history of dbox

[jfish]

I know the dbox was initially for the German cable market I am however curious how someone managed to work out you could put the box into debug mode and then flash a variation of the linux operating system

anyone know the history for it .. was this the first cable box of its kind

[Devilfish]

I think it was basically some guys in Germany that were curious and wanted to find out if they could alter the firmware.

They found a loophole to access the flash of the DBox and after backing up the original Software and extracting some drivers(Ucode,Avia) out of this software they where able to start the foundation of the Tuxbox Project.

More info available here...

GNU DBox2 Software Project
Hauptseite - New TuxBoxWiki

[DavC]

i read that the dbox1 was modified first to run a custom linux os. so it seems obvious for someone to try and reverse engineer and hack the dbox2

wouldn't be supprised if it was all started by someone who worked in designing/manufacturing the dbox

[gingerninja]

Quote
The Dreambox is a Linux-powered DVB satellite, terrestrial and cable digital television decoder (set-top box), produced by German multimedia vendor Dream Multimedia. Its firmware is officially user-upgradable, since it is a Linux-based computer, as opposed to third-party "patching" of alternate receivers. All units support Dream's own DreamCrypt conditional access (CA) system, with software-emulated CA Modules (CAMs) available for many alternate CA systems. The Dreambox is based on the DBox2 units that were distributed by Kirch Media for its pay-TV services before its bankruptcy; it uses the same Linux-based software originally developed for the DBox2. The built-in Ethernet interface allows networked computers to access the recordings on the internal hard disks on some Dreambox models. It also enables the receiver to store digital copies of DVB transport streams on networked filesystems or broadcast the streams as IPTV to VideoLAN clients. Unlike many PC based PVR systems that use free-to-air type of DVB receiver cards, the built-in conditional access allows receiving and storing encrypted content.

The combination of third-party developers and network connectivity which facilitates card sharing, makes Dreambox use particularly common among enthusiasts and those who intend to obtain services without payment. Third-party software for this purpose is neither officially endorsed nor supported by Dream Multimedia and voids the official warranty; however, unofficial web sites support a very large community of enthusiasts.