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Thread: Going back to Optus Aurora

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    Adrian, you need to find a time machine
    then you can go back and relive the whole thing

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    I think you guys all have valid arguments, and I simply suggested it in the hope of perhaps starting a discussion.

    I think you're right, gordon_s1942, starting a dedicated forum for such a thing might be a little too much. Yeah, these things are difficult to judge, one never knows who might be interested, to what degree/intensity, the numbers of potentially interested parties and so forth, so I kind of put the idea out there with the premise that it wouldn't be a good one. I agree with you, so I think, yes, the dedicated forum is ruled out as an option then.

    OK, then apsattv suggested maybe a Wikipedia update or page of its own, that might not be a bad idea, I don't know if pages are removed due to a lack of traffic though?

    Then, there's always the option of simply making another thread in this same category, but this time giving it an accurate descriptive title (sorry about my one, but we did discuss Aurora initially ). It would be nice I think if it stayed in our community. I always fear once you go out onto the wider web, we start running into issues of copyright, trade-marks and patent rights, and you can't say this and you can't say that because of this and because of that. Here, it is at least a community-like environment and you won't get some web-troller or spammer or whatever trying to sabotage the whole thing - I think let's keep it in the fish pond for now, before venturing into the actual shark tank.

    But, most of all, I want to ask, and guys you can be very honest - was it actually enjoyable re-living some of these things or talking about it again? From where I'm sitting it seemed to at least stimulate some discussion about the older systems. I think if we are really enjoying it, we shouldn't let it go simply because there isn't the audience for it - nobody ever defined how big an audience should be. Technically, an audience may even consist of one person, and if it means anything, you'll always have one permanent audience member in me.

    I think if it was something that was actually enjoyable, let's keep it going.

    The reason I say all this is because I never imagined that speaking about Aurora would be such a useful segue into the older systems (Galaxy, HACBSS, MMDS, etc.) so I thought that perhaps we were losing potential participants in our discussion because of the original title being so misleading. What I mean is people see "Going back to Optus Aurora" and then skip it because they think it's about Aurora when now the thread has actually outgrown that with (in my opinion) rather rich content.

    Maybe people who possess all this knowledge never post their stories or whatever because it seems irrelevant. Let's make a thread where it IS relevant then, and maybe we get surprised by the number of extra people that start posting in it, because they never found a place/thread for it before.

    But, I mean, I would only create such a thing if you guys would like me to and you think it's something that would be nice. I really don't know, I'm way too young to say whether someone older than me would like such a thing, I just don't know. I mean, yes, I like reading all of your contributions that you guys add here, I think they are phenomenal, but do YOU guys enjoy posting them and discussing it? To me it seems like it, but what do you guys say, do you like it? If so, then let's not allow it to get stifled or lost in this Aurora thread, let's give it it's own thread, what do you think?
    Last edited by irritant; 10-01-15 at 08:41 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by weirdo View Post
    Adrian, you need to find a time machine
    then you can go back and relive the whole thing
    Haha, yes, maybe I should invent one. Yes, OK, I understand. Maybe the forums are not the best place for all of this, that's why I thought maybe a single thread is perhaps the safest bet.

    I understand the frustration, that's why I say I will only do it if it's something that people want. If it's a total flop, then it is.

    It's not so much re-living the whole thing, maybe re-living wasn't the right word. It's nice seeing people discuss it, their interpretations too. OK, it would be nice to relive it of course, but also then you have to ask "Am I seeing what I am seeing?" I might be there and re-live it, but it still has little impact on me because I might not be understanding all of what I am seeing. When Gordon or OSIRUS speak of these things they add background knowledge. You need both - observation and interpretation to make it live for you. I'm afraid a time machine is but a mere observation device.

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    "E16 Service is currently scrambled”
    You wouldn’t see it on a box with a card with valid keys and all channel IDs present on the card.
    I think it would depend on whether your card was valid, and maybe even original,
    but did or did not include the channel in it’s subscription.
    For UEC, It’s going back, but I think E16 was a message you saw if you had the bouquet,
    but not the channel ID on your card.

    At best I didn’t ever understand the relationship between channel IDs (CHIDs) and the lowest level key.
    If you were subscribed your card wouldn't receive CHIDs for channels you weren’t authorised for.

    On a UEC decoder with provider firmware, if you were set up for Aurora, I don’t think you would see
    the other channels on the service in your bouquet, i.e.. Optus Business Television.

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    Thanks Art.

    Yes, that's the issue right there. When the channels are in bouquets, then it is like you say, but the UEC had this special bouquet called "Public bouquet". Anything in the public bouquet would just be stacked and shown as is. Basically, the channel numbers and the channels would stack up EXACTLY as they are being beamed to your dish from the satellite. This means you got everything, blanks, scrambled channels, business channels, the whole lot, stacked in the way the operator (Aurora) chose to stack them. If there was stuff you couldn't use, you had to go into the "Channel organization" menu, then select "Delete TV channels" or "Delete radio channels" and then proceed to delete any thing that you say you want deleted, like scrambled or blank useless channels for example. But, as soon as the UEC box scanned again, all that stuff would come right back, just like it does off the satellite.

    The thing is, Aurora wanted it to be just like a normal bouquet, allowing them to say, Seven Central can be found on Channel 40 for example, and then when you press 40 on your remote up pops Seven Central. They wanted to designate channel numbers to their services just like a Pay-TV service does. But, since the public bouquet only stacks channels and you can't assign channel numbers (well, through the channel organization menu you can, but then each time you rescan it falls away to the original line-up), what they did is insert placeholders, like blanks, with channel name "." so that these would "bump up" the channels to whatever number they wanted to give it. So, instead of me going into my channel organization menu for example, and then setting 7 Central to 40, ABC to 21, etc. they would slot in these so that if a rescan occurs or they add channels, it would be correct by default, and I wouldn't have to go into my menu to go and set this each time.

    These "." channels were not just gaps in between real channels, they were placeholders, so real channels, just with no video or sound, but some even had sound, they played radio channel sound with no video. And, I know that some of these "." channels played 990 AM radio as soundtrack, which at the time was only for WA smartcards, so if you were not in WA, I would be pretty sure that it would indeed throw up some error message like E16 or E30 or one of those scrambled messages. I think why many people didn't see this happen is because of the great amount of hacking of Irdeto 1 encryption that was going on at the time, with special smartcards, or "cardless" boxes and all that kind of thing.

    I reckon Aurora was pretty much a hacked mess by the time it shut down.

    I think we may be talking of different times here too, I'm referring right back to about 1999/2000 when this was going on, I don't know what subsequent upgrades to the firmware did to the functioning of these boxes. You are right probably, and probably for a later time, say 2002 or whenever, I don't know.
    Last edited by irritant; 25-01-15 at 08:25 AM.

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    Optus Aurora was also available as a card only option ..... meaning you could choose your own STB ... not sure when this card only option started .....

    You just bought an Optus Aurora Card & then Requested access to the services,

    I think the UEC was a more expensive STB than some of the others that would take the Optus Aurora card,

    and then later on Other Third party STB also had the PVR option, & sometimes offered multiple CI slots & multiple card slots making it possible to have your Pay TV & Aurora services on the same STB etc ....

    I suspect a lot of people did buy the UEC STB too but may not visit this forum


    The hacking of the irdeto system was mainly to add access to all the channels on Aurora, (as well as choose your own STB)
    Last edited by OSIRUS; 25-01-15 at 09:23 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by OSIRUS View Post
    Optus Aurora was also available as a card only option ..... meaning you could choose your own STB ... not sure when this card only option started .....

    You just bought an Optus Aurora Card & then Requested access to the services,

    I think the UEC was a more expensive STB than some of the others that would take the Optus Aurora card,

    and then later on Other Third party STB also had the PVR option, & sometimes offered multiple CI slots & multiple card slots making it possible to have your Pay TV & Aurora services on the same STB etc ....

    I suspect a lot of people did buy the UEC STB too but may not visit this forum


    The hacking of the irdeto system was mainly to add access to all the channels on Aurora, (as well as choose your own STB)
    Yeah, I think that definitely came later. The initial Aurora system in late 1998 had the UEC DSD 642 as the only receiver that would receive Aurora, but that soon changed, and then in about 1999 it was just the official receiver. By the 2000's it was just another receiver for Aurora.

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    I looked at but never bothered with Aurora when I first became aware it was available simply because of the cost.
    The first information I saw was at the Sydney Motor show at Darling Harbour one year ( sometime in the 70's I think) and I picked up a pamphlet issued I am sure by what ever Telstra was back then as my terrestrial reception was poor and I was interested in trying anything to improve it.
    One big stumbling block for me was my lack of understanding how it worked and getting relevant information along with the usual problem of not having money to spend on things when I was paying off a car, house and supporting a wife and children.
    Back then I think the hourly wage was around $2 per hour and a $1000 was a sizeable sum, around half the price of a car back then (Datson 120Y or Toyota Corolla)
    Now I may be wrong but my memory is I was told it was between $1000 and $4,000 to buy and instal a 'dish' and a B-Mac decoder and all that was available was the ABC and maybe some radio channels?
    I dodnt know when C7 or SQ7 was added to the mix but I dont think it was there from the beginning, but I could be wrong but for 2 channels, still too expensive for me.
    This cost was for the site survey, filling out the forms needed for approval, purchase of equipment needed and the time and labor of the installer to do so.
    I had a sort of deep fringe reception of at least 2 if not all 4 channels depending on the weather so taking those costs at face value without confirming them, I decided that Aurora wasnt for me for next 15 to 20 years.
    Which is why in the 90's as PayTV was introduced, I along with many others jumped that the chance of at last getting a clear TV reception along with more channels then were available on Terrestrial TV.
    As time progressed, B-Mac was dumped amid much annoyance to those who had been told it was 'the System of the Future' and because the decoder was built literally only for the Australian market (Korea was a possible market but it didnt eventuate) meant it was more expensive than other decoders on the market at that time.
    I saw articles in possibly Electronics Australia and other similar magazine of the extreme annoyance of those using this B-Mac system being told they had to at their own expense to throw out their current B-Mac decoders irrespective of the fact they werent that old and buy a new decoder to be able to receive the the 'New' system replacing it (Aurora).
    I believe an 'accommodation' was reached to assist those using the B-Mac system to defray the cost of changing over as they did with the introduction of both VAST and Digital Terrestrial TV.
    Again I believe UEC were the preferred maker of decoders and at first it was alluded that only a UEC would work with the SMART Card (like the claims made by 'FreeView') and some installers would only sell a UEC and SMART card as a package but unlike VAST, the card and STB werent 'mated' so it wasnt long before it was found any brand STB would work with the SMART card.
    Another problem with the UEC stb was it wasnt easy to retune as the others were so you couldnt go looking for anything else.
    Also when the Gold Card Piracy was at its height, anything but a UEC was used because from reports, it had something called a 'Country Code' built in which enabled the broadcaster to more easily disable the Pirate card.
    How ridiculous was it that right up the the very last day before Aurora was closed, the SMART card was still on sale for $99 each.............
    At least, thats how I remember it anyway.
    To be honest, I doubt if one in 10 users of Aurora were interested in what numbers were displayed on the STB, only that they knew where to find the channel they wanted and for many, they would have either deleted or blocked out those blanks and unviewable channels anyway.

    I would say the same thing applies today with both VAST and regional Terrestrial channels with this stupid so called 'logical channel numbering' system , most viewers dont know or care why it is done that way, because I know I dont !!!

    Adrian asked about the wisdom of bring up subjects like this and I think it is good to remember what happened and why we have the system in use now because once the dust settles people who went through it forget and move on but the 'next ' generation dont have that knowledge which is all part of planning for the future by not repeating the errors of the past.
    In the last 40 years, Technology in the field of 'Communications' (TV/Radio/Mobile phones/computers etc) has raced ahead like a Tsunami sweeping away much of what previously was considered the 'knowledge of the Day.
    Its bloody frightening to think that what 'we' have done over that time is now a page in History...........................
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 25-01-15 at 12:41 PM.
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    you are right Gordon I think cost may have been the main reason too when Aurora first started...

    here is an advertisement from the AV-COMM Newsletters that I used to get back then .....





    $1770 for a "kit" & you have to then install it or get someone to install it for you (AV-Comm was one of the better priced Sellers of Satellite Equipment of the Time)

    (Not sure what year this is from)
    Last edited by OSIRUS; 25-01-15 at 03:14 PM.
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    I remember reading those ads by AV Com and others put out by them and articles in EA and Silicon Chip regarding the use of Satellites which by then I had a little more understanding of but even at the quoted price of just under $1800 was still out of my reach.
    Reading that advertisment, it says B-Mac was in place from 1985 to 1998 so that means that advert had to be published post 1998 but I did think it (Aurora) was a bit earlier, maybe 1994/96 unless Aurora ran in tandem with the B-Mac system for a period of time.
    Where and which of the Optus B series Satellite was the B-Mac system on as C1 certainly wasnt around then.

    *****************************************
    Optus B1 was launched from China 14 August 1992 , B2 blew up before reaching orbit and B3 was successfully launched in August of 1994.
    According to Wikipedia, B1 introduced the DTHBS which I am guessing became Aurora.
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 25-01-15 at 04:30 PM.
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    I had the legit v1.6 Aurora card, but didn’t live in WA, and was not given WIN.
    With the mixture of other stuff going on, It’s a bit fuzzy how the channel menu behaved for me.

    Unless there’s still some ID1 in your location, I too think it’s a little curious to be worrying about this now.
    Not that I’d condemn anyone for the curiosity.
    What I still find fascinating is the killing & reanimating,
    and erasing original card data by dirtying up it’s clock signal and supply rail.
    Last edited by Art; 25-01-15 at 10:54 PM.

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    Wow, thanks Gordon and OSIRUS for your inputs, and thanks for that great AV-COMM ad OSIRUS.

    Yes, that ad would have been around 1999, as the receiver in the picture is a UEC DSD 700 model. That ad is correct Gordon, the B-MAC they speak of (1985 to 1998) is none other than the analogue HACBSS and RCTS services that started on Aussat A1 in 1985 and carried on on Aussat A2, A3, Optus B1 and some on B3 up until the end of 1998 when they started switching off the B-MAC analogue channels. In 1998 you would have used probably something like a Scientific Atlanta 9708 B-MAC IRD or the next generation Plesseys to pick up those channels. At this point, the UEC IRD 642 was launched (1998). The HACBSS service which was analogue, was being replaced with an all-digital equivalent on Optus B3 only, and this was called Optus Aurora, but many people actually called it the Remote Area Broadcast Service (RABS) which many confused with names like Remote Commercial Television Service (RCTS) from the early 90's, so I think I can see why it seemed Aurora started earlier. It truly started in late 1998, on Optus B3 on transponder 3 (12.407 V) and later 6 (12.595 V) (a repeat broadcast with exactly the same line-up as tp. 3) in a testing phase, with about 13 TV channels and 20 radio channels, some of them blank for future use. But, tests of about 1 to 3 channels (TVSN, ABC feeds all in digital) were actually being run since early 1998 on Optus B3 on tp. 4 (12.469 V) and even as early as May 1997, about six test channels (ABC feeds, SBS, and others) on Optus B1 on tp. 10 (12.367 H). By about March of 1999, they had added most of the channels they wanted to broadcast, and it was up to 49 TV channels and 66 radio channels, many of them still blank for future additions, all spread over 3 transponders (number 3, 6 and 8 on Optus B3 at 156°E, which would be 12.407 V, 12.595 V and 12.720 V). For all intents and purposes, I would say Aurora started in January 1999, but some of the B-MAC channels were still being simulcast with Aurora and some channels were still being added to Aurora.

    As for the decoders, the official decoder for Aurora was the UEC IRD 642 (based on the South African "Panasat" design (an affiliation with Panasonic, in it's Cape Town branch) which was around since late 1995, and was also built in South Africa, where UEC headquarters (Durban) are to this day), and then in 1999, a new design (based on the UEC MultiChoice DSD 645 and DSD 660 design) called the UEC DSD 700, became the official replacement for the older UEC IRD 642, and included mostly a memory upgrade I think, and perhaps newer software, although I don't think so. I think even the UEC DSD 700 for the Australian market still didn't have multiple signal setups for example, a feature already present since the MultiChoice DSD 660, which is a very similar box.

    However, the DSD 700 was fitted with two SCART connectors and an S-Video port, which the DSD 660 didn't have (it had three SCARTS). But, from the front, the two boxes looked identical (that centre half-moon screen, with the little drop-down smart-card flap on the right, and the whole box finished in a dark grey finish, as opposed to the all-black UEC IRD 642 predecessor).
    Last edited by irritant; 26-01-15 at 01:06 AM.

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    For interests sake, here's how the UEC range looks:

    UEC IRD 642:


    UEC DSD 700 (and MultiChoice DSD 645/660/720/720i)(MultiChoice branding in the pictures), same as the one in the AV-COMM ad:



    UEC DSD 910 (990 looks the same but is silver):


    Then, just for comparison, here is the Scientific Atlanta 9708 B-MAC receiver:
    Last edited by irritant; 26-01-15 at 01:31 AM.

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    the 642 wasnt the only receiver capable of receiving aurora from the start....

    any irdeto 1 capable box would do it. there just weren't many available boxes at the time.

    the humax boxes and the nokia dbox changed things with the custom firmwares allowing lots of wonderful things....

    it was , however, the only official box until the 700 came along...

    the galaxy pace box would work fine on aurora or optus vision.

    the aurora uec 642 would work fine on galaxy or optus vision.

    you just needed to get into the installer menu and disable home transponder and change the second transponder frequency to suit the appropriate service.

    then if you had the right card, pick the dth coco, AUS ring any bells ?.......

    oh, its 20 years ago tomorrow that pay tv officially started, galaxy - australia day 1995......

    it was also the worlds first digital tv service.....

    some reading...
    Last edited by hoe; 26-01-15 at 02:31 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by hoe View Post
    then if you had the right card, pick the dth coco, AUS ring any bells ?.......
    Yes, that's right. Take out the smart-card, go to "Change manual tuning parameters" but don't "Tune & Rescan", rather go to "Signal Detection" then EXIT out of menu, let the box scan that way, and then up would pop the previous channel you were watching. Then press TV button on remote continuously so that it cycles through the bouquets, then put in the corresponding card. At the top of your screen it said "X of X" and then next to that the name of the bouquet. I think Aurora was 5 of 5, right at the end. The last bouquet on the UEC was always the public bouquet.
    Last edited by irritant; 26-01-15 at 04:02 AM.

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    Irdeto 1 encryption used in the beginning seems so simple now ....
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    Quote Originally Posted by OSIRUS View Post
    Irdeto 1 encryption used in the beginning seems so simple now ....
    True, but if the cards had been secure it would still be in use.
    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by enf View Post
    True, but if the cards had been secure it would still be in use.
    The story I heard going around was the Iredeto system was fairly secure at the time but it was either a disgruntled or hacker minded employee who gave out the information on how to 'Hack' the system.
    I would not disbelieve either story after it was reported one of the Companies involved in doing encryption systems or such like were caught 'shaving' another Companies card to 'reverse engineer' it............

    After Sony allegedly being 'Hacked' recently by either China or Nth Korea and suspecting every other Government agency world wide being like minded and doing the same thing, it stands to reason that one day the original Irdeto system would have been compromised eventually.

    But back to Aurora, 1999 still seems too late for it to begin as I am sure it was an option when SETV/Galaxy/Austar began in 1995 as reported by Hoe, Happy Birthday Subscriber TV............

    Hoe, thanks for that link to the details of the history of Iredeto, what I have managed to read so far is fascinating when you think it was mostly just an idea and what it eventually became.

    ************************************************** ***************
    PPS, Go to Page 49 and there is the details of Irdeto coming to Australia and the use of the system by Galaxy in 1995 but I am not sure if it is only for Cable or Satellite too.
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 26-01-15 at 01:13 PM.
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    I don't think it was for cable. They were stand alone boxes...they were hackable, at least the Optus ones were.

    The problem they had with IRD1 was that the first cards (1.2) I think were about as secure as a tissue box once the original ideas were out there. An attempt was made to shore up the system with later versions (1.6, 1.8, 1.9) of the cards. These made it progressively more difficult to access the HMK, but eventually we were able to do so via a variety of guis. If a card had been available with a secure HMK, and all older ones deleted, then IRD1 itself would have been secure. Without a valid HMK, knowing how the system worked was irrelevant.

    Of course their would have then been no need for IRD2 and its extra level of encrytion and longer signatures, so the attempts at security from a company standpoint may have been a sham. Mindport was the name of the company I think, but that may be wrong. My memory isn't what it used to be.

    I remember the fun though... AND the expense...
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    aurora started transmissions in october 1998 i think.....

    - bit of pre aurora history


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