Hacker News Reader

If my memory does not fail me, this was still being used in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember buying a TV tuner (PCI?ISA?) card especially for the purpose of unscrambling Canal+ using tools downloaded online (I didn't have the first clue about cryptography back then).

View on HN

This was the nagravision encryption mentionned at the end of the article.

Old "decodeur pirates" wouldn't work past 1995. They were standalone and didn't require a PC.

After that, you had to use a tv card (mine was PCI) with a "compatible" chip like BT848 if memory serves. Some plugins for tv applications existed to bruteforce the key every month (deschtroumpfer used to be a keyword to find such plugin).

BT848 does ring a bell ^^

> deschtroumpfer

Is it because the encrypted audio sounded like smurfs (schtroumpfs in English) talking?

Ahah, I think it was to avoid the takedown of websites talking about it. The term is still in use to advertise CCcam and the like.

The famous Miro pctv card, it was pci and the best way (probably the only one) to uncrypt Canal plus in the computer days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com