The past week, I’ve been struggling with tvheadend and oscam. The solution of a working configuration I will present in part 3, but first, I will provide some background information, in part 2 I will discuss the problems I’ve encountered, and finally in part 3 I will provide how to get it working
In my previous post, I have mentioned configuring my USB Satellite receiver, so you guess I have satellite TV. In my country, the Netherlands, the provider is CanalDigitaal. Their channels are encrypted and they use the SECA MediaGuard encryption system. It’s CAID is 0100. CanalDigitaal has Provider ID 0006A.
In order to watch TV on a computer (or raspberry pi), I need to decrypt the TV signals. A regular DVB-S receiver uses a CAM (Common Access Module) which reads the smart card. An example of such a CAM is the MatrixCAM. In the picture two revisions of the MatrixCAM: Reloaded and Revolutions.
When Canal Digitaal introduced their SECA Mediaguard v7.3 cards, I bought such a MatrixCAM. Even though my DreamBox had a built-in card reader, back then the store where I bought my DreamBox said it couldn’t read the card. Nowadays I use the card reader to read the card, but back then I wasn’t that much this kind of stuff. It could be true that the softcams back then didn’t support Meduaguard v7.3 cards yet, or simple, the salesman wasn’t aware of it. I mean, he sold me a DreamBox with an emu-enables distro and a couple of funcards, so I suppose if he knew he would have told me, right?
Before I didn’t need a card or a cam to decrypt their signals. The encryption system they used before was broken and I could watch using a so-called emu, which emulates the whole cam and card by software. Back in the days there were distros for my DreamBox DM-7000S available which had this built-in. I believe the hacked system was Irdeto, but I am not sure about this. In those days there were also programmable cards, like the funcard5, which enabled owners of certain receivers to decrypt the dutch channels, but could also be used as data storage to upgrade firmware I believe.
Anyways, when Canal Digitaal yet again replaced their smart cards with MediaGuard v10.0 cards, like the orange one shown above, the MatrixCAMs didn’t work as they should anymore. With the MediaGuard v10.0 cards, the MatrixCAM started to crash frequently and needed to be powercycled. Even though the software in those CAMs is supposed to be upgradable, I haven’t been able to locate a newer firmware to resolve those problems. One solution to this problem is to buy a CAM from Canal Digitaal themselves, which is an official MediaGuard CAM.
Or, since my DreamBox has an integrated smart card reader, soft an softcam, a CAM in software. For this purpose I have been using CCcam. For my media center project, I have bought an USB smart card reader, A smargo smartreader+, which can be used in combination with such a softcam. CCcam is however closed source software, which I would like to avoid. There is also an open source softcam, oscam, which I will be using, and I will discuss the problems I have encountered with it in part 2.
As I mentioned, there have been problems with certain hardware after Canal Digitaal gave out new smart cards. The salesman recommended the MatrixCAM since it supports multiple card systems, as opposed to the official CAM, which only supports one system. Also, the MatrixCAM is software upgradable, so, in theory, new software could be flashed to resolve the incompatibilities with the MediaGuard v10.0 cards… however I once searched but haven’t found.
Can’t wait for the 2nd part..
This project went a little to the background I’m afraid. I guess I am wanting to do too much at once. I will continue this project at some point, but I can’t do any promises when that will be.
it would be great to see parts 2 and 3 some day :-)
After I moved, I have no longer a satellite dish setup, so I’m not working on this any more.
Yes, I’m looking forward to part 2 and 3. Thank you.