Conditional Access - How to decrypt and view encrypted channels

Overview

In the UK and several countries in Europe, there are now encrypted channels being broadcast along with the standard free to view channels. In order to view the encrypted channels you will need a subscription smart card (and appropriate card reader device) which is specific to the particular channels you are trying to view. Additionally you will need digital TV software/hardware which has been designed to talk to the smart card/interface device correctly otherwise the channels will remain unwatchable.

In DigiTV v3.5 we now offer native software support to interface to our own USB smartcard reader (available late 2005) or to a third-party Phoenix smartcard reader. Our current implementation has a built-in SECA 2 software conditional access module (CAM) which allows you to use our DigiTV hardware in conjunction with a smartcard reader and a valid subscription card to view SECA 2 encrypted channels, such as Top Up TV in the UK.

We are actively investigating adding in support for Viaccess and Conax software CAMs, but for the meantime SECA 2 is only supported.

To ensure that DigiTV users abroad can still take advantage of using other third party software CAM implementations, we have retained Multidec plugin support from v3.201. This way you can install and use the appropriate third party software CAMs to successfully decode Viaccess,Conax, etc, using DigiTV.

Setting up DigiTV to decrypt SECA 2 encrypted channels

In terms of hardware, you will need the appropriate/valid SECA 2 smartcard for your encrypted channel set, plus a smartcard reader that supports the Phoenix interface. Either a COM port device or USB device that emulates a COM port should suffice (currently retailing for between £20 and £30 in the UK).

1	Make sure you are using DigiTV v3.5.09 or greater. You can check this by going to Help -> About inside the DigiTV application.
2	Install the smartcard reader, and make sure that it resides on either COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5 or COM6.
3	Download the Common Scrambling Algorithm DLL (CSA.DLL) from Joshyfun.
4	If it doesn't already exist, create a directory called 'CAM' in your DigiTV home directory (ie, where the DigiTV.exe resides - usually 'c:/program files/nebula/digitv/').
5	Extract the CSA DLL into the new 'CAM' directory and make sure it is called 'CSA.DLL'.
6	Make sure your smartcard reader is correctly installed and connected and insert your subscription smartcard.
7	Start DigiTV and then go to File -> Settings. Now click on the Conditional Access option from the left hand panel of the settings window.

8	Ensure that our own In-Built DigiTV CAM is selected.
9	If you have one of our products with an Internal Card Reader please ensure this option is selected. Otherwise if you are using an external Phoenix smartcard reader please select the External COM Port Card Reader option.
10	If you are using an external card reader, please set the COM port to the COM port on which your smartcard reader was installed (COM1-6).

If everything has worked correctly you will now find that your subscription smartcard card details appear in the bottom part of the Conditional Access settings page. If so, please click OK on the settings window and then tune to an encrypted channel as they should now decode correctly.

If the smartcard details do appear but then channels do not decode, please ensure that you have put the CSA.DLL in the correct CAM directory location within DigiTV, as this is most likely the problem.

If you find that no smartcard details appear at all, then please make sure that the COM port number set in DigiTV reflects the actual location of the card reader as this is the most likely reason it isn't talking to the smartcard. Also, try removing and reinserting the smartcard just in case it hasn't been inserted correctly.