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Microsoft Announces CableCARD Support
Thomas Hawk writes "Microsoft and CableLabs announced today that they have reached agreement that will allow digital cable ready CableCARD supported Media Center PCs to ship by the Holiday Season next year. Lack of premium HDTV cable or satellite support was frequently cited as one of the largest weaknesses of the Media Center platform. Central to this agreement is the DRM protection scheme developed by Microsoft to protect HDTV cable programming under the OpenCable process."
Anyone else see the irony in the "OpenCable" process being used to DRM TV content?
I love my XPMCE network. I don't watch much TV, but I have nearly every movie ripped, 2 HD tuners and 2 SD tuners (had 4 as a test but it recorded too much).
I'm getting HD cable right now. I use timmmoore's Firewire mod and its perfect. I don't believe the firewire input transfers any broadcast flag, which I fear CableCard will.
This is the #1 requested MCE feature. MS came under a ton of angry rants because it was missing from RU2, yet it was the content provider's holdup.
Me? I'll stick to RU1 and Firewire. No DRM, no broadcast flag and gorgeous HD from cable. You can wait until Xmas 2006 if you need official industry support.
I'd love to see HD via an extender (other than the XBox360), or user-sorted Recorded TV.
something else to have to wait till it gets the DRM 'corrected' out, anyone know where to get the patched version, is it out yet? lol
It's the question on everyone's mind!
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Of course, it's the CableCard 1.0 spec, not 2.0 it will support. No PPV, or VOD, but it's a good step.
record the HD content to a PVR and stream it to a disc for archival and later viewing? 'Cause if not, then I'll stick with my Motorola 6412 PVR and JVC DVHS deck. Which, BTW, works perfectly well today and has the benefit of being pretty cheap too. --M
Must mean "Closed."
Typical American newspeak for the New Century. Rubbish. I'm building MediaPortal or MythTV, thanks.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
At the speed that DRM's are worked around, this is just going to make recording your favorite HDTV shows that much easier. Although, it would be nice to be able to watch high quality cable on my computer. This is just bringing the computer and television closer and closer.
Cable cards already exist now. You can walk down to your local cable provider and pick one up. So whats the difference between sliding a cable card into a tv and sliding a cable card into a pci tv tuner with an empty cable card slot? What is the delay in making this happen sooner?
I am so sick of all this DRM crap. It just makes things a pain in the butt for average customers who aren't trying to pirate anything. If the DRM makes the product a pain in the ass to use, I won't buy it.
I've been dying for DirecTV to make a PCI card that just plugs into the PC and pipes the video onto the PCI bus. (Or better yet PCIe) I don't seen why DRM should be handled by the OS if the PCI card still needs to use a smart card like the DirecTV boxes. Why wouldn't the cable folks use the same approach? They'd have their control of the content via an addressable smart card. And all they'd have to do is have the unlocked content stream from the card into the system. At that point the OS is just a "dumb" path for the signal to be displayed via a media player. Quite simple really. And then they don't need to trust MS to be their DRM provider...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Okaaay... Heartwrenching, but this has nothing to do with anything.
And i'm pretty sure porn has nothing to do with it either, that sort of thing happens in Ahmish communities too, and i doubt they have a very robust porn industry.
From TFA
"The specified OpenCable architecture allows for multiple DRM systems to be used in the device and ensures content providers of protected delivery of content to the PC. Microsoft(R) Windows Media Digital Rights Management is the first major DRM system to complete the due diligence necessary for approval by CableLabs."
We are just getting over the SONY fiasco, bringing on the call of the "SONY boycott." Micro$oft now tries to get in bed to implement some more DRM crap ( not like this is any kind of surprise). I wonder how many PS2P and XBOX 360's will be under the Xmas tree this year. My guess is way to fucking many.
DRM (just recently referred to as "Digital Restriction Management") is a continuing issue, it is reported a lot and harped on quite often, recently there was an article that I wish I could find where some honcho of the music media was referring to consumers need to get use to "renting" content and not purchasing it..
BTW I still play vinyl at home.
Cause what you suggested is the equivelent of plugging the cable box into a vcr. Change the channel on the cable box while its recording and you change what you are recording. One cable out of the wall into one input on a device is the better solution. But not if a user has to jump through hoops over what they can and cannot watch/record.
CableCard requires strong DRM -- much stronger than is possible in XP. I suspect it will require the "Protected Environment" feature in Windows Vista.
About the broadcast flag, it only applies to TV that is broadcast over the air, not cable. Cable has copy control information (CCI) embedded in it, and FireWire does obey CCI -- if the content is marked as "copy once" or "copy never" then the cable box will re-encrypt the data with DTCP before sending it over the FireWire port. Since computers do not support DTCP/FireWire (on purpose), premium cable content is generally not recordable by PCs. (However, in the short term many cable networks/boxes are "broken" and don't properly enforce this.)
It doesn't have CableCard support.
Instead of putting in more channels, can they not put in some basic functionality? hardware and software wise they are way behind. Extenders are only avaible for ntsc so far which doesn't help you much in Europe. I invested in a MCE system, now browsing the net every day for alternative solutions. Afcourse M$ has more interest in making deals with networks then in keeping their users satisfied. Hope MCE can be deinstalled faster then it got installed.
It took two years to negotiate the DRM licensing to allow CableCard PCI tuners to exist.
Not even close. VCRs have no smarts at all. Computers can be hooked-up to IR transmitters and the like to control everything themselves.
Get an extra cable box, dedicate it to your PVR. You're going to be paying just as much (more) of an extra fee to get a smart card for this Microsoft box, as you would for an extra digital cable box from your provider.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And all they'd have to do is have the unlocked content stream from the card into the system. At that point the OS is just a "dumb" path for the signal to be displayed via a media player.
No, at that point the OS is a dumb path for the signal to be recorded and BitTorrented. They don't want to allow this, thus there must be DRM at every point in the system.
DRM protections are ALREADY on DBS and cable and have been for a long while. This new step was needed or else the content providers vowed they'd stonewall digital cable content delivery to PCs for eternity.
Sadly, the same content providers who didn't care if you watched a VHS tape of the nightly news at one point now see the future of DRM as being pay per view everything. A time when they can arbitrarily at any time revoke your ability to watch anything. The cable companies are NOT happy about being in the middle and THEY have been the ones stonewalling the advance of DRM on your television more than anything else.
Marriage born in Hell, but aren't they all?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"Get an extra cable box, dedicate it to your PVR. You're going to be paying just as much (more) of an extra fee to get a smart card for this Microsoft box, as you would for an extra digital cable box from your provider."
Why when the cable boxes that come from the cable company have 2 tuners built in. Also a cable card costs half as much as a cable box rental does. I'm not saying MS's solution is better just that the pc solution isn't up to par yet.
There will be issues, as you can imagine!
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Reminds me of a song:
...Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Gates^H^H^H^HGrinch.
Just in time for Chistmas!
Most "nerds" seem to be overwhelmingly against technologies to prevent consumers from using legitimately obtained digital content. As such it might be appropriate if Slashdot ("News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.") reflected this by not falling into the trap of defending them as being "to protect HDTV cable programming". But what do I know.
I hope tivo get's their act together and get's their cablecard HD box out of vaporware soon and beats M$ to the punch.
It'll be interesting to see if 3rd party software applications will be able to interface with the cablecard so taht you won't be stuck with using MCE 200x as your PVR/HTPC.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Perhaps this would work. A Hauppauge satellite receiver card with cabling?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"Central to this agreement is the DRM protection scheme developed by Microsoft to protect HDTV cable programming under the OpenCable process."
And.... go.
Why not just plug a firewire cable from your cable box to your PC?
http://www.dtcp.com/
Note the announcement: "DTCP grants provisional approval to Windows Media DRM"
5C DTCP is a DRM scheme that can be used over Firewire to require that only compliant devices will receive "protected" data over the Firewire connection. Most cable boxes already have 5C support, even if they don't have it enabled yet.
CableCard compatability will make Media Center more viable. I tried hooking a media center up to a box...and I could not find a code, so it never got hooked up. CableCard will mean no cable box, no wiring, etc.-and expensive media centers will have-and
This is DRM that's been in your cable box for a long time now. It's called "5C" or "DTCP". It essentially prevents a cable box (or any other DTCP-compliant device) from transmitting "protected" data to noncompliant devices.
The problem here is that the CableCard licensing group (driven by the cable/satellite companies) got in bed with the content companies (RIAA/MPAA/etc., driving the DTLA, who manages DTCP licensing) and locked things up under patent protection so that you can't create a CableCard device that outputs a digital signal unless it also complies with DTCP. This doesn't really affect the cable companies at all. CableCard is already secure for managing the ability of a device to receive subscribed channels over cable. But it's a gold mine for the content companies, who now have complete control over your ability to record/rewatch/rewind/fast-forward content received over cable TV.
In other words, it's exactly like the broadcast flag, but for cable. No legislation required.
The reason that Microsoft is able to get a license for Vista to support CableCard+DTCP compliant hardware for the PC is because they are willing to put in the DRM required by the DTLA, a la "Trusted" Computing. No open-source solution will ever be able to get this license, because the content companies decree it to be so - after all, an enterprising young hacker could alter said open-source solution and then be able to skip those oh-so-precious commercials that we don't want to watch.
So don't blame Microsoft for doing what's required. Blame the content companies, and blame the cable companies for caving in. This has been locked up tight for years now, and barring public revolt or legislative prohibition, moving down this road was inevitable.
MythTV running on pcHDTV-3000 and are a killer combination for viewing and recording HDTV on Linux. Even unencrypted QAM is supported.
The pcHDTV forum is very informative if you want to set up your own PVR on Linux.
I guess I won't be buying any new TV equipment
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I think we should take up a collection and buy one of these for DVDJon!
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Unfortunatly, they get away with this because it isnt a pain in the arse for average customers. Most users are happy if it works, and it *does*. They can download music via itunes, play it and run off cds so are happy. They can (in a years time) use these MCE cable cards and aslong as it does record the shows as promised they will be happy, and they wont ever notice its wrapped in DRM. I mean, the most they will probably want is to watch it on other tvs (which ms will no doubt cater for with some extenders) and possibly on their pc (which if the posts about Vista MCE being the requirement for this drm, the desktop Vista will hopefully support). Of course this doesnt help people like you, the exception, who want to do things the DRM deems unacceptable, such as reencode for the PSP. And if this DRM is as good as they say, you could be stuck. But hey, at least you have the option. Here in the UK, there is no cablecard.
Paul
In the words of someone (I can't exactly name who it is) very wise, DRM "only blocks stupid pirates and legitimate users."
I have one. It works.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
Which is exactly the reason why it's such an important subject to bring up! Having CableCards only being supported by Windows means we are fucked! (And by "we," I mean the union of the set of cable TV watchers and the set of Free Software users.)
I, for one, do not welcome our Microsoft-monopoly-through-DRM overlords!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
DRM is like border patrol or a lock on a box - effective, but ultimately circumventable.
The big companies are spending more and more time trying to figure out how to build a higher fence around their border and build stronger locks.
Aside from the issue that all DRM is ultimately circumventable, I believe most nerds are upset by content companies forcing software non-diversity and screwing up advancement of opensource software.
Example: there is still no legal solution for playing DVDs on Linux.
REPEAT: There is still no legal solution for playing DVDs on Linux.
Chew on that and think of what that means about how important opensource environments are to the RIAA/MPAA.
So... when will Linux users be able to use CableCard? My guess is that within 2 years some group of enterprising hackers will have a decent reverse engineernig of it so that with great pains and probably hardware that will be rendered "illegal" in the US, someone would be able to receive HD content directly on Linux. So, maybe the content companies are buying themselves a few years by making a mechanism that locks out Linux.
If enough people switch to Linux on desktops and set top boxes, market forces will drive alternate solutions.
Until that day, I'll stick with SDTV and non-HD tvs, thank you.
Myth, and any other F/OSS project, could easily meet the requirements for the content providers to allow for Linux support if two things happened:
(1) The Linux kernal presented a fixed, stable binary interface for the content providers and hardware designers to write against, allowing them to produce binary driver modules for the hardware and precompiled binaries for the software that wouldn't stop working every minor code revision (For comparison, Windows drivers really only stop working between OS versions, i.e. 2000 to XP, 98 to 2000, etc. XP was a break in this, with XP SP2 breaking a small subset of drivers -- several years after XP Classic was released.)
(2) The users of the F/OSS platform would allow the statement (1) to happen. Which, they won't. Without the ability to write binary modules, rather than having to distribute source code and have it mucked with and compiled to suit the user, the functionality desired will never be available on Linux -- no matter what the market forces dictate. And that ability, to have "closed up" software on Linux, is reviled by everyone who uses the platform more than casually.
Because of all the "copy-protection" schemes, DMCA, DRM and the outrageous fees I decided a while ago to ditch COX cable and not to sign up for an other similar service anymore. Instead I am reading books in the evening. It really makes a difference. Most of the books I get from half.com for a few bucks. Now I safe a lot of money, I am no longer annoyed about paying for religious propaganda shows, I care no longer about bogus "news", I can sleep much earlier because I am no longer exposed to the soundscape from stupid TV shows, and the best thing: I enjoy the books with someone else. So, I think I should be thankful to Cox, Microsoft, Sony, MPAA etc.. Thanks!
The only way we will ever be able to stop DRM is to create our own, free content. Via the same (r)evolutionary technology which threatens to kill our ability to share copy-protected media, the potential to create a world-class television production or film is no longer soley in the hands of corporate entities.
The media industry, from top to bottom, is about money. How can we create a production which can compete with the "big leagues" without being sucked into the same greed-pit that already exists? If content was distributed freely, could a small production company, with actors, producers, technicians, etc. survive on a tip system alone?
I'm guilty. I currently work for a massive player in the media industry, and I don't necessarily see a way out. Breaking something like CableCard would be huge problem to my company. Yet I'd still love to see it happen.
BTW, don't bother trying to hack CableCard. Just figure out a way to crack DigicipherII -- that's where the goods are.
I don't agree that binary drivers would be enough to satisfy the OpenCable robustness requirements. For example, Windows Vista includes a whole set of DRM features in the OS. Implementing similar features on Linux would be either a huge amount of work or impossible.
First of all, that's bullshit. If binary driver modules can't be used with Linux, then what the fuck is this?! It must be a figment of my imagination, but I'm pretty damn sure it's an nVidia binary driver module for Linux!
Second of all, merely using binary drivers wouldn't cut it, because the NAZI* content companies insist on having a complete end-to-end DRM'd pathway. Effectively, this means closed-source software all the way. The whole system would have to be binary-only, from the kernel to the player application, and this is impossible with Linux. (And by "impossible," I mean that if you did do it, the result wouldn't be Linux anymore.)
*I don't mean that just as an epithet; they really are Fascist!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If the DRM makes the product a pain in the ass to use, I won't buy it.
There is no "if", DRM means less choice, less functionality, less value. Every copy prevention technology restricts fair use. DRM means that the technology isn't ours it is theirs, so that the technology is only worth as much as the existing content.
Computers and the Internet have meant that for the first time in many years many more individuals can have a parity with big institutions in our ability to create and distribute ideas and expression, DRM seeks to take that away.
So, how long before we can start copying HD content?
It's called CONTEXT...
Your question (to which I was replying), was clearly about a box with a SINGLE TUNER. Obviously, if that's not the case, then that advice doesn't apply.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, but it might be Linspire or Xandros or whatever other commercial distro that decides that there is money to be made serving this segment of the market.
It might suck, but think of this: Uber-root! You can be sysadmin, but there is still a higher power than that! Isn't that awesome?
I have freaks! I did something right...
Don't you get it? Such a system wouldn't be able to exist, because the content companies wouldn't allow it to be open source!!! You've got exactly two choices, if you're building a Linux distro that supports CableCard: either break the DRM (which is illegal), or violate the GPL (which is also illegal)! THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBILITY.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sure there is.
Have a closed-source player. Have it check the md5sum of the kernel and any modules. Then, have it do all communications with the PCI card in an encrypted manner.
Go ahead, modify your kernel. It's not their problem if their legal, closed source app breaks if you do. It's not a "derivative work" any more than a virus scanner or word processor is.
CableCard requires strong DRM -- much stronger than is possible in XP.
Is that to license or to operate? Seems to me that the cable card is mostly just hardware and someone else could write software that allowed it to work without restrictions. If it lets the video into the PC for viewing one should be able to record it whether there's any soft or broadcast flag or not.
Thank you, Microsoft, for doing your part helping to defeat DRM controls on HDTV content. I mean, what could be a better contribution to that goal than to make that content available under Windows?
So I work with an MSO and handle as one of my duties most of the engineering side of cable card deployment. And I've got to say, there was never a more broken bastard of a technology released upon the consumer. While I fully support the concept of a PCMCIA like card to handle authorization for copy protected items, it brings a whole crush of issues along with it in its current form. Here are a few of my favorites.
First, its unidirectional. The biggest thing the cable industry has done in the last 5 years is finally finally get to a two-way system. Its pretty crap, but at least its IP. CableCard 1.0 is a step backwards. All it does is hand off a decryption key to the host TV that it receives from the cable headend.
As a sub to the above, the lack of bidirectional communication means we can't do any remote diagnostics or QOS of these things in the field. Unless the customer is a techie troubleshooting these things is a nightmare. Add to that the fact that unlike the standardized cable box platform (OMG Monopoly) every set handles decoding, channel mapping, etc in a slightly different manner. While the OCAP standards provide for guidelines, the different TV makers take some considerable liberty with implementation. Some TV's may do a fantastic job of decoding HD content, while others do an absolutely horrid job of it. They also have serious issues with MPEG2 audio streams, which some of the broadcasters still ship to MSO's.
Second, and this is the killer here for the customer, any and all of the current CableCard TV's will have to be replaced or have a costly upgrade module added to allow them to do CableCard 2.0 (bidirectional). You have to have some mechanism for modulating QPSK traffic back up to the headend. I hear Panasonic got a spec approved for a 2.0 TV, but AFAIK it isn't near production yet. Odds seem to be that within a year to two most of the new TV's will be 2.0. So both the consumer and the MSO will be stuck with these 1.0 cards and sets floating around that can't do half of what the new sets will be able to do.
I could go on, but its stressing me out to think about it. Basically, Cable Boxes suck, Cable Cards swallow.
Enquiring minds want to know, how do YOU sing ^H?
Backwards.
Seriously, if the preceding lyric was "bitter" you'd sing "erskib", with a reverse tonal inflection.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Where do you morons come from?! What pleasure do you get spouting nonsense?! The discussion is about HOME copying of TV content with is perfectly legal under Sony v Universal! Or at least it was, until the content industries bought our federal government.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.