There's more to starting a cable company than just pirating DirecTV
Blame it on the economy, lack of common sense, or lowered aspirations, but it seems like an awful lot of you guys think it's a good idea to re-sell DirecTV "on the sly," as they say in the business. Hell, this morning alone no less than two items have come across our desk to this effect -- and you know as well as we do that if both John Metzler, the owner and operator of Phoenix Communications and Pine River Cable in Michigan, is reselling premium digital channels, and if four unnamed Haysi, Virginia residents have also thought if it, then it's a growing concern. Our advice? Just don't do it. You don't want to be like OJ, do you? Didn't think so.
Read - DirecTV Sues Virginia Residents for Unauthorized Distribution of DIRECTV Programming
Read - DirecTV sues Michigan man for redistributing its content
Read - DirecTV Sues Virginia Residents for Unauthorized Distribution of DIRECTV Programming
Read - DirecTV sues Michigan man for redistributing its content
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Unknown @ Sep 4th 2009 1:34PM
Thanks engadget for lumping your readers in with "a lot of you guys" (5 people?) who are pirating DirecTV. Why do I bother coming here...
Money Mike @ Sep 4th 2009 3:39PM
I've never heard of this before. Do a lot of your readers really do this?
I didn't go reading the articles, but does anyone want to give cliff notes on what they're doing exactly? I don't want to know "how" to do it, but I'm not quite understanding what's being done exactly.
Is this something like the guy who bought internet service for himself and then sold access to it to the people in his building?
UnnDunn @ Sep 4th 2009 6:00PM
It works a little like this:
1. Get lots of subscriptions to DirecTV using your employees' addresses. Compensate said employees for the DirecTV bill (in effect, giving your employees free DirecTV.) Make sure every employee gets the maximum number of receivers DirecTV allows. Every employee will thus have a number of activated, fully paid-up DirecTV receivers that they aren't using.
2. Grab all of the unused but working boxes. Tune each one to a different channel and hook up each box's output to your cable headend.
3. Sell access to the programming much like any other cable company.
4. ???
5. profit!
Why is this attractive to some people? Because it's easier/cheaper. Not as many hoops to jump through, getting programming deals yourself and setting up a point of presence with fiber links to programming-provider broadcast nodes. It is very much like charging for access to your home internet connection, and calling yourself an ISP as a result.
bdav @ Sep 8th 2009 5:53AM
Do they have to dig their own cables to the illegal subscribers houses?
SH @ Sep 5th 2009 3:42PM
Anything DirectTV accuses anyone of should be taken with a grain of salt.
7 or 8 years ago they sued many engineers in north America who had a smart card programming device, assuming they were making pirate cards for their receiver hardware. They are no better than the RIAA or the like, suing thousands in the hopes that hundreds will choose to settle instead of protracted legal proceedings. People should give companies with this type of business model the finger and open their wallet elsewhere.
It's for this very reason I have passed and stuck with my pitiful cable company.
SH @ Sep 5th 2009 3:44PM
http://www.directvdefense.org/
Meant to post that link in my original post.
SH @ Sep 5th 2009 3:54PM
And this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/17/190232.shtml?tid=126