By cable box, I am referring to my set-top box with a smart card.
I have a satellite TV connection where I can subscribe to channels, and they update every month.
If I haven’t paid for a specific month, my connection stops working, and I am told to pay on my TV screen.
From what I have been told, the connection is mainly one way – the satellite is broadcasting information to my receiver, and it broadcasts the same signal to everyone, and my set top box can decode it using its smart card, which contains some sort of encryption key.
If the same signal is sent to everyone, is the encryption key the same? And how does my set-top box know which channels I have subscribed to? Is every user’s list of channels broadcasted to everyone?
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As far as I understand it, they send multiple signals meant for one card at a time. Each card (which has a microchip that can perform computing and store data) listens until it gets a signal it can decrypt, then it follows the orders in the signal. The orders include new decryption keys to use for the channels you subscribe to. Everything is encrypted and how it works is largely kept secret to make hacking the systems (of which there are many) more difficult.
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