TEST REPORT
06-07/2008
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TELE-satellite & Broadband — 06-07/2008 — www.TELE-satellite.com
PayTV Throughout
the Entire House
Smartcard Splitter
CardSplitter
To receive PayTV throughout the entire house, there were up
until now only three more or less practical solutions: you either
ran coax cable to every room in the house and built up your own
cable network or you used video transmitters to distribute the
picture to multiple TV’s. The main problem with these two solu-
tions is that the same channel always ended up on all the TV’s.
The third option would be to have more than one PayTV subscrip-
tion although for most consumers this alternative is out of the
question.
becomes interesting when the
end units aren’t too far apart
and are actually quite close to
each other. A classic example
would be a second receiver
with a built-in video recorder
that would let you record one
PayTV channel while watching
another one live.
Since two receivers would be
needed for this task, the sup-
plied card could be split for
both units. The CSPRO series
is available with connections
for 4, 8 or 16 reception cards.
Don’t let the pictures fool you;
every connection on the con-
trol unit can handle two recep-
tion cards. Even the smallest
version with only two jacks can
handle four cards independent
from each other.
Everyday Use
No initialization or other
similar preparations are nec-
essary before using the Card-
Splitter for the first time. The
user must merely insert the
PayTV card in the control unit
and connect it to a proper
power supply. Thereafter, the
connection between the recep-
tion card and the control unit is
made possible with the help of
the included cable.
We first chose to play with
a Cryptoworks ORF (Austrian
TV) card that the control unit
recognized without any prob-
lems. The red LED on the front
panel went out to signify this.
Next we connected the cable to
two receiver cards and placed
these together with the match-
ing CI modules into two receiv-
ers an