Dreambox

The dreambox can be bought for about 140 euros (cloned 500s) from a local agent we have had one for almost two years and this allows us to get all sky, from uk austria poland germany incl sports movies and general entertainment. arab channels lots of french channels too. most of which can be switched to english or some other language. It does however need to have a decent internet connection permanently. all of this can be obtained using only a 1m dish with motor...the motor is usually about 70euros and then there is fitting and configuration of box.  Usually the whole install incl dish is about 350-400 euros. prices vary very slightly and is usually dependant on the agent - you do have to subscribe to a package with the agent...everything is usually about 20-25 euros per month collected every three months usually....the lesser package of general entertainment only (no sport or movies) is usually about 12 euros a month etc etc etc

Guys, it may be prudent to keep these discussions at a pm level as card sharing is currently a 'hot potato' with major investigations and enforcement under way throughout europe!!!

true....pm for more info

the beginning of the end for dreambox ?

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/vi … lta.387247

Police probe Dreambox use in Malta

"Sources said large companies had been in contact with a local law firm to file a complaint so that police start investigating. The sources mentioned the Discovery Network and Uefa.

When contacted, a spokesman for Discovery Europe would not confirm his company had been in contact with a local lawyer.

However, he added: “While we do not wish to comment on an ongoing legal investigation, we take the issue of piracy extremely seriously and we are keen to work with industry bodies and partners to help counteract piracy."

ah well enjoy it while u can..thenit wil be a  bonus for the iptv peeps...

The problem for the authorities in Malta is that the Dreambox is not illegal, selling of the Dreambox is not illegal, using the Dreambox is not illegal.

The Only thing that is Illegal is cardsharing / Codesharing. Now if you are like me and use the Dreambos for the FTA channels then there is nothing illegal about it.

This is why the Authorities are going after the people that are selling the channels.... and realistically they are acting very similar to Melita... didn't they sell channels they weren't supposed to ..Living, Comedy Channel.....

Then comes the Streaming side... are they going to close out of Malta all streams that show BBC, ITV, Football Channels, etc etc...

Is Malta going to turn into China with Censorship in place in the internet to stop these streams before you can even see them ???

Julian.

i agree scuba - its difficult to see how they can stem this - there must be over 100000 boxes in the island....and most of the administrators of it are cash only and word of mouth from trusted users - are users really going to expose the people who have provided the service?

and are the two main companies who have complained  - melita and go who supply the main cable tv services here that are slapdash, rubbish full of repeats form 3weeks to 5 years ago and then more....and offer no real uptodate tv servcies (except say football and news) all of it being re-broadcast programming nothing live....isnt this the main reasons for people using the dreambox option.

in the main most long term residents have moved to other tv services- leaving only those new comers to the island to find out what a sham service go and melita offer, unfortunately after signing a 15-24 mOnths contract....PRICELESS.

Why do you use dreambox ? I thought if you had a dish you could use a SKY box and subscribe in UK. I watched a woman buy a new HD SKY box on thursday call SKY from her Malta mobile and upgrade her UK account to the serial number of new HD Box. Is it just about the size of dish. The only time I used Dreambox was to pull in a football game in UK to re-transmit it for the club, so my knowlege on what it does is limited. There must be plenty people on Island unaware of how to get UK TV as SHS placed an advert in the Times a week ago and got over 400 enquires.
There has been a spate of web-sites closed down in the last two weeks P2P ones and there will be many more, because most of them a theives they rob streams put adverts on them and then give for free. The person creating the stream gets a massive bandwidth bill because no one is paying for it or the kit to pull it down and deliver it. Jim.

its the dish size thats the problem....to get pukka bbc and derivatives ch4 and derivatives you need a much bigger dish as we are in the edge of the sat footprint -  also the obtaining of a card with your current address in malta - i dont think sky will give an account to anyone outside of the UK - those companies (not sky) providing cards are not exactly legal are they - they are using a uk address on your behalf to obtain an account for you. Similar to the iptv thing using a vpn....not exactly legal IMHO.

jim IPTV wrote:

Why do you use dreambox ? I thought if you had a dish you could use a SKY box and subscribe in UK. I watched a woman buy a new HD SKY box on thursday call SKY from her Malta mobile and upgrade her UK account to the serial number of new HD Box. Is it just about the size of dish. The only time I used Dreambox was to pull in a football game in UK to re-transmit it for the club, so my knowlege on what it does is limited. There must be plenty people on Island unaware of how to get UK TV as SHS placed an advert in the Times a week ago and got over 400 enquires.
There has been a spate of web-sites closed down in the last two weeks P2P ones and there will be many more, because most of them a theives they rob streams put adverts on them and then give for free. The person creating the stream gets a massive bandwidth bill because no one is paying for it or the kit to pull it down and deliver it. Jim.

jim you might find that that woman still maintains some form of uk address and thats ok to get the upgrade but she would still be recieving sky illegally here in Malta - albeit maybe unwittingly.

I believe that the problem lies with the agreement not to broadcast content in certain areas to which most of europe has agreed. However i think there was a recent case where a pub landlady questioned the sport broadcasts in her pub as she contested the UK sky fees and proved she could get it cheaper from I think Greece...this was taken to courts (in EU) and she won thus opening the doors for legally obtaining the same tv services that sky provide from other much cheaper sources.

I sat in a meeting with two heads of SKY and it was suggested SKY should spend money closing down every subscriber who is not in UK, an estimate of 2 million paying subscriptions. They have software that could do it, but don't use it, why seems obvious. Non of the channels put pressure on SKY because they are getting their cut even if they don't have the rights to transmit to the territories, the rights holders don't care because they are getting their cut, and who would buy Engiish Spoken rights to Spain for example. What everyone is against is piracy, using one users details to clone and sell to many and not pay the provider but still use his feeds. That why I always stuck to free to view channels and despite how easy it would be to stream Pay Channels I would not. Our box works the same as SKY box, the service is all in UK the box is a UK product and you are traveling with it. If you want Sports like football then don'y buy our box because it's the same as Free to view in UK, you get BBC 1,2,3,4 and ITV 1,2,3,4 and and 4,5 more 4 and a few more. Somedays I nee to reboot the box every hour but then it settles down and plays for 12 hours perfect, it's just the internet. It's a pain at times but it's cheap and you don't need a dish. I could put a big dish up in my yard and I have a 2.2 meter dish at work but I don't watch much football, I get all the Rugby I need on ITV 1, I get Grand Prix on BBC 1 and the missus get Egg Heads, Hollyoaks, Corry, Eastenders, Corry in that order so we are happy enough with the box. Jim

That being the case then Jim why is it when i tried to get a box here for sky from sky they wouldnt allow it. Further i have access to a uk purchased sky hd box and i approached sky for a pukka sub - they wouldnt allow it as soon as i said i lived in Malta.. I understand what you are saying but its not working out that way - i think that if they (sky) did allow it they would get pukka subs from many people. isnt that what they want...or maybe not

as a little aside i must admit to watching mainly itv - any footy or rugby i usually go to the pub (for my team anyway) - Movies and specific bbc tv shows i dont need as they are sourced elsewhere....as for the iptv and vpn i got so peed off with the buffering and freezing that i discontinued with it. maybe things have improved....i do have a good reliable internet connection at 10mbps and a half decent download / streaming limit.

The difference is - if you tell Sky you are in Malta they would be breaking the law in providing a service to you. If you have a service with Sky in Malta and tell them they will cut you off as otherwise they are breaking the law. If you don't tell them you are overseas and they provide a service to you, then its you who is (possibly) breaking the law.

Sky would love to provide a service in Malta I'm sure, but they don't hold the broadcast rights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011 … ion-rights This was the case in question, Jim

From memory, this was a case where Sky had broadcast rights in both countries, which is not the case in Malta.

George is spot on, Its all about rights. Do you think SKY would cut off 2 million European Subscribers ? and as they pay the channel owners a cut would the channel owners complain ? its about rights. They buy UK rights to content as do most of the UK channels so they have to make it look like even though they are transmiting to whole of Europe they are only selling subscriptions in UK. Toon if you want to borrow a box PM me, I have a few demo boxes. Jim

RE SKY and the pub, it was SKY Italia card she had purchase in Greece I believe. The rulling was not a rulling it was an appeal judge opinion that Europe is one country type view, and provided you bought it in one country and paid TAX then why should you not use it anywhere else in Europe. They had not even got to the rights issue, just the marketing part. There was an "Any Frontiers Act" thrown out because no one could agree to it, Jim

yes thats the case - ah well it still opened doors for the unaware.

i must admit that the FTA stuff via the dreambox leaves a lot to be desired. IMHO.

georgeingozo wrote:

The difference is - if you tell Sky you are in Malta they would be breaking the law in providing a service to you. If you have a service with Sky in Malta and tell them they will cut you off as otherwise they are breaking the law. If you don't tell them you are overseas and they provide a service to you, then its you who is (possibly) breaking the law.

Sky would love to provide a service in Malta I'm sure, but they don't hold the broadcast rights

so much for the freedom of being in the EU then!!!! and being treated equally.

The alternative is to force Sky to buy the broadcast rights for every EU country - would that be better for the consumer ? Not sure. It would force say the football World Cup organisers to sell the broadcast rights to one company EU-wide. It might mean the World Cup wasn't shown in some countries.

The any frotiers act got tossed when they read "what is legal in one country should be legal to transmit to any other in Europe" Holland jumps out, but the biggest complaints was agains Bull fighting, Cock Fighting etc. Jim

Hi George a very British view of it, if anyone bought Europe Rights it might not be SKY and you would end up watching everything in French or German. It think they should be forced to buy Enlish Spoken Rights, thats what I try to buy. Jim

money being at the root of it all - so i guess it will never happen - all people want to do is watch their own tv. sounds easy but oh so complicated.

jim i have pmd you

toonarmy9752 wrote:

money being at the root of it all -

without money the programmes wouldn't be made in the first place :-)

isnt that what advertising is for?

its like a newspaper - advertising helps cover some of the costs, but not all, otherwise newspapers would all be free

must be the sunday sport then.....lol

60P the Sport last time I looked. not that I would purchase such a comic. Viz is better. Jim

So back to the Point, If you had a SKY HD Box in Malta, and got a FTA Card from Sky then you are not breaking any rules ???

Or if I got the FTA sky card I could then put it in my dreambox and watch that as well ??

I have a SKY Plus box in the UK and also a sky HD Box in the UK as well. Maybe the easiest way would be get the FTA sky channels and us a Slingbox to watch it over the Internet ... no laws being broken then ???

Julian

Interesting general comments throughout so far!

However, as far as I know the TV without Frontiers directive was not passed over but was updated and renamed as the Audiovisual Media Services directive which is now in force!

http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/tvwf/index_en.htm

and is the foundation of the current murphy eu hearing!

Sky will obviously only pay lip service to those obtaining their services in breach of their T&C's of service provided the receiver is to all intents and purposes in the UK... Trying to legally obtain such service by stating an address external to the UK is doomed to failure.

In Spain quite recently, Sky was behind a major crack down on a MMDS rebroadcaster operation that was showing Sky Sports etc to 100,000 plus expats unlawfully. This network was torn down literally overnight and all the transmission equipment wrecked!

In IPTV circles, there are good and bad! Some individuals create numerous companies and fold them just as quickly (with every excuse under the sun...but it was never their fault!) to gain services without payment which in turn causes those like our own to have to pay for these losses carried by the providers.

Fortunately, as we have built and own all our own structures for delivering UK FTA channels etc, we can control our cost and delivery base but we still obviously search around for additional bandwidth provision at reasonable pricing to keep our cost base low, unfortunately this is not always possible as the above mentioned type have already frequently left there calling cards and 'ripped off' the suppliers.

Finally, to bring the subject back 'on topic' I seem to recall reading that it is Discovery, Disney etc that are driving the anti-piracy / card sharing crack down assisted no doubt by Sky et al and frankly, in that league I suspect if GO and Melita are involved, it is probably in a very small way!

scubaboy wrote:

So back to the Point, If you had a SKY HD Box in Malta, and got a FTA Card from Sky then you are not breaking any rules ???

Or if I got the FTA sky card I could then put it in my dreambox and watch that as well ??

I have a SKY Plus box in the UK and also a sky HD Box in the UK as well. Maybe the easiest way would be get the FTA sky channels and us a Slingbox to watch it over the Internet ... no laws being broken then ???

Julian

J. You could obviously do all of that! What size dish have you got at the moment?

With the new bird launches over the next couple of years, new geo-footprint beam applications are also to be instigated which will allow the sat operators to be more in control of their deployment regions and geographic customer base. If you currently have a 2.4m dish to pick up north beam progs... then it would appear that you would need to at least double that and apparently even then you will would still struggle to receive good service!

with regard to slingbox... place shifting is good provided that you have the relevant uplink broadband to transmit and that you have full remote control of the capture box (and nobody locally wants to watch something else) Are laws being broken? I'm sure you can answer that one yourself

Seems to be all about football, if you want football then you need to jump through hoops, break the law and spent big money. If I was you Scuba I would bring my HD box out and buy a big dish and a quality LNB/Cables. You are paying for it sitting in UK, A dish is not so expensive.(in UK)
If all you want is UK TV  a few hours a day then there is loads of ways of getting it cheap.
Owning and runnning an IPTV service for nearly 6 years only interupted by the odd hour down or at worst a day is not easy, but it's getting better, people really expect to much from a web-based TV service even Melita's own web-site warns you their connection to Italy occasionally goes down, so how can you build a service based on that.
The other big issue has been resellers selling the service at 10 x the price I have emails from people who have paid 600 euros for a box that the reseller paid £25 for. This won't happen in Malta because if I have to I will put 5000 boxes out for free before I allow it to happen, SHS are selling it at £50 with a buy-back at any stage of £25, I think for occasional British TV thats not bad, and if it don't work for a few hours then it's not the end of the world, unless it goes off during the Scot/Eng rugby which it did, for 10 minutes. Jim

Hi Jim thanks for the info and the meet earlier - pleased to meet you ans Bev.... i guess the 10 minutes down during the england scotalnd game was a probably at the end and i guess you know what happenned then LOL....great timing.

Excellent topic I was on the verge of changing my Sky HD (no sport or movies get elsewhere)I think this is my 5th year, now I shall have to re-think' I have a 1.5 mt fixed dish. My question can I buy a UK FTA box and use here in Malta, if so will I get all FTA channels?

Hi Redcap,

I dont think that a standard FTA Box will work in Malta but a Linux type box should do it.  The problem in Malta is the Size of the Dish.

There are good satellite forums that give you the mapping but as stated before hand i think that the problem is going to be when Sky change the way that they send out the signals.. all in the future at the moment

J.

Q....why is costagriff so anti....axe to grind.....?