[tptacek]

Yes, famously. Google "DirecTV black sunday". DirecTV successfully killed off the (huge) DirecTV piracy community, not just by frying the old hacked cards, but by deploying new cards that have mostly withstood more than a decade of intense analysis.

[apaprocki]

Ahhh memories. What started as a "write a byte now put the card in any box for TV" escalated into complicated custom electronics, MITMing the stream, with a computer required to sit in the middle to lend its processing power. All the while, some unsung heroes out of the Matrix able to look in realtime at the DV-S stream flowing across their screen, able to spot a new Agent Smith barreling at the card and alert the world via IRC.