We are not giving this new site any free promotion by mentioning its name, suffice to say, they have 20 posts and a thousand members.

The small Nfusion Site claiming to have big news, had nothing but a server that was crashing all day long with nothing to note. They once had a banner displaying big news, it has since been removed.

Time and Time again in the FTA Industry people make big claims, and it turns out to be nothing at all. At GoodFTA we will always tell you the truth behind all of the worries and concerns of FTA!

GoodFTA has for the last three years been the leading provider of FTA News, Files, Firmware and a great community! Over 80% of all of our paid members are still with us years later! That says allot about our customer service, and support.

GoodFTA is the leading provider of FTA Support on the internet! We have dozens of FTA Instructional videos that show you how to setup, scan and fix common FTA Receivers, such as CNX, Viewsat, i-Link, Sonicview, Nfusion, and more! We also have videos to help you understand common FTA Equipment like DISEQ Switches, Coax Cable, LNBS, Satellite Dishes and more. While other sites may offer videos, they just show ours, we are the LEADING provider in FTA Videos, bar none.

We also do the GoodFTA Radio show, where we talk about all of the latest FTA Events, News, we take your calls and emails, this is available to paid members only, other then our free youtube videos we do sometimes.

Our FTA Support is quality! We help our members over Live Chat, SKYPE and many other methods to be able to give you the help you need, when you need it. Most FTA people are new at this hobby, and have a ton of questions, most forums make them feel bad, or run them away by being mean spirited. At GoodFTA we take pride in helping people not only follow tutorials and guides, but help them UNDERSTAND what they are doing, and why.

Sign up today, for as little as $10.00 you can get the full GoodFTA Multi-Media FTA Experience.

We

Most international channels (Asian, Latino, etc.)
XXX Porn channels
Most HD channels

The following channels have moved to Nagra 3 as of May 28 2009

Echostar 110

111, 113, 115, 119, 121, 133, 141, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 163, 167, 175, 177, 178, 179, 187, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199

203, 206, 207, 211, 273

301, 302, 304 ,305, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356

400, 401, 410, 412, 413, 439, 455, 456

560 to 572

873, 876, 877, 882, 888, 891, 892, 893, 894, 898, 899

905 to 981, 987

5440, 5441, 9575

Many Sirius Music channels

FTA Keys
FTA Forum
FTA Files

Programming services that are supported on the Aladin (old) Smart Cards will be taken down based on the staggered schedule below.
The dates in parentheses are when reminder pop-up messages will begin appearing on an affected customer’s TV screen.

4/1/09 = Adult programming (pop-up reminder messages begin 3/18).

4/8/09 = HD programming, Starz, and Encore (pop-up reminder messages begin 3/25).

4/15/09 = Latino programming, Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax (pop-up messages for Latino begin 3/25 and for Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax begin 4/1).

4/22/09 = Classic Gold 250 (pop-up reminder messages begin 4/8).

4/29/09 = Classic Silver 200 (pop-up reminder messages begin 4/15).

5/27/09 = Last round of on-screen messaging begins on 5/6 for any remaining services.

All remaining services (including local network programming) will be shut off to Aladin Smart Cards by 5/27.

The marketing calls were made to some consumers who signed up for the Federal Trade Commission’s national do-not-call registry to fend off unwanted sales pitches, the agency said.

“Because a few bad actors still don’t get it, we want to make it crystal clear. If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call Registry, you’re breaking the law,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection unit.

Dish Network said the company obeyed the law and should not be held responsible for violations by independent retailers.

“An independent audit demonstrates that DISH Network is in compliance with ‘do-not-call’ laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law,” the Englewood, Colorado-based company said in a statement.

“We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to ‘causing’ or ‘assisting and facilitating’ violations by that retailer,” Dish Network said. “We look forward to resolving these differences of opinion through the judicial process.”

The FTC said the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Springfield, Illinois and was joined by state attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina.

The federal lawsuit seeks to stop Dish from making the calls either directly or indirectly through its dealers, asks for unspecified civil penalties and asks that the company be required to enforce compliance with the do-not-call registry regulations. Two other related lawsuits were also filed against two of Dish Network’s authorized dealers, the agency said.

The FTC’s do-not-call registry became effective in 1995, allowing consumers to register their telephone numbers without charge. Telemarketers can access the registry via the Internet but are prohibited from calling the phone numbers.

Dish provides service to more than 13.7 million satellite television customers.

Federal Trade Commission v Dish Network, U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, No. 09-03073.

BET, Comedy Central, CMT, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike TV and VH-1 will join the other 128 HD channels broadcast by DISH Network when they launch later this year. The pay-TV company said that the new channels are a response to subscriber requests for more HD channels.

The company did not disclosed any details of the deals to broadcast the channels. DISH Network subscription details and coverage details are available via the company’s website.

We are speaking of digital modulation of signals today, rather than the analog signals of the past, but the concept is equally applied.

There are many means to modulate a signal to transmit data today. Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation are the most familiar to us all (i.e. AM radio and FM radio).

In AM radio (amplitude modulation) you understand that there is a carrier wave that is transmitted with a constant frequency. But, that carrier wave’s amplitude is increased or decreased by an external signal, the data signal. The receiver detects these variations in the carrier’s amplitude.

The receiver does not care about the carrier signal itself, only the changes in its amplitude. So, it basically only identifies the amplitude changes and strips that information away from the carrier wave and tosses the carrier aside. Only the signal that created the variations in the carrier’s amplitude remains and that is the data information. If there is no change in the amplitude of the carrier, we get a digital “zero” if it does change, we detect a digital “one”.

If we strip all this information from the carrier wave, we will end up with a stream of data which can be processed and converted back into the original information (audio or video).

In FM radio, the carrier wave has a fixed amplitude, but the data information readjusts or modulates the frequency of the wave. If the frequency doesn’t change, the receiver reads this as a digital “zero” and if it changes, it reads it as a digital “one”. So the receiver strips the information or data signal from the carrier wave by analyzing the changes in the carrier’s frequency.

Now we can discuss PSK, or Phase Shift Keying. This is a little harder to visualize, but the overall principle (theory) is the same.

In PSK, you have a constant amplitude and constant frequency carrier wave, but the data information modulates the “phase” of the signal. If the phase of the signal is suddenly altered (modulated) by the data signal, the receiver will detect this as a digital “one”. If it does not change, it detects it as a digital “zero”. So you get an idea that the same process is occurring here as with AM and FM modulation.

Here is where the advantage begins to come into play. If you have one carrier, of a set frequency and set amplitude (a sine wave), you can modulate its phase to produce 1′s and 0′s (BPSK or Binary Phase Shift Keying).

If you add a second carrier with the same frequency and same amplitude, but transmit it so many degrees offset from the first carrier (now as a cosine wave), then you can put more data on the same radio frequency band. One wave carries some information and the second wave carries additional information.

Now your receiver can extract “00″, “01″, “10″ or “11″ from the data in the same instant, as opposed to just a “0″ or a “1″. This would be QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying). Quadrature PSK is also referred to as 4PSK, which seems more logical and makes it easier to compare to the next step up, 8PSK.

Now, if we add a third carrier wave, with the same frequency and amplitude as the first two, but so many degrees out from the first two, we can transmit and receive three bits of data or 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111 during the same instant! This would be 8PSK modulation.

I am sure you are seeing the advantage here. The data is being transmitted at the same time, within the same bandwidth, but you are transmitting more data simultaneously. Therefore, there is more data (more information) to work with immediately, which means more accuracy and a better quality picture (and sound).

There is also 16PSK signals! HOTDOG!

Just to add a summary:

BPSK or binary PSK is 1 and 0 (binary = two packets)
QPSK or 4PSK is 00, 01, 10, 11 (quadrature = four packets)
8PSK is 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111 (eight packets)
16PSK is 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111 (16 packets)

Many people ask if they can use a Coolsat 5K to view the 8PSK signals. The answer is no, of course. The reason should be obvious. Even though QPSK and 8PSK are similar in theory, they are still just as different as AM and FM radio. The receiver’s tuner (or tuner MODULE) has to be designed specifically to detect, decode and process these signals.

This is why the NFusion Nuvenios have a separate 8PSK module.

The picture perfect launch took place at 7:45 PM and lit up the nights sky.

Testing of the new satellite took place at the 138 degree orbital location and from everything I have been told the testing went extremely well.

The new satellite will give Dish Network customers a better signal (especially on the West Coast, as the current satellite at the 129 location has been an issue for customers in the West and down South. In addition the CIEL II satellite introduces spotbeam technology to the 129 orbital location. This spotbeam technology will allow Dish Network to roll out HD locals to many cities which currently do not get HD locals from Dish Network. With these new spotbeams it will free up conus satellite transponders which can be used by Dish Network to offer more national programming including new national HD channels.

And while the satellite is at its new home don’t expect Dish Network to flip a switch and light up a bunch of new services all at once, in fact it could be days or weeks before customers see anything new from the new satellite. Before the satellite can be used a few more tests are needed and any final tweaking of the satellite will need to be done. After this is complete then Dish will start transferring programming from the old satellite to the new one. When this happens many customers will notice an increase of signal quality from the 129 orbital location. Once the moves start then you can expect Dish to start adding HD locals markets taking advantage of the satellites spot beam technology.

Welcome home CIEL II, a lot of folks have been waiting for you to come home for a long time now!

CAM or conditional access module is defined by the DVB standard as an interface between a standardised DVB common interface receiver and one or more proprietary smartcards for signal decryption. It is not the smartcard itself. The standard format of this module follows PCMCIA specifications; some receivers bypass the requirement for a separate module by providing embedded CAM functionality in the receiver to communicate with specific proprietary smartcards such as Nagravision, Conax, Irdeto, Viaccess, Betacrypt. In the North American market, most “package receivers” sold by signal providers provide embedded CAM operation; terminology is therefore often misused to misidentify the smartcard as a CAM.

CW control words are also some times called Keys. (see explanation below)

DSA. Digital signature algorithm. DSA is based on a different mathematical problem than that of RSA (discrete logarithm problem) or the difficulty of inverting a mathematical exponentiation operation in a finite field. DSA generates a digest of the message to be signed using a hash function as with RSA. The digest is then processed by a DSA signing operation, which requires private key and generates two 160 bit numbers. This signature accompanies the original message when sent. A recipient system that needs to verify the signature recomputes the digest by applying the hash function to the received message.

DES algorithm was initially published as FIPS publication 46 (USA Federal Information Processing Standards ) in 1977. The algorithm is designed to encipher and decipher 64 bit blocks of data using a 56 bit
key.

DVB. Digital Video Broadcasting is a suite of internationally accepted open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium with more than 270 members.

ECM (Electronic counter measures) Electronic counter measures are signals that are sent via satellite to to the IRD to combat satellite tv piracy.

EEPROM (also written E2PROM and pronounced e-e-prom or simply e-squared), which stands for Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory, is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices to store small amounts of data that must be saved when power is removed, e.g., calibration tables or device configuration.

EKS. Extreme Key Sharing. This is basically another name for IKS. (see explanation below)

Emulation . is the imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of computer/system

Encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information

FTA is often used to refer to receivers and equipment which contain no decryption hardware, built with the intention of being able to receive unencrypted free-to-air broadcasts; more properly FTA refers to the unencrypted broadcasts themselves.

Hash functions. A one time function of a data value which is easy to compute but difficult to reverse. The most credible hash function is the U.S. government’s secure hash algorithm (SHA-1). SHA-1 generates a 160 bit output,(with DSA) which gives it a substantial advantage over algorithms with a 128 bit output.

IDEA is a block cipher which uses a 128-bit length key to encrypt successive 64-bit blocks of plaintext. The procedure is quite complicated using subkeys generated from the key to carry out a series of modular arithmetic and XOR operations on segments of the 64-bit plaintext block. The encryption scheme uses a total of fifty-two 16-bit subkeys

IKS. Internet Key Sharing is using a web server to share CW’s from a cam or stand alone 3rd party bin file to share the Cw’s of encrypted tv programs.

IRD is an integrated receiver-decoder, in other words a complete digital satellite TV or radio receiver; “decoder” in this context refers not to decryption but to the decompression and conversion of MPEG video into displayable format.

KEYS. Keys are a seemingly random string of bits, with the number of bits (key length) depending on the particular cryptosystem. There are private (secret) keys and public keys.

MAP Modular Arithmetic Processor and enhanced DES accelerator are designed to speed up cryptographic calculations using Public Key Algorithms and Secret Key Algorithms.

MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group technical standard 2) This is a widely used standard for digital encoding of motion pictures. It typically achieves a 50 to 1 compression of data. It achieves this mainly by not retransmitting areas of the screen that have not changed since the previous frame.

RSA. Rivest, Shamir, Adleman. A public key based digital signature scheme. Encryption and decryption has to be applied to the entire message contents and the volume of data is at least double the original message size. To improve the scheme a hash function is introduced into the processing.

Smart card. A tiny processor and storage system realized in a microcircuit embedded in a plastic card.

There are some brief definitions to help us understand things a little better as we get into what N3 is. N3 stands for Nagravision3. This is a form of encryption produced by a company called the Kudelski Group. This is a company owned and operated by Andre Kudelski, based in Cheseaux, Switzerland. The Kudelski Group specialize in security and access control solutions for digital television for many companies around the world. The Kudelski Group forms partnership with companies Like Echostar to provide security and encryption services for Echostar’s pay per view programming service they offer. The Kudelski group and Echostar formed a company to offer this support by the name of Nagrastar. Nagrastar is responsible for the security of the encoded broadcasts of the American satellite tv provider Echostar and the Canadian satellite tv provider Bell Expressvu. Nagravision is the type of encryption and Nagrastar manage how this encryption is used. Nagrastar does this by the use of smart cards or built in Cams in some of the newer models of IRD. They update these Cams by sending a ECM to update the EEPROM in the smart card or cam installed in the IRDs. This ensures only authorized or paying customers are the only ones who can view their encrypted programming. To explain in simple/basic terms, what this means is Nagrastar will encrypt the signal at their uplink center using the present form of nagravision encryption. Echostar uses an uplink center which is based in Cheyenne , WY, USA to compress their signal into the Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 format and add the encryption . Bell Expressvu’s uplink center is located in North York which is in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
When Direct tv secured their signal with the introduction of the P4 card, satellite tv hackers moved on to the weaker encryption used by Echostar and Bell Expressvu. At that time it was Nagravision1 encryption being used to secure the signal broadcast from the satellites. Hackers got help in decrypting the N1 cards by Europeans who already were heavy into researching weaknesses in the N1 cards. Also at this same time someone figured out that you could use an FTA receiver to decrypt the programming by loading 3rd party software onto the fta receiver to emulate the smart cards used in the pay for view providers IRD’s. After numerous ECM’s sent out by Nagrastar, failed to stop hackers from getting access to the programming, it was concluded that a new card would be needed to fully secure the stream. So in the spring of 2005 nagrastar started to change to the Nagravision2 encryption. However once again with help from overseas hackers, N2 was defended almost as soon as the signal was secured. After several more attempts with ECM’s, one of which was quite successful for awhile (MAP57) it was concluded that another card swap was necessary in order to once again secure the signal.
This brings us to this point in time. I’m sure many of you are wondering why it is so hard to crack N3 when N1 and N2 seemed quite easy to crack. Well the answer is quite simple. The Nagravision people have had a few years experience dealing with hackers and in fact have hired some of the former hackers to help them secure their signal from any future breaks in the encryption. They have done this by building better firewalls and increasing the complexity of the algorithms used to encrypt the signal broadcast by the pay per view providers. They do this by using a combination of RSA, IDEA, DSA, DES, algorithms. This makes it next to impossible to guess what the CW’s are because the possible output combination of these Algorithms equal more then all the molecules in the universe. So hackers must get inside the card to see what exact is going on and how the card/cam is using the MAPs to process the CW’s. Now this is not easy to do. They do it by a complex method of using acids to peel the layers off the chip and sending electrical currents to the chip to see how it reacts. This is a science mastered by very few hackers/card crackers in the world. N3 has been in use in Europe for at least a year now and no one has a successful hack for a free standing hack of the N3 encryption. Remember Europeans are the ones who helped crack N1 and N2.

Now what does this mean for people using FTA receivers at this time. Well it is obvious to anyone who was using a FTA receiver to view the programming of Bell Expressvu, it means a black screen. OH no, you cry, what will I do. Well you have several opinions. You could start paying the providers to watch tv. It’s expensive, has allot of crappy stations but it never goes down. Next you could do true FTA. After all you already have a FTA receiver and cables run. You would only need to switch to a larger dish and linear lnb. This is minimum cost and you get quite a few channels such as fox, abc, cbs, etc. However what you don’t get is, HBO, PPV or porn. Let’s face it, this is what most FTA receiver or card hackers want to view. So what does that leave you with? Well I’m afraid it’s Card sharing, IKS or EKS. The Nfusion was the first FTA to be successful on a large scale in North America. However even these will not give you wide open tv. You can only view what you buy as a package for the providers. A basic explanation of how IKS or at least how I think works (because I’m not a hacker but a student/studier of satellite tv), is like this. A group buys a sub or combination of subs and sends all the CW’s for ALL the channels to a central server where the CW’s are cache until a request comes in to the server requesting the information for a certain channel. A fta receiver is connected to the internet, 24/7. As you choose a channel to watch on your tv, the receiver sends an encrypted packet to the central server with the receiver’s ID and CW request for that channel. The server reads this packet of data and sends back the CW’s needed to view that programming.

Cool you say. Well this method has it’s pit falls as well. For example, decrypting the encrypted programming of the pay per view providers is considered illegal in North America. This could lead to a fine from a civil lawsuit by the providers or even a criminal charges by the legal authorizes in your area. If a person was to use this method they should take steps to hide their true identity because despite what these salesmen will tell you, your IP can be traced. If your receiver makes contact enough to process the data packet requested by the receiver then there is a trail to your house. No country is safe from a server seizure either. Even Hong Kong as turned over servers to Echostar when they got sued to get possession of those servers hosting hacking files by Echostar. How do you stop from getting caught?? Well some use a proxy. However not all proxies are created equal. Some proxies are transparent and can be seen right through. IKS has a hard time process CW’s using good proxies because of the time delay in the request data packet. My PERSONAL opinion is it’s not worth the risk. However now that you have the facts you can make up your own mind as to what you want to do as N3 nears completion and all channels go black.

I’m hoping many of you try TRUE fta and become hobbyist at this fta stuff. I think you will find it is educational and fun to boot.