First, the legal news. As I mentioned last month, the victims of the June raids have scored a victory in the lower courts, and we were waiting to see if an appeal would be filed. It seems at the last minute there was an appeal filed, and it was dealt with in short order. The government was opposing the return of the items seized, and asking the appeal court to overturn the lower courts decision. The higher court completely agreed and upheld the previous ruling, that the items be returned. At one point in the proceedings, after the decision had been rendered by the court, one of the lead investigators informed the court that he was "unable" to return 3 hard drives taken from computers seized. The Judge was not very impressed, and advised the officer that he would be ignoring a court order, and therefore in contempt.

Since the court date, the former accused counsel have sought vigorously to insure that those contempt proceedings will follow unless everything is returned as ordered by the court. Will we see an RCMP officer actually go to jail over this? The possibility is very real. I couldn't imagine what their agenda is, but it seems unfathomable to what lengths these officers will go. Is it possible that some of that money DirecTv bought the RCMP with, has trickled down to a few others? It can only be speculated.

At this time, I have been informed that the RCMP are cooperating very little in returning things, only giving back the minimal amount of items. Any blue plastic cards seized are not being returned, with the excuse that they are the property of News Datacom (flip over and read the fine print on the back of the card). Also, battery cards or components of them are also not being returned at this time. It seems a court order isn't strong enough for the RCMP to follow.

Also, there may be some problems with returning certain items, since they were forwarded to DirecTv in the U.S. This is clearly a violation of the handling of evidence, but was quite prominent in this case. If those items cannot be returned by the RCMP since they don't have them anymore, it could lead to a civil lawsuit for loss of property. Which I don't think would be hard to win, given that the items were seized under a search warrant, and therefore to be accounted for, and also ordered returned by the courts. I will keep you up to date as this saga continues to unfold.

My own appeal, as I told you last month, was heard several weeks ago. I am still awaiting a decision, and am "cautiously optimistic" (a defence lawyers favourite fallback..) as to the outcome. The argument seemed fairly well received by the judge, and I was informed the court was "quite taken" by my presentation. Only time will tell. I will let you know the results in the future.

The card scene is started to heat up a little bit again, now with new software preventing frequent ECM's. The new bootstrap version, for the most part, is a success. It has been ECM'd only twice, in the same time the old version has been ECM'd at least 6 times. Also, the new software has some added "magic" that allows it to rejuvenate itself after an ECM. Only time will tell how effective this is against a particular ECM, but so far it's results have been fairly good. One dealer I know, who had approximately 60 or more cards running the V3 software, had to only reload 3 of them. All the others turned themselves back on automatically. This is no doubt good news for dealers and consumers who had a pretty rough fall dealing with these cards. The "confidence" has rebounded and cards are once again selling.

Also, the plastic cards continue to run flawlessly as well, even 3M's, which were previously targeted, have been holding up. Of course, the big question on everybody's mind is the new card. What the answers are remains to be seen, but I can tell you this. The new card is developed on the same "platform" as the current European card, just like the 0-3 series DSS cards are based on the Sky 09 card, from a couple years back. Since the Sky 0A, as it is called, is broken in Europe, the secrets used for that hack will be instrumental in breaking the "H" series DSS cards.

Also, I am hearing of some compatibility problems with the very first few hundred thousand RCA receivers. It seems they do not like the new series cards, and owners must run the old style card. This will pose a dilemma for RCA, they will either have to replace all those receivers, or leave the old datastream running for those people. Hopefully, the latter will be the solution, particularly since any corporation hates spending money it doesn't have to. Just look at GI.

I recently had an opportunity to see the new Star Choice system, the only "legal" DBS system in Canada. The receiver I saw was a Houston Tracker DISH network system, with a Star Choice sticker covering the Houston Tracker logo. A bit cheesy, I thought. There has also been some confusion regarding what exactly the hardware is, compared to a standard DISH network system. Some people think there is no difference, others claim the DISH system won't work without an upgrade. Well, they're both right. The receiver is the same, except for an extra output on the back. I believe that output will be used to control an A/B switch, so that when you hit a certain block of channels (ie. The Canadian channels) it will switch LNB's. The dish will have 2 offset LNB's that will pick up 2 different satellites. One will be on the regular DISH network bird, the other aimed at a satellite delivering the Canadian channels. So for all the channels already carried on the DISH bird, it will run normally just as a DISH system does. Once you tune a channel not on the DISH bird, the A/B switch changes LNB's so you are now tuning the Canadian programming. So an unmodified DISH network system will pick up Star Choice, but you will be limited to non-Canadian programming. I am sure you will see 3rd party modifications come available to make the DISH systems compatible for a reasonable price. Of course, this still doesn't address the problems of lack of programming, but that will never change until the CRTC is disbanded, and a free market allowed.

Till next month, stay warm!