DirecTV Rates Kudos for Signal Security

[Gregg Lengling]

It's an unhacked card ... at least that's the latest word from both pirates and analysts regarding DirecTV's P4 security card released during the second quarter.

"There are currently no known hacks of the P4 card, or at least none that can be easily replicated," says Banc of America Securities analyst Doug Shapiro. Chatter from pirates tends to back that despite the fact that some 15 million DirecTV shipped set-tops remain unaccounted for.

The 2Q DirecTV security switch is generally credited for "several hundred thousand" gross adds to the News Corp.-owned giant's bottom line. The fall-out from this good news for the DBS No. 1 has apparently hit square on the DBS No. 2, as DISH Network is now reputed to have significant - and growing - security woes.

For more on multichannel piracy, get the October 2004 BRIDGE at http://www.mbc-thebridge.com.

[borghe]

I was familiar with aspects of this for a while. It really was insanely easy. Congrats to DirecTV for essentially killing it in one fell swoop.