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Cable Boxes With DVD, MP3, Networking
Bruha writes "It appears that Charter Communications cable division is in the first phase of rolling out a new home media center-style cable box. The article on CNN describes the box with a 80 Gig hard drive, dual tuners (With HDTV), DVD, and WiFi networking capability to allow music to be transferred to the unit along with pictures from your PC. Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC, and Charter has ordered 100,000 of these boxes." We covered a preliminary announcement of this box, which uses the Linux-based Moxi software, last year.
It was covered at Slashdot as well.
Nothing new here, is there??
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Only prevent digital copies to and from digital media, right?
At least with audio, all you have to do is output to analog, and capture from analog to make a pretty decent copy, right?
Install FreeVo on a PC with a capture card and video out and you have the same thing without the copy protection.
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http://www.scientificatlanta.com/consumers/Exp8000 .htm
http://www.dream-multimedia.tv/
When germans get down to engineering: a linux set-top of which you can really pop the hood and do whatever you like. They only omitted the DVD drive, I hope to see it coming.
DTLA
Basically a digital content licensing/protection sceme created by 5 companies (listed on that site).
All HDTV tuners and HDTV-connecting equipment has to support this for copy-protected content.
Few months ago I grabbed and read their "informational version" of the standard (the real version wants you to sign a NDA and pay $$$), and in general, its about high encryption to the data traversing high-speed buses between HD equipment (1394, usb2, etc). It provides mechanisms for scrambling the signal if another device is attached to the bus (sniffing) and methods for "blacklisting" known hacked equipment.
:)
Pretty hardcore stuff, has been around for as long as I know HDTV tuners existed (in japan at least), and has NOT been cracked, hacked, bypassed or in any other way defeated. The encryption it uses (from reading the informational PDF) is pretty strong, there's a mechanism for refreshing keys every so often, etc.
Pretty bad stuff, if anyone has any POSITIVE information on this, feel free to reply
It will not take long before someone breaks it, but I would suggest avoiding participating in such ventures.
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law. If you are leasing a cable box from the cable company, you are fined a huge bill if they catch you modifying their hardware. If you don't pay up, they'll take your arse to court or mess up your credit rating. Trust me, I know someone (guess who!) who's been through that mess over wanting free HBO.
On a side note, these boxes will have traps in place that will detect if something has been changed. Also, there will be break-away prongs that you can't put back in place once you take the box apart. So even if you get around their copy protection, you still get a rectal modification when they take the box back when you move or change cable providers (or get wise and go with satellite).
I know I sound like a broken record here, since I seem to say this in any entertainment related post, but go with satellite if you are going to do anything sneaky. You get to purchase your own equipment and the only thing that'll tell on you is the modem in the reciever. Luckily, you are not required to use the modem unless you want to access PPV.
Remember, all modern cable systems that can carry HDTV signals are advanced enough to communicate bi-directionally with the cable company. You do anything sneaky and they'll know.
Comcast in the Mid-Atlantic region just came out with their DVR service for the cost of digital cable plus $9.99. Basically a TiVO with about 60 hours of recording time. No DVD player, no network connectivity, and no WiFi yet. The service is damned popular. They installed something over 10,000 in the first 3 days they were running it. I guess people (like me!) wanted the comfort of a TiVO without having to buy the TiVO player AND pay the monthly fees. Since the box is a rental (Scientific America Explorer 8000), they can (and have said that they plan to) 'upgrade it periodically'. After reading this, I can't help but wonder if they won't add the DVD and 'net connection soon. The box has a built-in USB port, but unlike our last digital cable box, no Ethernet connector. As for recording purposes... it has analog out to record to a VCR. Anything you save can be recorded to VCR. You can record anything EXCEPT for the Video-On-Demand channel (order your movie and get control of it for 24 hours). Note that this includes the Pay-per-view movies. Technically, I could record a PPV and then hit a VCR with it. Now I only need a DVD burner for home use...
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law.
The FCC passed rules on this several years ago. The intent was to deregulate cable set-top box ownership in the same way telephone handset ownership was deregulated.
In Section 629 of the Communications Act. Congress directed the FCC to adopt rules that would allow consumers to obtain "navigation devices," such as cable set-top boxes, remote control units and other equipment, from commercial sources other than their cable providers. In 1998, the Commission adopted navigation device rules with the intent of improving consumer choice by fostering a competitive retail market for this equipment and said that it would monitor the development of the commercial availability of navigation devices and commence a proceeding in the year 2000 to review the effectiveness of the rules and consider any necessary changes.
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