# dish500 card ready???



## hikerak (Jan 8, 2003)

Hello, 
With the new software and everything I was looking at the system info screen and I noticed in green it says "DISH500 Card Ready" 

What is that? 

Should I already know??


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Since some of the nondish500 receivers are having this up as well then I am guessing they are planning a card swap as they have mentioned a while back. Once a dish500 card is placed into the receiver it will not accept the older cards that dont have the dish500 logo on it.


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## John Walsh (Apr 22, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Jacob S _
> *Since some of the nondish500 receivers are having this up as well then I am guessing they are planning a card swap as they have mentioned a while back. Once a dish500 card is placed into the receiver it will not accept the older cards that dont have the dish500 logo on it. *


I LOVE IT! Put you foot down on that hacking!


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

I would also guess that they are really putting their foot down on hacking not only by what I had posted above by not allowing any other card that is older other than the new dish500 card by having them dish500 ready, but by also having the newer receivers coming out without cards but with a chip built inside of them that would be found on the card and then when a swapout is needed the new card would be the internal chip's replacement.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Interesting... I always thought that dish had hacking and piracy to a minimum since there is such tight controls on construction of the receivers.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

It is a constant battle against pirates. Pirates tend to favor the easier system to hack. If DirecTV gets harder than Dish they flock to Dish and vice versa.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

If Dish is going cardless and mount the decoding chip on the board itself on the newer receivers, then they should take the extra step and "secure" the chip with epoxy. Thus, any attempts at physical access would result in great difficulty in order to gain access to the chip without damaging the board. And, before anyone laughs, there was several coin-op games, including a version of Pac-Man, which secured the chip by this method in order to prevent EPROM copying.


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## johnsmith22 (Jul 12, 2002)

I think that hacking of Dish is now pretty sophisticated, I know of someone who has been receiving Dish for 6 months with a hacked card. He has only lost programming once and his hack expert was able to have him back on within 24 hours. He thinks I am crazy to subscribe when he gets it for next to nothing!

If its that easy it is time for Dish to take some harsh action against the pirates and hopefully they are getting ready to do just that.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

There is also the economics of fighting hacking. DBS companies have to balance the cost of making more secure equipment vs what they would actually gain if piracy was eliminated.

How many pirates would subscibe to DBS if it was impossible to pirate? Have to figure out how much they would make (note not how much they would gross, they make only a few $$ per year per sub after programming fees), and balance it against how much it cost for the equipment to everyone including all the honest people.


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## johnsmith22 (Jul 12, 2002)

Mike, I agree with you, the question is how widespread is it, if it is really as easy as it sounds there could be millions of pirates. 

It would be very interesting to know the ratio of Dish receivers sold to the number activated + the number that have gone faulty. 

Dish must have those numbers so they should be able to determine the approximate level of piracy, which I am sure will influence the decisions on when to do something about it.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

I also agree with Mike, some may be subscribing that may not subscribe before or have one receiver that is hacked while the other is subscribed. Some do it for a hobby as well and just want the extra network channels and other stuff they could not even purchase.

I figure they would figure out a way to get something where there is the card slot for future use or to access that chip, it just makes it a lot more difficult for the hackers in doing things this way. It would be a good idea to make it hard to get to that chip though.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

I am surprised given the volume of DBS chips consumed someone has not come out with an intergrated package chip (several chip cores inside of one large package that looks like a chip) or a single chip that combines all the hackable parts together so they cannot be hacked.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

This is something I have wondered as well. I have wondered why they have not used a combination of some of these encryption schemes together on one card or in one receiver. Perhaps two or three cards or two or three chips on a card. When these receivers first came out piracy was not like it is now so that is why it did not get developed.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

The providers would like a low cost 100% secure system Unfortunately more security = greater cost

Eprobably never imagined the sub numbers they have today mostly driven by locals.


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