. . . . . Ir.S.S.R. Kwee Computer ConsultancyThe Anysee tuner is, currently, the only DVB tuner with USB output and Conax smartcard. The Dutch DVB-T, "Digitenne", provider KPN, markets this product to consumers who want to watch commercial television channels directly on the computer screen. In Holland, only some public DVB-T channels are Free to Air (FTA), and for those few channels several simple USB stick style receivers are being sold in regular computer stores. All other, commercial, programs are scrambled. KPN page for the Anysee tuner
The reason that most tv channels are scrambled in The Netherlands, while in the UK, Germany, France, etc, all channels are FTA, seems a copyright issue. Hollywood movies in Holland are broadcast in the original English language with Dutch subtitles. The copyrights are paid by the Dutch taxpayers or broadcasters, but these programs can be received in considerable parts of Germany and Belgium, with original sound. Similar movies with sounds replaced by, e.g., German voices are not commercially interesting outside Germany.
While most DVB-T tuners can be used with open-source software, e.g., with Linux, this is only limited to the FTA programs. Currently, some people are searching for open-source drivers for the Anysee smartcard tuner. It is not expected that such drivers will appear. Neither open-source conversion or descramble software to playback program files recorded by the Anysee tuner.
The whole point of scrambling the signal of a program is that the broadcaster wants to protect content from being copied, redistributed, etc, unauthorized. To this end, the entire chain from antenna to display must be protected. With the Anysee tuner, the smartcard authorizes the display of scrambled channels, but the software drivers must be closed-source. Also, the tv application must be closed-source, and the display drivers. With the Anysee software, you can make recordings, but the recording files from scrambled channels will be in a scrambled file format.
I did some test recordings with the Anysee tuner, running under Windows Vista, a 32-bit and a 64-bit installation. The recorded files are in .TRP format, containing Transport Stream data. This is the same as the .TS format files from another USB-stick style DVB-T tuner without smartcard from Avermedia, when recorded from FTA channels, and can be played back with open-source software as, e.g., mplayer. The recordings from scrambled channels can indeed not be read by the same open-source software.
For the future, it is only to be expected that the broadcasters of scrambled channels, i.e., the commercial broadcasters in The Netherlands, will also limit options like time-shift. This way it will be harder to ignore commercials, the main source of revenue for them.
Todays PC's and large flatscreen displays proudly carry HDMI connectors. This is not to improve picture quality, because HDMI is a digital format compared to the analog VGA cable, but to extend the content protection to the display. The HDMI signal can be scrambled.
The moral of the story is that it is an illusion to hope for open-source software to utilize the Anysee smart card tuner, or to watch scrambled tv channels.