Capture video output of MCE

[ForestKlown]

I have Comcast cable and want to use NPVR to view my subscription.

I know there is a way to use IR blasters to control a set-top box and capture the video output of the box with component cables.

I also know there are tuner cards with CableCard, but they only work with MCE because of DRM BullSh!t.

So I'm wondering if it is possible to write software to capture the video output of MCE and pipe it into NPVR? Maybe someway to control MCE with NPVR?

Thanks for any input.
Forest Klown

[johnsonx42]

whurlston said awhile back that he was working on something like this, a 'bridge tuner' that would allow NPVR to schedule recordings for MCE to do, and also a way for MCE to playback it's recordings at the request of NPVR. However he seems to have disappeared, he's not been on since early january.

there is a new HDHomerun called 'Prime' that will take a cablecard and is supposed to work with NPVR or any other app. But the DRM restrictions remain in that it will only decode content flagged as 'CopyFreely'. I don't know what the experience has been on what content is flagged CopyFreely vs CopyOnce or CopyNever.

[mvallevand]

Sub hasn't provided any way for developers to create plugins for external recording. I've expressed interest to him about porting the Graph Recorder plugin and if that happens and if I learn enough, I'd love to create an experimental hook to babgvant's experimental SageMCTuner.
This also depends on the Copy Freely flag so it might not be any better that the HDHR Prime.

Martin

[ForestKlown]

Thanks for the replies!

So we would need some sort of Pseudo-driver that makes NPVR believe that MCE is actually a tuner card?
I think I'd rather have NPVR do all the recording and bypass all this DRM bs, if at all possible.

Forest Klown

[ForestKlown]

What if npvr could fool Windows Media Center into thinking it is a Media Center Extender?

[pcostanza]

What if npvr could fool Windows Media Center into thinking it is a Media Center Extender?

I like the idea but can only say, good luck with that! I know I'm negative but I'm sure it's been tried.

Whurlston is working on being able to record copy freely programs via cablecard and is in the early stages of putting it together. This stuff is all over my head so I won't comment any further than that for fear I'll look even more dumb than I actually am about it.

[whurlston]

Originally, I planned to create a bridge tuner meaning that GBPVR would pass the recording request onto Media Center and then save the MCE recording location in the NPVR database. I have since figured out how to record directly from the DCTs with NPVR. The downside is that it can only record "copy freely" content. At some point in the future, I may add the option to pass the recording request onto Media Center if the program is not copy freely.

I'm sure it's possible to write a screen capture program but you would need Media Center in the foreground while the recording is taking place and it's not a project that I would be interested in attempting.

There is also no way to "trick" Media Center into thinking NPVR is an extender. Even if we could, it would still stream the program encrypted to NPVR and NPVR would have to decrypt it.

[mvallevand]

There is SoftSled which I was looking into but it never developed far

http://softsled.codeplex.com/

Martin

[pcostanza]

Early on in my testing for Media Center and cablecards, Microsoft hinted they would include SoftSled in a future version. We kept hearing rumors both good and bad and I guess the bad ones came true. The talk switched to the possibility of someone taking this on themselves and that never came to pass either.
While not completely dead, I never hear about it anymore so it must be in severe hibernation.
Not to hijack this thread but this post pretty much sums it up.