CableCard

[CodeMonkey]

I'm trying to make some sense out of the CableCard DRM stuff. There is some good information in these forums but I'm hoping someone can answer a couple questions.

1) NPvr, I'm given to believe from these forums, works with the hdhomerun prime and the ceton infinitv cards. But only if the content is marked as "copy freely". Is this correct? And if so, is there a way to determine what channels that I currently receive are marked copy freely before I buy one of those cards and a cablecard from my provider?

2) Did NPvr need to license anything from Microsoft for PlayReady or some other DRM to work with these cards?

Thanks!

[sub]

I'm trying to make some sense out of the CableCard DRM stuff. There is some good information in these forums but I'm hoping someone can answer a couple questions.

1) NPvr, I'm given to believe from these forums, works with the hdhomerun prime and the ceton infinitv cards. But only if the content is marked as "copy freely". Is this correct? And if so, is there a way to determine what channels that I currently receive are marked copy freely before I buy one of those cards and a cablecard from my provider?

I'm not aware of any easy way to tell which channels are copy-freely without one of the devices.

NextPVR has built in support for the HDHomeRun Prime, and Hauppauge DCR-2650. With one of these devices present, it requests channel information from an xml url in the devices internal web server. It can use this to determine the lists of copy freely and copy protected channels. I think there is also a descriptor in the stream of each channel that gives this information, but I never had to look for it since there was an easier way to get the data.

2) Did NPvr need to license anything from Microsoft for PlayReady or some other DRM to work with these cards?

No, but the mechanism I use only gives me access to the unprotected and copy-freely channels. The same mechanism cannot be used to get the copy-once/copy-never channels.

[CodeMonkey]

Thanks sub, that makes some other stuff I've read make more sense.

Is the devices internal web server a standard way of getting the list of available channels or is it a Hauppauge specific thing?
For example, do you get the channels from the ceton card the same way?

It's a shame the cable companies insist on this whole copy-free/once/never thing. I would have thought requiring the cablecard from the cable companies would have been enough security for them. Not sure it would be worth the $200 for the card and the $2.50 a month for the cablecard to only get a handful of channels. Though it would be well worth it if I could get all the channels that I subscribe to.

Thanks again!

[sub]

Is the devices internal web server a standard way of getting the list of available channels or is it a Hauppauge specific thing?
For example, do you get the channels from the ceton card the same way?

It's something the HDHomeRun and Hauppauge devices do. The Ceton devices do things differently.

It's a shame the cable companies insist on this whole copy-free/once/never thing. I would have thought requiring the cablecard from the cable companies would have been enough security for them. Not sure it would be worth the $200 for the card and the $2.50 a month for the cablecard to only get a handful of channels. Though it would be well worth it if I could get all the channels that I subscribe to.

It really depends on the cable network you're using. For some users, copy-freely is enough to get them most of their channels, and its pretty sweet on those setups.

[BrettB]

It's a shame the cable companies insist on this whole copy-free/once/never thing. I would have thought requiring the cablecard from the cable companies would have been enough security for them. Not sure it would be worth the $200 for the card and the $2.50 a month for the cablecard to only get a handful of channels. Though it would be well worth it if I could get all the channels that I subscribe to.

CodeMonkey: Who is your cable provider? I've got a DCR-2650 with Comcast and it works quite well for everything except premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc.). When the DCR-2650 and HDHR Primes first came out, I tried to do a little research about what I would be able to record. I found documentation that Comcast had a corporate-wide policy that everything should be copy-freely except for premium channels. There were reports of markets where Comcast had non-premium channels marked copy-once, but once a customer got the problem reported to the correct people, it would eventually get fixed.

[CodeMonkey]

@sub: Thanks again!

@Brett: Time Warner. From what I read they are almost all copy-once. I tried asking their tech support for a list of copy-freely channels but after being transferred to 3 different people who had no clue what I was talking about I gave up.

[smajor]

@sub: Thanks again!

@Brett: Time Warner. From what I read they are almost all copy-once. I tried asking their tech support for a list of copy-freely channels but after being transferred to 3 different people who had no clue what I was talking about I gave up.

I feel your pain. Same here. Except, when I went looking, I had to point out to them that their CableCard telephone number was actually missing digits, making it impossible to call them for information. In my TW area, everything is copy-once.

[mikeh49]

My Motorola STB will display the copy parameters of each channel in the diagnostics screen. You can search for your box (if you have one) to find out how to put it in diagnostics. For Motorola, it is in the manual. It is painful to do it this way because you have to select channel-enter diagnostics-view the correct page of 8 or so-exit diagnostics-repeat. I can record anything I am subscribed to from the firewire port on my box, but I do not have HBO, etc. Charter cable.