Well, it sounds like they did eventually cut his access, so that's one measure. Presumably they relied on Facebook having his real name in order to know who he was, though it's also possible that they have some stenographic watermarking.
They did. Right before access was cut, a code was watermarked on the TV, I assume it was per-box as a number so they knew who it was to cut access to.
Just really fascinated with the technicals of how they'd do that.
They tried showing an image, but the owners would just stick something covering the watermark so they wouldn't be caught q
It's for inspectors to see that it's a pub license, which is more expensive than a home one.
The volume in the glass changes daily so you can't just put a sticker or overlay on to replicate it.
Why not just get the home package and run it through your own overlay system? The fatal flaw here with this design is that there's nothing in place of the glass. With enough tinkering (a pub subscription and a home subscription to play with, and maybe a fortnight to a month, if that) build something that exactly reproduces the watermark. 1080i-capable HDMI capture systems are expensive but not 5-figures (or even 4-figures) expensive nowadays, and most satellite feeds don't even justify 1080i anyway. Do satellite receivers do HDCP? If they do, RGB video is still very very very good quality for 1080i, and reference-quality RGB capture systems aren't 5 figures (probably very low 4 figures). You could just output via HDMI or whatever of course.
To complete the setup, you could have one place receive a legitimate broadcast, and (alongside the TVs/projectors) run that through a capture system which would do differential frame analysis to heuristically figure out what watermark is displaying at the moment. This location automatically pushes the current watermark type out to a bunch of other places - for a nice small fee.
Of course, the above is said from an honest academic-security standpoint. :P
The fees the place with the legit subscription would impose be significantly less than the ~£400+ pub subscription fee.
But, you know... I just realized... there's nothing stopping the place with the legit subscription simply just retransmitting/forwarding on their own signal to a bunch of other places. Duh. And that's so simple I'd be surprised if it isn't already being done in at least one place in the wild. (I have no idea if it is, I only just thought of the concept.)