| What do I need to watch the nordic channels? |
| To watch the nordic channels (on the satellites on 1 west and 5 east) like TV1000, TV3 and Canal+ (earlier
Filmnet) you will need a satellite dish and a receiver. The transmission standards used on
these satellites are PAL and D2MAC. Since most D2MAC channels are scrambled in Eurocrypt you will also need
a D2MAC/Eurocrypt decoder or a receiver with a built in decoder. All PAL channels are unscrambled. To decode the scrambled picture you will also need a smartcard to put in your decoder. When you subscribe to a channel they will send you a card that works as long as you pay the monthly fee (eg. both TV1000 and Canal+ costs about 200 SEK a month). 
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| What is a pirate card? |
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A pirate card is some type of card that you use instead of the original smartcard. This can be illegal
depending on in which country you live in. The most common card is the PIC card and the "season"
interface/PC interface. Note! You still need the receiver/decoder! A lot of people think they can use their computer as a receiver/decoder and watch satellite TV on the computer screen, but that's not possible.
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| What is a PIC card? |
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A PIC-card is a small PC-board with one or two micro
controllers of PIC-type or a wafer card that is a smart card with an in built PIC-controller. The card
fits in the cardslot of an eurocrypt decoder. You have to program the card with some software (eg.
MultiMac or Nordic) before you can use it. No need for a running computer during viewing time. There are different PIC cards available now: single PIC, twin PIC, PIC + EEprom. The PIC+EEprom (sometimes called MM2-card, since you program it with MultiMac II) can hold most keys. The most softwares supports remote updating (when a channel changes to a new key you can update your card with the remote control to your decoder/receiver). Example of cards: 
 Wafercard............................................................. Twin PIC................................................................... |
| What is a "season" interface/PC interface? |
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A season interface is a card that you connect to the RS-232 port (eg. COM1) of your computer and put in
the slot on your decoder. To descramble the TV picture you'll need a program (like Voyager or Decrypt)
running on your computer during all viewing time. The card can look like this:  |
| D2MAC? |
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D2-Multiplexed Analogue Component (D2-MAC) is a transmission standard. The scrambling system overlay is
EuroCrypt. EuroCrypt comes in a number of variants (M, S, S*, S2) but according to European law,
EuroCrypt-M is the European standard. Nobody takes much notice of that anyway. France Telecom developed EuroCrypt. Since the system is open as regards the scrambling algorithms, France Telecom chose a modified form of the US Data Encryption Standard algorithm (DES). They removed the initial and end permutations to make it run faster in the smart card. They also believed that this algorithm would be top secret and apparently that their smart card would be unhackable.
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