i believe this to be a hoax.

- cellphones traffic is encrypted with [name was here] algorithms (weak but still something your remote won't be able to decrypt)
- cellphones do frequency hopping, (you'd need a pretty tricky bowl)
- the rest doesn't make sense either imho, now i'm not an electronics expert, but put me down as Extremely skeptical.

I am also sceptic about this. i dont know any technical stuff behind this, but there were two things suspicious to me (iirc).

1st: it didnt make any sense to me putting some wires on the batteries.
2nd: When he demonstrated the product it really did sound like cut together.

nonetheless i'd really like to try it out (whenever i get some free universal remote )

btw: after watching this video i found this nice site: http://easybartricks.com/

IMO, simply not possible.

Remotre controls use infrared whose frequency is about 10^14 Hz. On the other end, the mobile phone typically uses the 900Mhz or 1,8 GHz band. There is a big difference between the frequencies involved (10^14 -> 10^9).

On the other end, a remote control only EMITS infrared. You don't want your television controlling your remote control, do you ? So how could a remote control "listens" on the mobile phone frequencies ?

that entire site is fake, no question. they are just trying to make an honest buck fooling people. And i guess that's what the internet is all about.

an universal remote actully scans frequencies (ie the whole being universal thing). sure, i'm also scheptical, but i'd like to try it out myself - just for shits and giggles. if it works, hey but first to find a remote...

seriously it's a hoax, __CELL PHONE TRAFFIC IS ENCRYPTED__, even if you intercept it, which you are probably doing every second of your life. You can't decrypt it. All of the videos there are obviously wrong for anybody who is aware of physics.

They connected some wires, and then flipped through the channels on TV, to get the sound plausible. Really no offense but you have been had.

it's a 64bit symmetrical block cipher. however in order to make the cellphones interceptable by law enforcement in the EU 10 bits of so are zero'ed out. this is preceded by an assymetrical key excange with some keys from your simcard.

that and the frequency hopping. when the call is established, there is some fancy algorithm, that states which frequencies it will hop to. in order to avoid collisions with other cellphones, and to minimize the effect if a certain frequency is jammed by something else or otherwhise impared for example because signals are bouncing off buildings. But if you are listening to only one frequency you will miss a lot of packets. and even if you have enough to comprehend it is still encrypted.

cellphone traffic is also a digital signal. which analog microphones will not know how to convert. it's a 13kbs signal.

depending how moronic you are wiring the batteries to the microphone you are likely to damage your stereo. There are however plenty of things in the airwaves you can listen to. cb radio/../ normal radio/ walki -talki/some law enforcement (over here we switched it all to digital stuff though)

what you can do is just jam _all_ the frequencies cellphones use, these people know how
http://wwww.hackaday.com/2005/02/22/cell-phone-jamming/ and if you want to do hacky stuff that's the blog to follow, i'll vouch to you that their information is real 98% of the time. (have to compensate for 1/4)

Um no. Universal remotes don't scan anything. They cycle through a long list of codes until they find the one that matches the TV. That site is total BS. Reading the comments was slightly entertaining though.

tried, tested, doesn't work. *lowers head in shame* yes rhican, i've been had. i'd love to pick your brain though.

Nah, it doesn't work well, I've built it and it can only intercept calls at less than 80 meters outdoor or 15~20 meters indoor, the sound is full of noise and only women voices are clear. My remote only uses 1 battery but I don't think that makes so much difference.