Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 5/1/23 08:42, Per Jessen wrote:
Per Jessen wrote:
Here, there are no "decoders" . It would be bonkers - change "decoder" just because you change provider?? Hmm, correction - the big providers (at least one) do offer their own hardware, but the smaller providers rely on consumer hardware - Fritz!Box, Apple TVbox and AndroidTV (built-in) - or indeed your own PC. My provcider recommends Fritz!Box.
Do you have paid subscription channels, Per? How is that done?
Myself, I'm old fashioned (no comments please) - I only have satellite telly, for more than twenty years. My only paid subscription channels are the Swiss national channels, for which I pay an annual license fee. Because I use satellite, I need a "decoder card", creditcard sized smartcard, which goes in the CI/CA slot on my receiver card. (card = PCI express)
You mentioned that your TV's have card readers, are these cards used as decryption tokens for paid channel subscriptions?
AFAIK, they are CI/CA slots for precisely that. I don't use them though.
Over here they've used things called CableCards that handle the decryption tasks.
I have a suspicion we are talking about exactly the same thing.
them at all. They expect you to rent their own proprietary decoders. If our ISP ever drops CableCard support we'll just drop cable TV altogether and go TV via IP.
Apart from old fuddy-duddies like myself, everyone here (Switzerland) has gone IPTV long ago. Aerial TV distribution ceased in 2018. What remains is DVB-C, DVB-S and IPTV. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (11.6°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes