Patent ID: 8837723

Claim:
An apparatus for providing conditional access (CA) in a downloadable CA system (DCAS), the apparatus comprising: a host processor; and a configurable secure (CS) processor in communication with the host processor and separate from the host processor, the CS processor being configured to: receive DCAS commands and content stream processing commands from the host processor and to configure itself in accordance with the received commands to parse and decrypt an encrypted content stream received by the CS processor from a source external to the CS processor and to the host processor, the CS processor decrypting the encrypted content stream by executing a DCAS software module that has been downloaded to the CS processor to identify an encrypted-content decryption key included in the encrypted content stream received by the CS processor, receive instructions from the host processor to be reconfigured by the host processor to parse and decrypt a second encrypted content stream that has been encrypted in accordance with a different downloadable CA system (DCAS) encrypting algorithm, wherein if the CS processor is reconfigured, a different DCAS software module that has been downloaded to the CS processor is executed by the processor to parse and decrypt the second encrypted content stream.