Archive for 9 August 2007
AnySee Tuners Works in Mysterious Ways
9 August 2007 in Code-ing | Comments (0)
If the source I read is correct, then it seems like the AnySee tuners really work in mysterious ways.
Regular DVB tuners have a Common Interface (CI) that is in some cases used together with an additional encryption card (Conax, Viaccess) and a subscriber card can decode a digital TV signal on-the-fly. The result (except an empty wallet) is an almost transparent decoding process for the digital TV software like MediaPortal or ProgDVB.
AnySee is sold in Finland as an integrated digital TV tuner with combined Conax card decoder all-in-one, but it doesn’t work in the above scenario. The same AnySee USB digital TV tuner can be used with virtually any encryption technology (in theory) that uses a smart card for pay-TV subscribers. The only thing you will need to change is the AnySee software when you change encryption technology. So, to make it short, the AnySee plus models are infact digital TV tuners with integrated smart card reader.
According to the source, AnySee has licensed the technology for Conax encryption (amongst others) and uses a software-based Conax card access module (or SoftCAM) to decode the encrypted TV channels in the AnySee TV software. This is also a reason for why AnySee will (or cannot) give out a SDK for the AnySee tuners. This in turn means that MediaPortal and ProgDVB plus the Linux DVB driver community cannot use the AnySees to the fullest potential. Granted, from what I’ve seen in the MediaPortal forums, it seems like the lead developer will sooner or later have to re-include the SoftCAM feature soon, if they are going to support AnySee and Hauppauge’s external USB CI reader.
Anyways, it is probably quite easy for anyone with the law on their side to reverse engineer the USB protocol the AnySees use to read the smartcards. The problem might be getting it working automagically with MediaPortal and on other platforms. Fortunately, this is not my problem… I’ll just stick to the slow, buggy, AnySee TV tuner program… 
Source [Min Hem Bio forums]