Videocipher

Though the first half of the 1980s, HBO, Cinemax and other premium television providers with analog satellite transponders faced a fast growing market of TVRO equipment owners.

The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 clarified all of these matters, making the following legal:[2] This created a framework for the wide deployment of encryption on analog satellite signals.

It further created a framework (and implicit mandate to provide) subscription services to TVRO consumers to allow legal decryption of those signals.

In the mid 1980s, M/A-COM began divesting divisions which fell outside their core RF & Microwave component and subsystem products.

PBS in the USA used VideoCipher I on its satellite feeds to its member stations in the mid-80s to take advantage of the high-fidelity digital audio capability offered by VCI.

The Leitch Viewguard scrambling system used for satellite feeds as well used the same video line re-ordering as well, while also leaving the audio intact.

In the late eighties and early nineties, VideoCipher II modules that had been pirated, began to receive constant Electronic Counter Measures (ECM).

Companies (such as Magna Systems) began offering services whereby users could continue to receive keys via fax electronic modifications/add-on boards such as "VMS" modems.

These add-on modem modules would dial into a bulletin board system and automatically download the required keys to view all available programming.

Viewers found a way to get audio from a cable line and video from satellite with their VideoCipher II and push both to their VCRs and TVs.

VideoCipher II was subject to ITAR restrictions on export of cryptography from the United States because of its use of DES, but an exception for consumer descramblers was added to the US Munitions List in 1992.

Within the years of the change of signal scrambling from VC II to VCII+, DirecTV began to take on many former C band VideoCipher subscribers and illegal receivers of programming.