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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.
How long will it be before the copy protection is broken and TV programs can be copied off? Two, maybe three days?
Imagine that, giving us what we've been asking for, with only enough restrictions to make it unobtrusive to the user while still protecting the content providers rights.
Seems like sanity wins out in the end.
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....
It uses Linux!
But it has copy protection!
I think my head is going to explode with this paradox.
Apparently, investors aren't worried about it.
If I could buy this directly and it were cheap and it worked with any cable provider, I'd be much more interested in it than in building my own... *even* if I can't copy the taped programming off of it. Why invent and make your own wheel if someone's not only done it already, but also done it potentially cheaper and better.
Have EVDO, will travel.
From the article:
"DVRs allow users to record shows onto a hard drive, and to pause, forward, and rewind live broadcasts"
How can a DVR allow users to _forward_ a _live_ broadcast???
This is like exactly what I built for myself.... down to the letter, including the WiFi! It's runnign MythTV. I should have patented it!
I have seen the future and it is this: set-top boxes that record everything coming in and send it back out onto a global P2P network that turns the RIAA/MPAA's hair a delicate shade of pure white.
"Select 'Share All' to share your TV programmes..."
Now, imagine this had the backing of a national government, TV companies, movie distributors, cable distributors and banks, and was tied into a simple payment system. Hold your breath, count to five, and you have instant pay-as-you-go TV and video and music on demand.
Prediction: this will not happen legally.
Shame for the media industry, it could make them so... much.... money.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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?
What a waste.
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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Remembering, of course, to include your de-macrovision-iser, in between the two. If it's HDTV it will output encrypted on the DVI and so it wont be as simple as that anyway.
Also, the files on the HDD must be readable, and the software to read them must be in the machine. {Think Spectrum fast cassette loaders. Not just fast, but copy-proof because it makes the whole process that bit more sensitive to fidelity - so an analogue copy is less likely to be successful. The first programme on the tape - often written in BASIC so you can just use LOAD "" - has to use the ROM-resident loading routines to load itself. It then implements the fast loader. All you need to do is to get this first programme to load but not run itself - the usual method was by making a fake header - and then modify the fast loader to read all the rest of the programme without executing it}. Now, 20 years on, the same principles apply. The computer has to be able to read the data from the disk in order to display it on the telly. Whatever can be read, can be copied. Light travels in straight lines. Energy is never created nor destroyed. Pressure in a fluid acts equally in all directions.
Why can't they just write something on the disk that the program [sic] can read, but the pirates can't? - reader's letter in an old Amiga magazine, offering the holy grail of copy protection.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
On Charter's bandwidth poor network...
While I applaud my cable company for this change, I have many cautions in mind when thinking about...the Charter network is already bandwidth poor...now we are going to be encouraging downloads of Music and such....Ouch!
They recently(March), dropped everyones upload speeds on the network to 128, where as many customers (me) used to get 512 or higher...this is not a good sign for a company planning to add aditional digital services....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Does it run Windows Media Center Edition?
Macrovision will not affect your ability to capture video on your computer clearly.
It will if your capture card has AGC that is freaked out by macrovision.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
...then the competition has nothing to worry about.
My parents have Charter digital cable and the channel guide--IMO the reason to get digital--is the worst implementation I've ever seen.
About HALF the screen is a constant ad, you can see about an hour of time, and a total of about 8 channels at once, whereas with TimeWarner, you can see about 4 hours at once in a big full-screen guide, and about 15 channels at once. Everytime I visit, I can't help but go off about what a poor quality channel guide they have compared to TimeWarner's digital offering. Why must half the screen be used for ads instead of a nice big channel guide? It's easier to either pick up the paper, read a TV Guide, or go to tvguide.com than it is to use the one they include!
I've written them about this and they're reply was something like: "There wasn't any more information displayed at once prior to having ads."
Don't they even TRY what the competitors are offering? I know cable is a localized monopoly, but geez. I would never pay for that after having used TimeWarner's system.
The point is it can be done quite easily. Not everyone has a computer. Not everyone has a video capture card. Still fewer have cards that get "freaked out" by macrovision because of automatic gain control. But the people who are into this sort of thing will have cards that can capture the content. Therefore, it is not copy proof.
First, one less box sitting in the entertainment center. There is a finite amount of space for AV equipment and a limit to the number of power outlets. Remove a box without losing functionality (at least today) sign me up!
Second, seemless integration would be made easier. There was a comic over at Penny Arcade that pretty well described the situation many AV geeks are living in. If I could remove a single device from my cabinet, it would make my wife's life easier and thus my life easier. This would be a Good Thing(tm).
Third, there is an opportunity for new services. Perhaps my cable company is unique (Wide Open West), but they have continued to add services while maintaining or lowering costs. In my opinion they "get it" and know who and what there competition is. I feel certain that when a new use for these boxes is invented (perhaps an iTunes like player and purchasing system) they will be right there trying to offer the services. Would TiVo? Maybe the hacker community could, but that's not the same thing.
These are just my thoughts, but I suspect that there are a good number of people who feel the same way and will speak with their wallets.
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.
It's nice to see a consumer product support timeshifting of HDTV material. Along with a plethora of HDTV programming, this might be a nice step towards making widespread availability a reality.
Myself, I ended up building my own, centered around the MyHD card and a RAID array with about a terabyte of available storage. Music, movies, and HDTV. Technology's wonderful!
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.
FreeSpeech.org
Don't all of those channels just get streamed to the cable box all at the same time as a series of 1s and 0s? It seems like it would be possible to make a machine that recorded all of those streams at the same time.