. The MPAA and other groups which lobby in favour of intellectual property regulations have labelled such decryption as "signal theft" even though there is no direct tangible loss on the part of the original broadcaster, arguing that losing out on a potential chance to profit from a consumer's subscription fees counts as a loss of actual profit.
Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live television that is streamed over the Internet (multicast) — in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable transmission formats — as well as video on demand services for watching or replaying content (unicast).
A conditional access module (CAM) is an electronic device, usually incorporating a slot for a smart card, which equips an integrated digital television or set-top box with the appropriate hardware facility to view conditional access content that has been encrypted using a conditional access system. They are normally used with direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) services, although digital terrestrial pay TV suppliers also use CAMs. PC Card form factor is used as the Common Interface form of Conditional Access Modules for DVB broadcasts. Major CAM manufacturers are Airmod.tech and SMIT. Airmod, created in 2022, regroup CAM formerly managed by Neotion and SmarDTV.
Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information for current and upcoming broadcast programming. Some guides also feature backward scrolling to promote their catch up content. They are commonly known as guides or TV guides.
VideoGuard, produced by NDS, is a digital encryption system for use with conditional access television broadcasting. It is used on digital satellite television systems - some of which are operated by News Corporation, which owned about half (49%) of NDS until its sale to Cisco in 2012. Since 2018 VideoGuard is improved and maintained by Synamedia. Its two most widely used implementations are Sky in the United Kingdom and Ireland and DirecTV in the United States, the former of which launched the digital version of the system in 1998.
Television encryption, often referred to as scrambling, is encryption used to control access to pay television services, usually cable, satellite, or Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services.
Nagravision is a company of the Kudelski Group that develops conditional access systems for digital cable and satellite television. The name is also used for their main products, the Nagravision encryption systems.
Conditional access (CA) is a term commonly used in relation to software and to digital television systems. Conditional access is that 'just-in-time' evaluation to ensure the person who is seeking access to content is authorized to access the content. Said another way, conditional access is a type of access management. Access is managed by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to the content.
Dreambox is a series of Linux-powered DVB satellite, terrestrial and cable digital television receivers, produced by German multimedia vendor Dream Multimedia.
Canal+, established as CanalSatellite in 1992 and later rebranding to CanalSat, is a French subscription TV provider associated with the channel of the same name. It is a subsidiary of Groupe Canal+, which is wholly owned by Vivendi.
EuroCrypt is a conditional access system for Multiplexed Analogue Components-encoded analogue satellite television. It had several versions. It supported receivers with card slots and those with embedded keys. Its most widespread use was in Scandinavia, where the only EuroCrypt protected broadcasts remained until July 2006.
Card sharing, also known as control word sharing, is a method of allowing multiple clients or digital television receivers to access a subscription television network with only one valid subscription card. This is achieved by electronically sharing a part of the legitimate conditional access smart card's output data, enabling all recipients to gain simultaneous access to scrambled DVB streams, held on the encrypted television network.
A free-to-air or FTA Receiver is a satellite television receiver designed to receive unencrypted broadcasts. Modern decoders are typically compliant with the MPEG-2/DVB-S and more recently the MPEG-4/DVB-S2 standard for digital television, while older FTA receivers relied on analog satellite transmissions which have declined rapidly in recent years.
Addressability is the ability of a digital device to individually respond to a message sent to many similar devices. Examples include pagers, mobile phones and set-top boxes for pay TV. Computer networks are also addressable via the MAC address on Ethernet network cards, and similar networking protocols like Bluetooth. This allows data to be sent in cases where it is impractical to control exactly where or to which devices the message is physically sent.
Dream Satellite TV was the first all-digital Direct-To-Home (DTH) television broadcasting service via satellite in the Philippines. Broadcasting from the Dream Broadcast Center located at the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga. Content is received from program providers, compressed and broadcast via Koreasat 5 in DVB-S and NTSC color format exclusively to its subscribers using the Integrated Receiver-Decoder and the Conax/Nagravision 3 Encryption System.
There are various implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard, also known as Rijndael.
Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is both an industry standard and promotional initiative for hybrid digital TV to harmonise the broadcast, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs and set-top boxes. The HbbTV Association, comprising digital broadcasting and Internet industry companies, has established a standard for the delivery of broadcast TV and broadband TV to the home, through a single user interface, creating an open platform as an alternative to proprietary technologies. Products and services using the HbbTV standard can operate over different broadcasting technologies, such as satellite, cable, or terrestrial networks.
GlobeCast World TV was a television via satellite service received in North America via the Galaxy 19 satellite, providing ethnic television and audio channels. It was a service by Globecast, a subsidiary of Orange. In North America, the satellite broadcasts dozens of Arabic and Asian channels.