Calcutta: World Cup matches have made a backdoor entry into around two lakh homes since broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television decided to cut off satellite feed to multi-system operator (MSO) Manthan over unpaid dues.

Most cable operators linked to Manthan started using "pirated" signals on Friday night itself, when screens had gone blank in the middle of the match between Portugal and Spain. Some took the piracy plunge on Saturday, fearing a backlash from subscribers before Argentina's first match of this World Cup against Iceland.

By Sunday evening, Manthan itself was beaming signals pirated from another operator. This happened just ahead of the Costa Rica versus Serbia match from 5.30pm. A cable operator said the emergency arrangement, albeit an illegal one, had been made to avert the "disaster" of football-crazy Calcuttans missing two big matches on a Sunday featuring Germany and then Brazil.

According to cable operators and technicians working with MSOs, a gadget called "encoder" is used for channel piracy. It alters the frequency of the signal of a particular channel or a set of channels of one MSO to match the frequency of another operator so that it can run on the second platform.

A set-top box of the MSO that is legally receiving the feed is connected to the encoder. The device extracts the feed, alters the frequency of the signals to match the new network and, bingo, the pictures that had gone off air are back on the "local channels" of the operator's choice.

Local channels are the ones kept free by the MSO for its cable operators to beam movies, promotions or any other programme of interest to subscribers in a particular area.

The Manthan network uses channel number 80 onwards to beam local content. This is where the Sony Ten 1, Ten 2 and Ten 3 channels are currently running.

"I have little option but to use pirated signals. Teams like Brazil, Argentina and Germany have a huge fan base in Calcutta and the World Cup is the biggest tournament. We were threatened with dire consequences if the Sony channels did not return," a cable operator said.

The picture quality of pirated signals can be poor, though. Shayan Das, a 21-year-old resident of Sealdah, said he was unable to read the match statistics on the screen during the Argentina-Iceland game on Saturday evening.

Officials of Sony Entertainment Television in Calcutta and its Mumbai headquarters did not take calls from Metro. A senior executive of Manthan declined to comment.

Sony, which switched off the channels after a cheque issued by Manthan allegedly bounced, has yet to lodge a complaint with police against channel piracy.

The directors of Manthan Broadband Services Pvt Ltd have been in Mumbai since Saturday for talks with Sony.