Slashdot Mirror
CableCARD In-Depth
Atvtg writes "Ars Technica has an excellent article on CableCARD, and where it's heading. After discussing the history of the
initiative and some of the technical details, they cover how CableCARD may meet its end shortly after the launch of 2.0 (the bi-directional spec) because of DCAS. The real
surprise, however, is that CableLabs, which controls the CableCARD spec, has to certify computers to use CableCARDs for DVRs and the like. Ars points out that the upshot of this is
that it will not be possible to build your own DVRs using CableCARDs. Will this kill the DIY market?"
Would it kill the Slashdot editards to include a brief description of just WTF is 'CableCARD'?
wasn't he in metallica? a real jack-of-all-trades, this one.
Will this kill the DIY market?
No, but all the DRM restrictions and nonsense about having a guy come to your house to provision the dam thing will probbably kill cableCard. The DIY crowd will just record off the analog out, it's really at the "good enough" state anyway. I read this article earlier today, and I still can't figure out why anyone would want this thing. It sounds like it was mandated by congress, but the cable companies didn't want to do it so they made a device that's so crippled no one will want it.
AccountKiller
They would love to do away the DIY market, not just for the mark-up they can hit people who want PVRs with, but because in the DIY market it is much harder if not impossible to enforce DRM. Having failed for the nonce with the broadcast flag, there are going to be other attempts to bring the hobbyist to heel. Cable card wars will be one of them.
So, the industry has been working on these cards since 1997 or so. The biggest hurdle seems to be how to encrypt the video stream umpteen times because they're dead paranoid about hackers. As a result, 8 years later, the technology is ready but is already outdated because consumers started demanding more from their cable provider (thank you TiVo) and the 1997 designed cards couldn't handle it.
Oh, the industry says, lets fix that in the 2.0 release. So they begin work on it. Unfortunatly, that's still vapor and it looks like the 2.0 release might be ready just about the time it's getting killed off by yet another technology.
Why does it take so long to develop these things? Well, a big reason is that they have to figure out new and exciting places to encrypt the datastream again. Also, there is a requirement to make it as annoying to the end user as possible by denying them the use of their DVRs and making it so you have to buy your computer from an OEM if you want to watch TV on it. At the end of the day, if the technology actually takes off, it will probably be hacked anyway (probably with mod chips/special remote codes for TVs and DVRs that enable the output regardless of state of the no-copy flag).
Basically, this is a technology that the cable companies didn't want to implement in the first place (Congress forced them to), and they've done everything in their power to make it unappealing to the end user to discourage adoption and let them extend the deadline passed by Congress and the FCC for as long as possible. It's also an example of DRM concerns basically killing what would otherwise be a pretty decent product.
I read the internet for the articles.
it wont kill DIY because the cable card will be certified to the capture device, aka the WinTV card or whatever other card you would purchase.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
"Ars points out that the upshot of this is that it will not be possible to build your own DVRs using CableCARDs."
How is not being able to do something an "upshot" of owning hardware?
less is more?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
No, this will not kill the DIY market, but it will cripple it by ensuring only analog recording. However, this wont be as big a problem as you think. Why? Because when the dust finally settles and the DRM is in place, the consumer box you get from your cable company will have about the same capability as your standard HTPC due to the control content companies will have.
How BeyondTV looks like they may get around it is by having Haupage create a capture card computer with a USB 2.0 interface- thus they'll only need to certify the periphereal.....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Despite all the DRM technology being built into our TVs, PCs, and DVRs, copying and fair use will still be allowed so long as the content providers do not flag their material with the most draconian copy-control settings.
Welcome to the future of digital television--it has never looked so good, and never looked more locked down.
If this is the future of television, it looks pretty bleak.
I guess we MIGHT be able to use our DVRs, but not if the content providers say no.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
...like the uneducated people on the encryption newsgroups who don't understand that you cannot secure something by piling weak encryption upon other weak encryption until you've built a MOUNTAIN no one can climb. ...to hell with what I have...MY WIFE has a 1.4GHz box I built for her two years ago. I can now build her a 64 bit box with dual cores today. :)
Computers are getting faster -- I have a
This will not remain safe for one very good reason: It is more fun to show these people how STOOPID they are by breaking their multi-level encryption than it is to sit and watch the latest crap spewing out of televisions.
Entertainment, though not the kind the cable and satellite companies envisioned, has taken a GREAT step forward.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
You can't kill the DIY market, because they will always be there. They create demand, and where there's demand, there's supply. It's what commerce is built on. Yes, the end game that those fat cats want is to control everything from lens to living room, but people outside that system will find a way. It may be illegal at first, it may be bread boards for a while. It might be something you have to import, but in the end, DIY will still be there.
... I'm rambling here. But the point I'm making (somewhere) is that there is a lot of motivation here, and potential profit. So it will find a way.
The real question is, Will DIY really mean DIY, instead of buying a computer, adding a capture card, and installing a ready-to-go program. DIY moves in cycles, it starts as a real nitty gritty DIY where people are building stuff from spare parts, creating solutions that didn't exist. Doing it cause they just want to make it happen. then others get infected with the idea, ideas are shared, innovations fly, people collaborate. Eventually some one else wants to make a profit... blah blah blah
I hope.
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
...mod the grandparent down.
upshot |p sh ät| noun [in sing.]: the final or eventual outcome or conclusion of a discussion, action, or series of event.
I guess if this happens I can go to using my HDTV for watching movies and just saving lots of money from not using cable or DVRs.
Umm, it's not layer upon layer. It's the same encryption with different keys at different times. One set of keys for the cable transmission. One set of keys from the cable-card to the host decoder. One set of keys from the decoder to the display device (if the decoder is not in the display device). None of them are weak encryption. The HDCP system used from the decoder to the display device has been in use for about 3 years, no one has cracked it yet.
:(
Having said all that, I'm not really looking forward to our digital future.
Dan
I wasn't aware that an HDCP decoder was available to the public at any price. Just a few dozen of those running around out in the wild and the entire HDCP infrastructure falls flat on its face because it only takes one person to rip and post a HD torrent and the anyone who wants it can have it.
I figured some day there would be a DIY project to take an HDCP monitor apart to the point where you can extract the decrypted signal, but I figured that was still a long ways away.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
i'm a 'less is more' kind of guy, so when buying a small (27") LCD with integrated DVD for my bedroom I wanted no cables other than the power & data cable running to it. Cablecard provided that because I didn't want DVR function in my TV in that room.
It only took Time Warner 5 tries for it to work. They also had to visit the house each time and refused to trouble shoot the problem over the phone. It was rather aggravating and troubleshooting 101 seemed to be to swap out the card with another one and hope that fixed it.
All I wanted was the HDTV channels
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The article gets most things right, except the part regarding OCAP--the middleware layer that permits interoperability. OCAP was developed long before DCAS and its purpose was not to enable DCAS but to enable retail interoperability. The CableCard enabled set top boxes or TVs to operate on any network, because SA networks, used primarily by Time Warner Cable, are not compatible with Motorola networks (used primarily by Comcast). The CableCard removes the network dependencies from the receiver. Along with a variety of other features, OCAP enables the network independent receiver to actually be able to tune to programs on specific network, because the electronic program guide data is proprietary to the network. Thus, the cable operator will write a specific application that will run on top of the OCAP middleware on any receiver on its network that will decode the proprietary guide data to enable an interactive program guide for program selection.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
I figured some day there would be a DIY project to take an HDCP monitor apart to the point where you can extract the decrypted signal, but I figured that was still a long ways away.
Seems it has already been done, but the researcher is not releasing any details due to fear of the DMCA and MPAA.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Why all of the end-to-end encryption? Is having people record TV shows to their computer, and even sharing them with the world, really that bad? I mean, I get cable even though I could realistically download all of the shows I want to watch from P2P networks and I suspect that the vast majority of TV-watchers do likewise. Why cause so many problems for your customers and raise prices so much for a something that really isn't a threat to marketshare?
>I guess if this happens I can go to using my HDTV for watching movies and just saving lots of money from not using cable or DVRs.
/with/ the cable TV than without it. Otherwise we wouldn't even have cable TV - just the internet access.
You hit the nail on the head.
The day they succeed in locking down the incoming cable stream so I can't record things and watch them whenever I want to as many times as I want to is the day I no longer need the cable stream.
Already the only reason we have cable TV is because it was cheaper to order broadband internet access
All they are doing is making TV less and less appealing to me as an entertainment medium.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I work as a contractor for a company that is implementing an OCAP stack for some major MSOs. The dates that the article gives for the release of the DCAS technology are a bit off. One of the cable companies plans on doing field trials this summer, followed by a full deployment of the OCAP stack probably early next year. As for the ones who think that all encryption here is evil, some of it does serve a good purpose. Most of the conditional access is to restrict people from getting pay-per-view when they haven't paid for it, and so forth.
and do whatever I like with it, then I simply WON'T buy whatever they are selling.
It's time manufacturers got the message; They don't control what gets made, sold and bought, WE do.
Vote with your money. And I don't mean that ironically.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
My MythTV box does a great job recording / timeshifting / removing commercials / transcoding broadcast HDTV stations. So, I think the DIY PVR boxes have a life left for the immediate future.. I can still record Lost, and The West Wing, along with many sporting events.
The biggest hurdle I have seen developing is with more sporting events. Events that would have been on broadcast TV in the past are often on ESPN ( e.g. next year Monday Night Football is on ESPN-HD, not ABC). If that trend continues, I have to decide whether to stop watching that program/event, or to go to a commercial PVR. Most shows I can easily live without.. the exception being ESPN-HD... when my MSU Spartans are playing basketball in HD, I am very tempted to go to the cable companies crappy PVR.
Hey folks the cable guys get their content off the satellites. You can too. Nagra 1 and 2 are broken and the other systems are largly broken too.
... Standards and Practices !
Cost me about $280 canadian. I'm not sure it was wise, I have 800+ channels of US TV and the only thing worth watching was Puppy Bowl 2. I may just sell my setup as I had not counted on quite as much pure garbage.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
The word "upshot" means "benifit" Why do people use words when they don't understand what they mean?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Any that doesn't end in "stan" to start.
Just a few dozen of those running around out in the wild and the entire HDCP infrastructure falls flat on its face
No, it doesn't. HDCP has been invented to inconvenience consumers, not to prevent all forms of piracy. It's been proven to be insecure years ago, long before it had any significant visibility on the market, but the industry didn't bother to replace or upgrade it.
I mean seriously, if your company is spending money (and lots of it) on technology just to restrict what a customer can do by removing features, then you might as well be shoveling money into a gaping fire pit of doom.
For an anology as think it as if a Microsoft Office project manager showed up at a meeting and said "Hey guys! I'm going to get us a million dollar budget so we can find out how to remove the Save feature for Word and Excel! Our customers will be so pleased they'll buy two copies of Office for every computer they own!"
They have put a great deal of effort into something that won't earn them a cent of profit. The majority of people who were going to use DVR aren't going to pay twice for things and if you try to force them to then they'll probaly go elsewhere for their movies (DVD, satellite, or iTunes Video).
On the flip side, I'm sure it keeps techy engineers employed helping them spend all this money on HDCP.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
... it will kill my Cable subscription. I'm paying $40 a month, but they'll never see a dime from me again. They can throw all the worthless DRM they want at me, I'll take my money elsewhere (or nowhere, if others want to play this game). The insanity of all this is that even if HDCP somehow survives despite its obvious flaws, somebody can still rip a master. It's digital, IT ONLY TAKES ONE! How can they not understand this?!
I don't care anymore, I was mad when I first heard this news, but now it's just amusing. In the end, they've gained nothing, but lost me (and hopefully many others) as a customer for life.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Who would do something like this if they couldn't boast about it afterwards? It's no fun otherwise.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Just keep with the set top box and hide it. That's what I'm going to be doing soon. I'm moving my homebrew Linux Media Center, DirecTV terminal and amplifier down to the basement underneath where the brand spankin' new 37" HD LCD monitor is wall mounted. And I'm only passing the cables through the wall to the back of the monitor (DVI, audio in, audio out and a USB cable for plugging stuff into the homebrew media center). I installed an outlet directly behind the wall mounted monitor as well. No wires. No mess. Just a nice looking monitor. The speakers are next. I'm building them into the walls... It doesn't matter what the industry does if you are willing to expend a little effort. Installing this stuff isn't that hard.
;P
DISCLAIMER: If you burn your house down, set fire to your cat, smoke your tail, etc... I'm not responsible.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
under what body of laws?
a video card maker is under no legal requirement to make sure their product is compatible with another third party product...
the MARKET might punish them, but the law can't
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The really annoying thing about cablecards is that they were supposed to break the cable company's monopoly on set-top boxes. But as the article says, the existing 1.0 cablecard spec sucks so badly it makes the cable company's STB the only viable option for almost all users. With a cablecard inserted in your TV, you must live with these limitations:
1) No interactive menu.
2) No pay-per-view.
3) No DVR. (No HD DVR at all, and even SD recording requires that you route the TV outputs into your recording device and back in through an unused input. This is both ugly and inconvenient.)
Meanwhile, the cable company can rent you a box that does all of these things, including HD recording. The crappy cablecard 1.0 spec guarantees there will be no competition. Essentially, the intention of opening the STB market up to competion has been completely circumvented.
Although the article points out that things will get better in 2008, the cable companies will still be in control since they'll own the software you must run to decrypt the signal. It might be possible to use your (OEM-only) PC of choice with your (certified Trusted Computing) software of choice, but the content providers will still be calling the shots.
is that even applicable in the netherlands?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
At CES Tivo announced their series 3 with CableCard support. So you could finally Tivo Sopranos in HD. We've been waiting for this for 3 years, forced to use a cable company unit just to get HBO HD DVR. Projected launch Q4 2006.
Also ATI had a demo of an external video capture unit with a CableCard slot and USB 2.0 connection to a Media Center PC. This is also great, because finally media center will repair its achilles heel. Projected launch Q4 2006.
More legitimate (subscription HD compatible) recording choices for the enthusiast market means competition, and the cable cos will have to innovate their UI's and VOD products to keep anyone who is willing to spend 300 bucks up front from jumping ship off their sub-par equipment.
Speaking of STUPID, learn to spell :)
I haven't had cable for the past year and a half. This was after sharing a house with people in college and having every pay channel imaginable and our Time Warner DVR.
Once I graduated and was out on my own I was not able to afford cable anymore. I survived by just buying the DVDs of the shows I like, downloading them (legally or illegally), and *GASP* spending my time doing something more productive.
The majority of what is on TV these days is complete crap. I also remember when a 30 minute block of TV used to have at least 25 minutes of the actual show. Now you are lucky to get 20 minutes of the actual show you want to see.
As more and more shows become available through different channels (pun somewhat intended) like downloading, the easier it will be for people to realize that they don't really need cable.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Not so simple.
OCAP defines a set of APIs, but it is not dependent on CableCard or on DCAS. There is some independence from the underlying security implementation.
CableCard is technically difficult, which has led to delays. However, the main reason DCAS will supplant CableCard is that it's cheaper, and it probably will be more secure. Cheaper is better for everyone.
Like most other DRM security schemes, DCAS is being designed in secret without open peer review. Some of those other schemes are known to be broken, some are incorrectly assumed not to be broken, and some are ludicrously close to being broken. The soft DCAS model may stay ahead of crackers only because it can change mechanisms in the field, not because it is inherently more secure. It will remain a cat and mouse game.
The MSOs (cable companies) make their money by selling premium content and services. They don't make much from basic TV. For years, they have been at the mercy of the hardware oligopoly selling cable boxes and headend equipment. Even within the product line of a single vendor, there are severe incompatibilities. This equipment is expected to last decades in the field (the low price customers get the old equipment), and it must be supported. This leaves MSOs at the mercy of only a few vendors selling incompatible equipment, depreciating as innovation accelerates. To sell the premium content and services, they need new equipment, but don't like being locked in to the hardware oligopoly.
The idea behind OCAP is a platform to enable portable applications on a variety of platforms, which will enable the MSOs to sell more content and services. This would break the hardware oligopoly. Also, it would allow the cable companies to get out of the hardware business, because the customers will be able to buy equipment at retail, and the MSOs won't be stuck with an inventory of aging STBs.
Historically, this grew out of an idea from the late 1980s, to make STBs like telephones: you can plug any telephone into any phone jack, and it works. You buy your phones at retail. STBs should be the same way: you should be able to buy your STB at a store, and it should work with any cable equipment.
This is both good and bad for the hadware oligopoly. On the one hand, it breaks their lock on their customer base. On the other hand, it allows them to encroach on the customer base of the few competitors they have. The result is that STB vendors want to keep a lock on the existing customers so they offer premium features that aren't portable (don't run under OCAP) while offering OCAP to satisfy minimal requirements. Being typical firms, they are risk averse, since the legal and economic structure penalizes genuine competition, so the focus is mostly on preserving existing standards while taking baby steps toward meeting new ones. While at each vendor they talk about existing competitors, though, the real threat is from foreign electronics companies: when the standards become open, then which companies dominate the consumer markets?
Everyone is being dragged kicking and screaming into the new regime: content providers are terrified of having their product stolen, the oligopoly sees new competitors just over the hill, the politicians are anxious not to lose some of their biggest bribe givers (a.k.a. contributors and supporters), and consumers are losing their fair use rights in the bargains begin made.
Cable boxes aren't rocket science, but they aren't as simple as cell phones, either. There is a lot happening in a state of the art STB. However, one of the reasons they are as difficult to get right as they are, is that they are based on the secret, internal, proprietary standards of the oligopoly. You can build a missile or computer or a nuclear bomb or a lot of other complicated things from information lying around in books or on the internet, but you can't interoperate with the oligopoly's equipment except through license agreements and NDAs. You can't just hire an average real time systems engineer
My HD2000 gets me direct access to the compressed digital signal, but it's over the air. The HD3000 can tune unencrypted digital cable channels too. The only thing all this cablecard crap is really going to accomplish is DRM. Why anyone would want to run out and buy an expensive DRM system that only reduces their options is beyond me. As for protecting premium HD content - who cares. I just recorded the superbowl in HD for grins and it ate up 35GB (yes that GIGAbytes) of hard drive space. Nobody is going to be passing this stuff around the net, or archiving it, or much of anything, DRM or not, - it's just too darn big. It's going to take my computer 30-60 seconds just to delete that file!
Besides, only a few channels are available in HD from the local cableco. They market this stuff with the "future" in mind. But as the article shows, the future will involve something different than you can buy today. If you're going to buy this stuff anyway, I'd make sure it has some immediate value today and not believe a word about what they plan to do next year or even next week. Me? I've got HDTV DVR capability on my PC today, and it's really not that useful. It is fun to show people the picture quality of HD, but beyond that it's just too much data.
It's been cracked, by someone in the Netherlands I think, but they refuse to release their findings due to the DCMA. I'd link it, but I don't know the link offhand, and I believe a comment earlier on had a link to the same page.
It's even more simple than that: all it takes is ONE of our European or Asian friends to capture a stream and post it on a torrent site. If HDCP does lock down home video recording, I'll drop cable and get all my entertainment via bittorrent. Heck, I use Bittorrent for timeshifting now as it is, because my ATI capture cards don't work in Linux (well, unless I downgrade to really old XFree86 builds).
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Why not stop now?
What you're doing is more like an abusive/dysfunctional relationship than anything else - you know you're going to be smacked hard and beaten to a pulp in the future, but until that actually happens you'll stick with it because, damn it, you're enjoying yourself NOW!
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
>Yes, but until then you're still giving them $60/Mo...
/more/ necessary that the people be armed. Just because there are no militias anymore does not invalidate the wisdom of the founding fathers to have armed citizens as a counterbalance to tyranny. See Federalist 29.
f ed29.htm
I'm paying $50 a month now for broadband cable internet access. The fact that TV comes along with it is just a bonus. I don't (and won't) pay extra for pay-per-view, HDTV, or whatever other extra bells and whistles they want me to may extra for.
>What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
What part of "there has been no militia, as intended by the founding fathers, since at least 1903" do you not understand? The fact that the federal government has absorbed the state militias so that they now serve to augment, rather than counterbalance federal military power makes it even
http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Are any Linux users playing DVDs on their systems? Are you watching MPEG videos and MP3s? Did you pay the required license fees to do so? Then why do you care that a DIY HDTV PVR will now be (borderline) illegal as well? People want freedom, but they aren't willing to make any sacrifice to get it. So here we are.
If you want to see a change, people need to cancel their monthly subscriptions en masse, and stick to OTA out of spite. Or, just don't pay the additional charge to upgrade the equipment and subscription to HD.
The only thing worse to the entertainment industry than theoretical money lost due to copying, is real money lost, due to lots of people refusing to accept their restrictions...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Finally! A topic on /. that I have some experience with!! As a cable technician, I deal with this particular headache at lease 10 times a week.
Cablecards are an example of what happens when Congress decrees that a certain service provider must provide the service Congress's way, instead of letting the service provider do it in a way that is guaranteed to work. CableLabs created the cards with a specific set of requirements for the firmware for correct operation. Some companies (LG for example) wrote their TV firmware along the direct specification. Other companies, such as Sony, Sharp and Mitsubshi took the liberty to write their firmware however they damn well pleased. In fact, we have an entire binder full of TV makes and models with known firmware issues.
I've never seen a problem using a Cablecard in an LG TV; it's pretty much plug it in, wait for the authorization numbers to display on screen and call them into the office for initialization. If I had the cash for a flat panel plasma to hang in my living room, it would be an LG, and I would get a Cablecard for it. Other brands, however, present a wide variety of issues. For example, any channel in our lineup that uses a 64 QAM data stream will no properly display on a Mitsubishi TV.
Another problem is in the specifications: Cablecards are one-way devices. They do not operate along the return path, which means no Video-on-Demand, no interactive pay-per-view, and so on. You're also stuck with the interactive guide that your TV firmware came with. Troubleshooting these ALWAYS requires a truck roll, because since they are one-way only, we can't hit them from the office to return an error message like we can with our DCTs. (We use the exact same boxes shown in TFA).
In response to some of the comments made about a MSO-issued settop box, we don't charge the monthly equipment fee for our digital equipment to milk more money out of customers; we do it to attempt to break even. A typical MSO loses anywhere between $75 to $100 per average digital subscriber due to failure to use common sense. Last week, I replaced a $500 DVR for a woman (at no cost to her) who had started putting her old newspapers on top of the box. It eventually overheated and died. I asked her why she had put them there, and she said, "Because my computer monitor got too hot with them on top of it, and I didnt want that to burn up." And just today, I replaced $700 of equipment for a family that had moved. They put their equipment in a box in the kitchen, and proceeded to improperly attach a dishwasher hose and flooded their own house.
Anyhow, back on topic, cable companies will try to steer you away from the Cablecards to their equipment because they know it will work. If our equipment isnt working, we replace it and make it work. With Cablecards, we are stuck trying to make third-party firmware play nice with someone's TV.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
Re-encrypting the same message multiple times with different keys is the WORST kind of security problem. This is one of the clues the allies used to break enigma. By providing the same signal encrypted with different keys you will reduce the cracking time by many orders of magnitude.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I suspect what will happen is that people will crack HDCP, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/CableCard/whatever other DRM the companies invent and not tell anyone about it.
Then they will use their cracks to post stuff on P2P
It will go through the same channels that "DVD Screeners" leaked from production companies, awards judges and such go through. And the same channels that result in the latest games being available on p2p days after release, fully cracked and working. And, just like the DVD screeners and games, the people behind it all doing the actual cracking, capturing and such will remain hidden from view going through a network of couriers and private sites that only a few know about in order to get the stuff out to the masses.
Capitalism at work: if the product sucks, send it back. Don't reward them with money per month for a bad product.
Of course, if the difference between SD and HD is great enough, then you may be willing to put up with paying them more money for poorer software.
But if Comcast is refusing to let you hide the stupid channels, it doesn't bode well for the future. I'd let them know that the money they spent on their restrictive design is money in the toilet, 'cause it isn't going to earn them cash out of your wallet.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
By saying "Haupage" did you actually mean Hauppauge? I'm asking because when I did a google search for "Haupage" google asked did you mean "Hauppauge".
For those of you who don't know how to pronounce it here as a copy from their site FAQ.
"How do you pronounce Hauppauge?
Hauppauge is pronounced HOP-HOG."
Also why use USB, as from my experience IEEE 1394 is better for transfering data of this size or using the PCI push technology (IIRC that is what they called it back then) that my ancient TV Tuner card from them uses (Please note I use the PCI card not the even older ISA card). Also from checking out the various cards & USB devices they make it is clear that the PCI devices work better because they use almost no processor time, while USB hogs it all up in comparison. I know this because I used to use my TV tuner card in a computer with an AMD 486 120 Mhz. Also the PCI versions frequently have a driver for running in Linux. My card had the driver included into the 2.2 version of the Linux kernel.
So why use USB for this when PCI is a much better option? I mean I can understand for the people who use a laptop as a desktop. I laugh at them, but still since they don't have a PCI slot I can at least understand. If they actually have a valid reason for the laptop I don't laugh, it's just the ones who buy a laptop, but don't even use them as a portable computer that I laugh at.
Having worked in the cable company (the biggest just guess) cable cards are the biggest pain in the ass the company has ever released. In some tv's like 2002-2005 sony's it very easy to get it working. Literally a plug and go install. In other sets especially Sharp tv's it's a nightmare where I've had to tell people flat out it won't work. If installing video cards were this difficult it would kill the DIY computer biz overnight. I would prefer it being a self install for customers so they could have the aggrivation but given the spike in phone support it would take I don't see it happening.
Quit being a troll.
But to the parent poster, a USB device won't be possible because it has already been stated that only entire OEM computers will be certified. They will not ceritify a card, or in this case a USB device. The only way you will be able to use Vista w/ CableCard is to order from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc.
That's true, but a reasonably well-designed crypto system (well-tested by smart math guys) isn't easily "puzzled-out", and that's what you'd need to do.
What I mean is, supplying a static message enrypted with a ton of different keys will help you break the entire encryption system, but there's no "easier" way to decode one specific message other than figuring out the whole system. And what are the chances of someone "solving" AES? Once someone figures out P=NP I guess...
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I was thinking in terms of a separate system- a single-purpose computer kind of like a TIVO that sends data back to the computer. Thus USB- to emphasize the fact that it is a periphereal.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Breaking encryption has almost nothing to do with how much computing resources you have available. Most modern crypto system are designed so that, using the best known attack, it would take every computer on earth working together the current age of the universe worth of time on average to find a key.
Your wife's dual core amd system is worthless.
Crypto is broken by circumventing the crypto entirely, by stealing (not cracking) the key, or by finding fundamental design flaws in the cryptosystem itself.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.