Announcement Gemini Team

[Lucas]

With the release of the GP 4.3, we have added a feature to the Blue panel to detect fake Dreambox clones. We want to show our protest against clones and replicas of Dreamboxes. It cannot be in our interest, to allow the fake boxes to hard the big dreambox community and in fact our beloved hobby.
Like some of you should know, some weeks ago a new box came to the market. It’s sold as a completely new development.
But if you check that box exactly, you will soon find out that not only the same images, software and drivers were used, but also the nearly identical hardware, such as for example in the Dreambox DM500. According to some owners of this new box, it is being shipped and sold with a preinstalled Gemini Image, which is not in our interest. Even in the manufacturers forum, Gemini images where posted with a warning “runs only on Box XYZ”.

We as a Dreambox board and Developer of the Gemini Images can’t tolerate this trend. It is not in our interest that our know-how, our knowledge of the Dreamboxes, and our time is used by a third party manufactorer to sell his copies with our software

In fact, the truth is that these manufactorers are themselves not able to provide a self developed image for their receivers.

The Blue Panel server is operated, managed and financed by private funds. Also the support we offer for the Gemini images and the genuine Dreamboxes is exploited by the fake clone developers and owners.

We can not prevent these people from using the Gemini images, but what we can do is making it as hard as possible for these people to gain money with our work. Therefore, we implemented in the images that are also running on the boxes described above a lock for the BluePanel server. The detection mechanism, whether it is a replica or a Dreambox, has been activated in the current DM500 release. Other Box types will follow. If a box is identified as a non-genuine clone of a Dreambox, the access to the BluePanel is locked.
Since this method of detection is still very new, it could unfortunately occur that even genuine boxes are identified as fakes and as a consequence the BluePanel would be locked also on original Dreamboxes. In the meantime, there are some known problems where repaired boxes can’t by recognized as genuine due to the replaced hardware parts. We will do everything the reduce the number of false identifications but nevertheless we cannot decrease the error rate to zero, as the necessary data from DMM is not available. If your Box is falsely identified as a fake box, please understand that we do this in order to maintain the Dreambox community.

We ask all users of our images to do everything possible to ensure that our hobby can live on and we will fight together against such unfair methods. We as developers want our Gemini images only to run on Dreamboxes...

The IHAD/Gemini Team

 

[dasteelman]

why I agree with their sentiments and I agree it is bang out of order for a manufacturer to be pre installing a gemini image prior to sale (without gemini team consent), I cant help thinking that dream multimedia have a hand on this say

 

[rolfw]

I'm sure that they do, but can you blame them.

 

[dasteelman]

absolutly not! they have been the pioneer at the forefront of affordable linux boxes

 

[Burnham Beech]

They have made their point.

But if it is true that the clone boxes have "the same images, software and drivers" and "nearly identical hardware", then it will be impossible to implement their intentions.

 

[Analoguesat]

Indeee - & there could be a serious backlash if their anti clone procedures arent 100% correct and blue panel stops working on large numbers of pukka DB's. After all theres plenty of other images out there to try.

 

[dasteelman]

i will be honest, I very rarely use the downloadable stuff anyway , i normaly manually FTP

 

[BonceChops]

They have made their point.

But if it is true that the clone boxes have "the same images, software and drivers" and "nearly identical hardware", then it will be impossible to implement their intentions.

It would appear not.

There is a 'fix' out already to allow the clone boxes to use the blue button server on the latest image. I sort of agree with Gemini so I will not post the fix or explain how it works.

I think putting Gemini on the box from new is wrong. They should just compile a CVS image of their own and put that on. Gemini don't make money out of their images so why should others.

On the other hand look at why we use these images in the first place.

 

[T_G]

It is a bit hypocritical from IHAD to claim a moral high ground. It is not loo long ago that keys were regulary posted on their site to open encrypted channels - they only stopped when (this is what I believe) they got pressure from Premiere. So their blue panel allows us to download cams and other tools specifically aimed at "cheating" other companies of revenue, but they get all saintly about someone using their "product" - which does NOT cause them any financial harm. Maybe the IHAD team have such close relations with Dreambox Multimedia that they fgeel they got to publisize this, but still a bit rich.

 

[Sharkadder]

I have to say though, i am agreeing with dream on this one.

this is what eagle get for ripping the DB off, i think it is good what they have done, the DB is the original thing, if gemini want to make it dreambox only, then so be it. It was developed for a dreambox so we use it on a dreambox, i'm sure the guys at eagle can develop their own images...or will they just rip somebody elses image off?

lol....i think it's funny right, a mate of mine on msn couldn't access the bue panel because he didn't have an official dreambox, so he searches the net and find's this tool what allows you to change mac address via a plugin.

He upload's the plugin onto his eagle, restarts his box and the box just freezes, he tried it another 2 or 3 times and same happens.

now his box is knackard......all because he wanted to cut corners to save an extra £20 by buying an eagle instead of a 500+ model.

Maybe people may realise just how good the dreambox is now, and i hope sales improve.

at the minute it's easy to change mac address of the dream, but what they could do is check your mac with the gemini server and check if it is a valid one or not. That way it will eliminate it all together.

Gemini obviously feel very strong against this, it was developed for dreambox, people who use it on the eagle ait look's like are breaking the privacy of it, i thought it would of been ok but obviously when you been in partnership developing things with dream multimedia for so long, then suddenly somebody comes along like that, we now know the gemini image need's to exclusive to DB, nothing else, otherwise gemini seem to think all the effort they have put in working with dream multimedia is almost worthless.

I have nothing against the eaglebox, just the people who developed it have the idea's of a 5 year old!

 

[BonceChops]

Here is the latest announcement from the Gemini Team that goes with their latest release for the 500 4.3.1

Our clone box recognition mechanism caused large waves in the last days and many opinions have been told to us. On the one hand there have been the enraged owners of clone, who had to install their addons manually now without Blue panel. Then there have been the people who simply did not understand Linux and the GPL and accused us of GPL-breach. Also a financial dependence or support from Dream Multimedia and or sponsors was subordinated to us.

On the other hand there have been over 1500 users of our forum who singned our explanation.

All in all our action was accepted very positively and we achieved our intended goal to give an impulse the owners of clone boxes. There have also been cases in which people who thought they owned a genuine Dreambox noticed because of this action that they are owners of a clone box. Too our own surprise according to unconfirmed messages, now one of the manufacturer changed over to supply their own images.

Recapitulatory we note, it was never our intention to insert a waterproof recognition and to get in a Cat-and-mouse game between us and the box manufacturer. Our intension was to push a general discussion to create a consciousness on the clone and reproduction problem and to disasociate us from the clones, too. In the context of our possibilities as image developer we have used the one and only available possibility to make our point of view clear. As image-developer we have absolutly no influence on sponsors, dealers or Dream Multimedia. Our influence on the persons and companies involved in this relationship is very limited and lacked also on support from some places. In any case we get attention on our displeasure and we did not send newsletters of our sponsors containing information about clones. We will keep this in the future.

As we all are Dreambox fans we would like to say clearly, that it is in the exclusive responsibility of Dreammultimedia to proceed against clones. Only DMM has the possibilities (e.g. legal) which might be the only effective method against clones.

For us as Gemini developer and operators of the IHAD this action is now finished. With the upcoming release 4.3.1 of the Gemini Project the clone recognition will be deactivated. We nevertheless ask everyone to use its influence to proceed against clones.

Changes to 4.3.0
* Pictures (JPEG, BMP, GIF und PNG) can now be displayed on the Dreambox 500
* Fix of the EPG display in the overview when there are mutiple languages in the EPG

 

[Sharkadder]

i noticed this aswell but i hope this doesn't continue. I cannot keep freflashing my box every week just for a small update like this, what happened to majpr updates every 1-2 months?

 

[easysat]

Personally, I have an IBM PC clone, which is a lot cheaper than the real thing. ;)

So long as manufacturers aren't passing off their clones as real Dreamboxes or making a direct copy of Dream's layout or case I can't see where the problem is. The hardware in set top boxes is pretty much built with off-the-shelf components so nothing stops you or I producing a box with the same or better specs than a Dreambox. As for the software, if it is open source and free to copy and use, how can you complain if someone else uses it?