[Thervicarl]

My high school had an electronics training course that was building decoders as a practical work.

It was good training for supply chain management and manufacturing. And they were selling them (illegally, obviously) and sharing the revenue between students and teachers.

Over the years and hundreds of decoders sold, they probably contributed to a significant loss of revenue for Canal+ in my hometown.

[nicolas314]

At my electronics engineering school we had access to everything we needed to mass-produce those decoders and did so at a reasonable scale to pay for our studies. That was a lifeline. Knowledge of TV signals gave me my first job, during which I got to work with the guy who designed the scrambling system and had a chance to thank him in person. Small world.