Trying to get legit Sky Italia card working in Spiderbox

[kenny]

Brought back a legit Sky Italia HD box and card from Italy and was expecting the card to work in my Spiderbox HD9000. However picture is not clearing. I can see from the menu that the Spider recognises the NDS card and reads the card number. Pressing the red button, I'm prompted for the "box key" and it is looking for an 8-digit hexadecimal number. The box number, as seen from the Sky menu is a 10-digit decimal value. Do I need to convert this to a hex value?

Thanks for any tips.

[passete]

Yes, the same for Nds uk, convert to hex !
Or Google for "boxkey generator"

[echelon]

or check the dreambox forum

[kenny]

Thanks for the replies. I just did a decimal to hex conversion of my 10 digit decimal number, which gave me an 8-digit hexadecimal number. Then on the Spider menu, I entered this key as the box key, hit exit and save. Nothing clears still. Go back to look at the box-key and it's still "00 00 00 00" .........what am I doing wrong?

[Anrakh]

Once entered, a boxkey will no longer be visible for your own security.

[passete]

Are the entitlements OK on your Card ?

[kenny]

Thanks for the tip about the boxkey not being visible - that really confused me. The card *is* in fact working. I had already saved some Sky Calcio channels in the Spider, and the one I was using to test was somehow not correct. I have rescanned and all expected channels are now clearing, so that's a relief.

Another question. Will the card re-authorise itself correctly in the Spiderbox? If not, I had planned to hook up the original box in series with the Spider and re-authorise it there. However my Hotbird signal comes through a Disecq switch and it appears the original box does not like this and even if a Sky Italia frequency is selected on the Spider, the pass-through does not work.

If I really have to, I could rig up a dedicated signal from Hotbird to feed the original box, but if I'd prefer to avoid that.

[kenny]

I have the answer to part of the above. It seems the pass-through *does* work. I think the slight glitch is that if the Spider has a Horizontal transponder selected, the SkyIt box has a problem with the EPG and gives an error message. However, if the Spider is set to a Vertical transponder, it is OK.

I'm still curious to know if the Spider can deal with the re-authorisation, in which case I can consign the original box to the cupboard.

[DARKMAN]

yes can do.