The following describes the conditional access process: The receiver receives the digital data stream.
The data flows into the conditional access module, which contains the content provider's unscrambling algorithms.
The conditional access module verifies the existence of a smart card that contains the subscriber's authorization code.
If the authorization code is accepted, the conditional access module unscrambles the data and returns the data to the receiver. If the code is not accepted, the data remains scrambled restricting access. The receiver then decodes the data and outputs it for viewing.