At 08:32 AM 4/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>        I am a begineer about PICs, and I have an ITU PIC-1 programmer.
>
>I find out an interresting project in video/electronics on the WEB and it's
>a video decoder sold by connectrix.
>You find a schematic of that decoder in the attach file DECSCH.GIF

The Decoder is pretty similar to other pirate SAT/Cable decoders we
have seen. If some company is selling it then they sure will not give
out the source code. If a company owning legal rights to the distribution
channel would use this decoder then that company would never release even
the schematics (except for cerified service engineers).

So you probably would not found the source for that project. It the PIC
is PIC16C84 some hacker would possible crack the protection and possible
give the code out. But this seems not likely to be the case.

As of the schematics I can tell you that the amount of time to write
your own code for that PIC in question would be more worth than the
money connectrix is asking for it. The design uses a phase looked loop
to get syncronised to the video signal and it is not easy to write that
code. And it wouldnt allow you to steal from your cable company anyway
as it is not comapible to that system.

Well the schematics is pretty interesting and it can be used in different
application  (not only to steal some bodies paid services)

the same (or almost same) schema could be used to generate on screen display.
or to count video frames or to detect wight/black frames and screen areas
in the video streem, so the schematics has its own value.

antti




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