New Sky cards are looming

jimbo

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Yes, according to Sky, in the February issue of their magazine, 6 million new cards will be sent out over the next couple of months. They say there is new software involved and the cards will have to be initialised to keep viewing. A question of inserting the card and pressing the 'back-up' button apparantly. The digibox has to be connected to the telephone line in order to initialise the card.
 

rolfw

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Yes the spectre looms. not sure whether they are saying that it won't work without the phone connection, or are trying a little crafty move to get people to reconnect.

If it is the case, they could get a huge amount of irate phone calls from genuine UK subscribers, possibly even cancellation phone calls.
 

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So does anyone know what's happening with the BBC FTA cards?

Will they automatically send out replacement cards or do we have to make the phone call request to the BBC ?
 

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That is a good question Ronski.

I would also be very happy to know what we must do if we are using freeview abroad.

Thanks
 

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Well I rang the BBC FTA number this morning to find out more.

A very nice lady confirmed that all FTA cards will be sent out automatically to the addresses that are on file, although this will take some time. She also said that no telephone connection or button pressing is required, you just insert the
card and it will activate itself.

Seems a lot more simpler than the sky proceedure.javascript:smilie(':)')

Ronski
 

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My sister received a FTV card the other day and it is of the new design, put it in an older Grundig box and it wouldn't read it, but would read their sub' card, so as an experiment we put it in the other box, the other box (a first gen' Amstrad) read it first time.

I aked her to check the software version number and it was an old one, the box had not had a card inserted for over a year. Did a forced update and Bingo, it read the card, so anyone haveing problems with new release cards will possibly have a similar problem if using a long time unused box.
 

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Rolf

That's interesting what you said about your sisters FTV card. You have tried it in two boxes so far, and you say it worked (after updating the software in one of them)

That begs the question, are the new FTV cards married to the box any more? Did you receive ALL the FVT channels in both boxes? Did you have to enable the cards either by a phone call or installers menu "new installation"?

Now you have installed the new FTV card, does the old one work any more? Did any paperwork with the new card say anything about when the old one would run out?

Sory a lot of questions, but I do have a reason for asking.

Currently we live in Oxford, but later this year are moving to Scotland. I am hoping the new FTV card comes before we move. I then want to get a Scottish FTV card at the new address. I am hoping that the two will be interchangeable, so I can continue watching BBC England or swap cards and watch BBC Scotland.
 

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Sorry ProDave, what i said was misleading, by read the card, I meant that it could see it, but it didn't work on the other box (hadn't been activated) they still request the box serial number though, so I would guess that it'll still be tied.

The original message I got on the Grundig was "No Card"
 

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Can I just ask does this mean that your FTV card and your Sky Sub card work in the same box?

I'm waiting on new cards but would like to know if I can still use 2 cards with one digibox.
 

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@ Rovingrover, It is possible to have more than one card married to a box apparently, it is also possible to marry a BBC card without knowledge of the box serial number (done it on a couple of occasions), the card will automatically bind itself to whichever box it is in when the signal is sent out.
 

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I think the situation for FTV cards is changing, for the worst.

There's a report on another BB of someone who found his new FTV card wouldn't work. So he phoned to find out. He was told "your box is married to a ROI subscription card"

So looks like they are tightening their grip on FTV cards. I will be interested if anyone with the new cards is able to report that they still can use two cards in one box (like it used to be)

This concerns me, as we are moving to Scotland soon, and I wanted to keep my English FTV card, and get a Scottish one as well. I can picture it now, phoning to order it, giving them the box serial number, and being told "sorry your box is married to an English FTV card" and then finding the English card is disabled.

If there's any remote possibility of that happening, I won't bother, I will stick to the English card. After all, I will get Scottish BBC etc via terestrial.

But since our new house is just that, new (we are having it built for us) I might just get another non subscription "free minidish and digibox" installed.
 

rolfw

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I would guess that the BBC are aware that a good proportion of their cards are going overseas, they would probably prefer that people access the BBC digital services via their aerial, its bound to be cheaper for them.

With the people out there already using two cards it should not be a problem, the replacement cards should auto-activate.

@ ProDave, When are you moving? I don't live too far from you at present.
 

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I'm currently using 2 cards in the same box (FTV and RoI sub) but am concerned that this may not be possible.

I'd love to hear from osmebody who has got it working with new cards.

From reading other boards it looks like it will be no longer possible to activate a FTV card in a box with an existing sub however I may get lucky in that my replacement card will work.

The current questions are

1) Will 2 new cards work in the same box or does the software disallow that?

2) If 1) is Yes then Will the replacement FTV card and sub card both activate correctly in the same box.

3) It now appears that it is no longer possible to get a new FTV card for an existing sub box or update a fTV card to a sub box as SKY now cross check the FTV and sub databases.
 

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Originally posted by rolfw
@ ProDave, When are you moving? I don't live too far from you at present.
In probably 3 to 4 months. We have bought a building plot in Scotland. Our house will be going on the market in a couple of weeks, so it's mainly down to how long it takes to sell. Also we need to set up a mobile home on the plot as temporary accomodation while the house is built. We need to wait for final planning approval before we will be allowed to occupy the mobile home (though it will be sited in a few weeks).

We decided to move now, because I am loosing sleep over the possibility of house prices now falling in our area.
 

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I think you may be justified in your concerns about the prices dropping, something has got to give soon and the current middle east situation could be influential.
 

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back on thread...

I heard that sky digital was going to make there viewing cards usable on any suitable digital satellite receiver using a pcmci cam system.?
has anyone else heard the same rumor ?

this would be a great thing as I could use my Manhattan receiver for sky instead of having to use 2 receivers.
it makes sence...hmm

thanks
Radioscannar. :)
 

rolfw

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I would say that was highly unlikely, makes them too vulnerable to hacking. May of course be too late though anyway. :)
 
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This would also require the availability of Videoguard CAMs, and as far as I know, no such thing exists at this time.

Permitting the use of FTV or Sky cards in such CAMs would lose Sky part of their absolute control over the hardware.

Another interesting idea would be to multicrypt the FTV channels in, say, Viaccess, so as to release viewers from the Sky digibox monopoly.

But none of this will happen. After all, what's in it for Sky?
 

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Well I heard that sky had lost a court battle over there digibox monopoly and will eventually be forced to use the cam system, this is one of the reasons that all sky digiboxes allready have a built in cam slot, this was a backup plan from the beginning.
maybe they allready have a deadline for the swapover.. anyway this is what I heard on the grapevine...whether its true or not I dont know ?
:)

anybody else heard the same story?

Radioscanner.
 

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Can confirm I have received new card. It did not work initially, so help line advised putting the old one back in until the box called for the new one, which it did 2 days later. It worked straight away but the box "lost"a few channels which was sorted by switching off and on.
Definately no need to have phone line connected, ours has never been.:rolleyes:
 
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