Smartcard

Smartcard, necessary to watch digital television To watch digital television, mainly the commercial channels or pay tv, a so called smartcard is necessary. This applies to digital tv by cable (DVB-C), satellite (DVB-S) or terrestial (DVB-T). To watch the free channels, Free-to-air channels, a smartcard isn't necessary; these are available for free.

The providers of digital television encrypt or code the tv signal all in such a way that it's (almost) impossible to watch without a smartcard. The smartcard is required for decoding the digital television signal of the involved provider. Most of the time the smartcards of the different providers are not interchangeable.

Digital receiver

A digital signal is transferred encrypted and is -basically- available for everybody. However as mentioned, the encrypted signal needs to be converted to an uncoded signal to be able to watch a program. The decoding of the signal is done by the digital receiver ('decoder') or tv in combination with an internal card reader and/or CAM module. The smartcard is placed into the card reader or CAM module. On the smartcard the type of channel package you may watch (as part of your subscription), just as your 'user id', is stored.

Each smartcard is unique

Each smartcard is unique and has it's own number. Per smartcard is stored which subscriber is involved and which channels may be viewed. The tv providers send activation codes out to activate the smartcards of the (paying) subscribers. Periodically a reactivation signal is send by the tv providers to keep the 'watching rights' of the subscriber up-to-date. When the smartcard for instance isn't used for a while, then it will be 'deactivated' and needs to be activated again. In most cases this van be done online or by a specific telephone number of the tv provider. Some providers, like Canal Digital or TV Flanders, offer the possibility to re-activate the smartcard as well by text message.

Maximum number of smartcards

When you want to watch on multiple tv's digital television, then often extra digital receivers (or internal tuner in the tv) and smartcards are required. For all providers of digital television there's a limited number of smartcards available per subscription. In most cases it's limited to three smartcards per subscription. Most of the time an extra fee is involved for the extra smartcards, both in purchase as in subscription (per month). At one provider the purchase of the smartcard is only once and at other proividers, like Caiway, there's a monthly fee applicable for the extra smartcards. The best price for a smartcard you get most of the time by other shops then the tv provider. At some providers, like former UPC, it's not possible; there the extra smartcards are only available via the provider itself.