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Vista Media Center Plus CableCard Equals No TV
notthatwillsmith writes "ATI's internal CableCard readers are finally available, and Maximum PC got hands-on time with a couple of Vista-powered systems built using the FCC-mandated technology. The short version? It doesn't work. From the article: 'The tech told me he'd receive training direct from Microsoft, but none of it covered internal tuners. We both agreed that the process should be the same, since the only difference is that the slots are inside the case, versus in an external box. The tech then proceeds to install the CableCards, connect the tuners to coax line, fire up the PC, and begin the software configuration. This step involves activating the TV Wonder with a product-activation code, and calling the Comcast office to exchange some information. We should have had a picture at this point, but we didn't.'"
The short version? It doesn't work. The long version? It still doesn't work.
Article detailing how the cable companies are using a device called Cable-CARD to prevent you from recording HD TV shows to your computer. http://www.microsoftisawesome.com/2007/05/rouges-d o-it-from-behind.html
OK, how is this modded insightful? Troll, Funny, Flame, Redundant? Maybe. Insightful? C'mon
"Ha Ha"
Not the point. The point is - the cable companies will be able to say "Look you can buy it, we don't set the price". The fact that it doesn't work, ties your hands, is VERY espensive - isn't their problem (anymore). It's 'your problem' now.
It isnt supposed too lol, thats half the point of the damned thing ...
Vista Retarded is here Sung by the V.C.P.s
[voiceover] The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
Vista "Retarded", is here...
And content not playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not
playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...
In this context,Vista disrespects, so when I click to play, the display disconnects.
We got find methods for us to reconnect to new codecs by the network effect.
Bout to lose your fair use. Microsoft's institution. Infect your computer with D.R.M. pollution.
Cause when we click on, the sound is gonna be down. You won't believe how we ow shout out.
Burn can't cause we locked out, Sample can't cause we locked out, act up from north,west, east south.
[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.
Lose control, of privacy and goals.
Won't run too fast cause, bloat makes it slow.
Won't get away, your locked into it.
Y'all hear about it, Gutmann'll do it.
Get Vista, be stoopid.
Don't worry 'bout it, Ballmer'll walk you though it,
Step by step, you'll be restricted
Patch by patch with the new solution.
Transmit bits, with D.R.M. pollution
Claim the contents irresistible and that's how they move it.
[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.
Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...
C'mon y'all, let's get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh) -- Let's get Do-do! (in here) Ow, ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...
Let's get ill, that's the deal .
At the gate, Microsoft restricts your will. (Just)
Lose your mind this is the time,
Y'all test this will, Just and download still. (Just)
Rob the resolution, from your monitor or to your speakers.
Get pixel-ated and suck.
Yo' movies past slow-mo' in another head trip.(So)
Locked in now cannot correct it, so be ig'nant and left apoplectic
[Chorus:]
(yeah)Everybody, (yeah) everybody, (yeah) get locked into it.
(yeah) Get stupid.
(click on) Get retarded,(click on) get retarded (yeah), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Whoaoa
Yeah.
You Cukoo! (A-ha!) -- It's Po-Po! (is here)
Be a Fool! (A-ha!) -- M.S. Tool! (be their)
Like Voodoo! (A-ha!) -- You cukoo! (out here)
Ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...
Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin'
[fade]
When Microsoft heard about Apple's "there is no step three!" strapline, they emulated it in the only way they knew how...
With the HDHomeRun you can watch/record the unencrypted channels on digital cable:n
. shtml?tid=117&tid=39
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomeru
Two tuners and plugs into your Ethernet network. You can watch content from any computer on your network.
Works with MCE 2005 and Vista MCE - both 32 and 64-bit versions.
Works with SageTV, BeyondTV, etc.
Works with MythTV under Linux.
Mac support is rumored to be coming soon.
Linux review:
http://servers.linux.com/servers/07/04/18/1531247
It works fine now, sorry
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
the card have DRM that only works with windows vista on oem systems that pay m$ for the right to use the cards.
also how do they lock them down to the oems only?
what happen if you put non dell ram, video card, or other things in to a dell system with a cable card? will that lock you out?
Just so i can watch tv? Ya, isnt technology grand.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The problems with these systems have nothing to do with the consumer-experience-enhancing DRM software installed in Vista. We will sue anybody who says otherwise.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Cable cards are horribly problematic. They were forced upon the cable companies and if you need one it means you're not renting equipment from the cable company. They really don't give a shit if it's a pain in your ass, because it lets them say "well, our cable-box/DVR/whatever never has these problems".
In three months, I've had 5 or 6 different cable cards in my Series 3 Tivo. Only one has worked the whole time (it's got a dual-tuner, so it needs two). Some never worked at all; others refused to unlock the premium channels I'm paying for; still others have been fine for a few weeks then suddenly stopped working.
For once I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt and assume that the problem is Comcast and the crappy cable cards their cartel has concocted.
I'm glad you posted this here. The link between Windows Vista Media Center Edition, the ATi TV Wonder card, and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan has gone unremarked for far too long.
I've had very few problems with two Cablecards in my Tivo Series 3. The one time a Tivo upgrade caused a problem, I called Comcast and they sent the appropriate signals down the wire to re-enable the cards again. I'm not a big fan of Comcast, but in my area, they've been handling Cablecards very well.
This is all about denying the customer the ability to watch TV through anything other than a cable co device, it's just paying lip service to the law so that they're not obviously in violation of it. This will only get worse too once switched video gets deployed.
RTFA. The comcast tech couldn't figure out what was wrong, neither could his home base, and neither could the relevant people at microsoft who should have been able to. If the cable industry makes it this difficult to watch tv on your computer, I'd be inclined to agree with you about the writing being on the wall. However, this is still very nichey stuff. once their revenue stream truly becomes endangered, I'd wager that things will mysteriously become easier.
I bought a Cable Card-ready Sony TV a few years ago with the idea that I would rent a Cable Card from Time Warner Cable so I could watch HD channels. Once the Time Warner Cable installation tech got the Cable Card working in my TV, he bolted out the door. About six hours later, the picture turned black and I could no longer receive encrypted channels. When I called Time Warner Cable's support, the support person first sent a "reset" to my TV but that didn't work. Then I was advised to turn the TV off and then unplug the set from the power outlet for ten minutes. That didn't fix the problem.
I had Time Warner Cables techs come to my house a few more times with replacement Cable Cards but they could never resolve the problem. They gave up and blamed the problem on my TV. They said the TV needed a firmware upgrade (I didn't even know my TV had upgradeable firmware!). I contacted a local home theater company and they sent one of their techs to my house to upgrade my TV's firmware.
After that upgrade, Time Warner Cable tried again but could not get the Cable Card to work. The TWC person at my house was on the phone with someone at the "head end" trying to get advice on how to fix this problem. Despite digging through some very cool diagnostic screens on my TV and trying every option available, Time Warner Cable never did the Cable Card to work in my TV.
I gave up and called TWC to let them know I would be bringing their card back.
For all of its hype, Cable Card definitely sucked donkey balls. I have a very nice Sony HD set that is supposedly "Cable Card ready" but the Cable Card just didn't work reliably. It's too bad. The time that I did get to watch channels like Discovery HD was very cool.
That was a couple of summers ago. I haven't had the time to see if TWC here in Milwaukee has figured-out the mysteries of the Cable Card.
I guess it is true. Never...and I mean NEVER buy anything from Micro$oft that is version 1.0.
Remove "from Microsoft" from that sentence. It rarely matters who it is, there will be problems.
They have gone to great lengths to prevent direct digital stream ripping of "premium" content. There are a number of ways to get a direct stream of non-premium content.
You could get an HDHomeRun. These are very nice little boxes that output a direct stream via ethernet. They can recieve both digital cable, and over-the-air digital broadcasts. They cannot decrypt premium content.
Another avenue of getting a direct stream is firewire. Your cable company can give you (FCC mandated!) a cable box that outputs the digital stream to your pc via firewire. You can normally even use this interface to change channels. Of course, when watching any premium content, firewire is disabled.
There are CableCard TV tuners for PC's as mentioned in this article. They can both receive AND decrypt digital cable. They will not work in anything but Vista (if at all), and the software is designed to allow you to view, but not record premium digital content.
So, you can upgrade to a digital tuner, and rip the streams directly to your HD, but you are not going to be able to record much that makes it worthwhile (Unless you're a sports fan). The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole. Yes, you're stuck re-encoding the video, but most capture cards do a great job of this. HD can be a bit tough to do, but it can be done.
As far as changing channels on your cable box, google up "IR blaster". Allows your PC to be a universal remote control.
Could it be that this product was pushed out the door without sufficient testing with different cable cards, cable systems and all the silly things that cable companies are doing just to be different? Naa. Has to be Microsoft.
It WAS NOT THE CARDS. They were tested before they left the shop and tested AOK.
Did you read the fine hands free phone conversation between the M$ tech and the cable guy? We can count the ways they lie to everyone. First, they sent a ringer - an experienced tech with inside contacts at M$ but they forgot to tell that inside contact in advance. Let's quote the fun that follows:
Translation: We lie to reviewers and send them out special equipment so that everyone gets a more favorable impression than they will if they actually buy the product.
Translation: They don't work but we are going to sell them anyway. The first tech wisely wants nothing further to do with this call and pushes it up to a second, who was not there, and third person you and I would never get to talk to, even if we spend $7,000 on a maximum rippoff, hi-death Tivo. The embarrassment mounts as two of them sit broken.
Things only go downhill from there. One of the cards had been "qualified" by the beast but neither worked. The tech devolves into typing "Microsoft-proprietary information" on a command line, a command so complex it had to be emailed but could not be shared with customer. After four hours, the tech gives up. The next day does not go much better.
Still, this represents a best case scenerio. How many of us will get a M$ or vendor Product Manager's email to make this thing work?
An bonus funny was the secret command:
c:/windows/ehome/ehribjob.exe \OCURNregister
Is this guy a Linux user or what?
Oh how I love Vista and digital restrictions. It does not get any worse than this.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With the recent improvements to graphics cards, computers have now got enough power for the next level of PVR to become possible.
I refer of course to Personal Video Rendering, ie locally generated real-time TV. Even modest AI can handle the retarded talk shows and formulaic sycophantic interviews.
Just imagine: you can watch computer generated random pointless drivel such as 'my boyfriend left me for a transexual limbo dancer and now i am marrying his mother' with 5.1 surround whooping and hollering from the audience for as long as you like (with artificial repetitive and annoying 'advertisement' breaks, of course), then decide to watch a blu-ray hd film. The software would automatically flip to rendering 20 minutes of a sports game, followed by 30 minutes of tedious analysis by virtual sports presenters before showing the film. Artificially intelligent filtering would then cut many of the scenes and redub profane dialog no matter what time it was being watched. Monitoring daemons would flag the kind of shows that you like to watch and then 'cancel' them.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I'll bet they feel VERY happy with themselves now that their content is so well protected that no one can use it.
It sounded nice, though. :-(
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
To everyone who complains about the command being in the wrong syntax (C:/ehome/ versus C:\ehome\)
/windows/system32
Go to your command line. Start>Run>CMD
> cd \
> cd
See where you end up.
Now, try
> c:/windows/system32/dxdiag.exe
Windows CLI takes paths in both formats.
Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?
It always seems like that, so I'll add my two cents. Comcast showed up and put two cablecards in my Tivo, and 15 minutes later (mostly the tech waiting for the head-end activation on the phone) it was up and running. No trouble since.
Or ATI's. It's the cable company. I'd bet quite a large sum of money on that statement.
Go read some Tivo forums that cover the Series 3 unit. There is story after story after story about the nightmare of getting cablecards installed and configured properly.
Cablecards are standardized. The device itself (provided it is compliant with the CableLabs standard (which it MUST BE to be certified)) is irrelevant. All the installer needs to do is know how to bring up the cablecard info screen and speak enough English to read a few numbers to a person at the other end of the phone. The person on the other end of the phone needs to enter those numbers correctly and provision the card properly. (Meaning they have to enter the card's ID number properly, enter the device's ID number correctly, and authorize that matched pair to access whatever content the subscriber is allowed to view.)
It doesn't matter if the device is a television, set-top box, DVR, computer, etc. Totally irrelevant. The only unique part of this process is getting the device ID from the subscriber's device. That is all the specialized training an "installer" needs to accomplish the installation. The person entering this information on the other end of the line doesn't even need that tiny little bit of specialized training. They're doing money-work. Enter the numbers, assign the content privileges, click ok.
It's astonishing how many ways the cable company can find to fuck (can I say fuck here?) up this simple process.
Why wouldn't they train their people properly? Simple. They can get $2-3/month for a cablecard rental. They get $10-15/month for a DVR or STB. While, technically, they do support cablecards (as required by FCC mandate), they intentionally make the process as painful as possible so people will give up on cablecards and tell their friends how horrible cablecards are. "Never buy anything that uses a cablecard. They don't work."
You're confusing the lies the cable companies told to the FCC to get away with the crap they get away and reality.
You probably also believe that bi-directional CableCARD 2.0 is a good thing.
Here's the deal. CableCARD's don't need to do anything at all other than decrypt TV signals if the customer paid for them. It doesn't need to send data or be activated by an on-site tech or any of that crap to do the job. The device it's plugged into can do the upstream requests, and the authorization codes can be pushed to the card just like they are with CableCo owned set top boxes. bi-directional communications and tech activation exist to prevent you from doing anything with the signal that the cable company doesn't like, even if copyright law doesn't actually prevent you from doing those things.
you should try it again, you should get superior picture by it going directly to the TV instead of having to pass the signal through another box.
If your using a DVI or HDMI cable, this simply is not true. When using these cables, you get an uncompressed video feed from the box. In fact, I've often found the cable box to provide BETTER video output than the card. For some reason, the MPEG decoder chips built into these TVs sucks ass. Or at least that was the case with first generation cable card ready TVs.
Life is not for the lazy.
The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole.
The analog hole (at least for the premium channels) is going the way of the dodo in the not to distant future when they cut off analog broadcasts and begin transitioning people to HDTV with all of those set top boxes (for those who don't know or care what HDTV is or just want to keep their coax television and have it work). Once the transition has begun the cable monopolies will move rapidly to reduce the number of channels that their set top box will output to their legacy analog television customers both to push people into buying more premium packages and reclaim the ground they lost starting in the late 1970s with the widespread introduction of the VCR and continuing on to this day with recordable DVD, SVCD, DVRs, etc...This will also push people into buying new digital HDTV television sets and complete the unholy alliance of closed DRM format with end-to-end hardware control (no analog holes). So yeah, you may still have your analog Linux DVR, but there will be no more analog cable content (that is worth a crap) to record.
I wouldn't be surprised if the cable company itself could not reset them and they had to be sent back to the supplier to maximize DRM protection.
It makes you wonder whether the "flakiness" reputation actually originated from people performing such testing.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It totally changed the way I used my computer! I used to use it quite comfortably, and everything worked, and I was somewhat pleased.
Things are vastly different on Vista! It's changed the way I use my computer. It no longer works, so I no longer use it. I had to borrow a friend's "leenux" just to type this!
Now can someone name one (1) show that it's worth going to all this trouble to record?
I can't think of a show in the last 5 years that I have been the slightest bit bummed out about missing.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Task: Make a SanDisk multi card reader work under Linux and Windows. Same machine dual-booting between XP Pro SP2 and Fedora Core 6.
Fedora:
Boot and login
Plug card reader in
Wait a few seconds
A nice little window that has the files on the MMC/CF/MemoryStick appears on the desktop
Done.
so, bzzt. Try again. I've got a Lexar multi-reader that I've used for every format under the sun and FC 5, 6 and 7 all work great.
Depending on what hardware you try, you could end up mucking about on google groups under windows for why a seemingly simple, universal device like a multi-reader still shows up as "Unknown Device" or why "Windows could not find a driver for your hardware, please contact the manufacturer". The same is true of Linux and Windows- buy non-cheapie hardware and it'll be more likely work.
The problem (that a few people have realized) is that the technician tested the cards first. Because of this operation they were inseperably paired with the device used to test them.
Without knowing that and resetting this pairing nothing that could be done would force the cards to work in the PC. It has nothing to do with the new hardware, the operating system or anything else. Simple matter is these are complex devices interfacing with even more complex systems. And the supposedly knowledgeable technician didn't understand this restriction.
Unfortunately, the article makes it appear that the technician was knowlegeable and should have been able to solve the problem. In reality the inexperienced technican created the problem and insured the installation would fail by testing the cards.
and
Remember, that's Microsoft-proprietary!
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Ah, you poor bastards in the US...
I have cogeco cable here in canada, and NONE of the channels, regular, HD or PPV/Premium have the Record-blocking Flag enabled. Also, for the record the Motorola DCT-6412 I have has 2 firewire ports and I assure you i can use both to record to 2 different computers at the same time.
Technicians can test cards all the want before bringing them to the customer site.
The bonding actually occurs at the head end, not in the card.
They have to call up and give the head end reps the device ID and card ID so that the system can start transmitting the correct key stream with which the card will be able to decrypt and use to get at the symmetric content keys.
The cards themselves can be tested in a sandbox environment where the technician can control the encryption process, registration in the sandbox, and then verify the decryption.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Typical Slashdot Microsoft bashing.
Isn't it the cable companies, or whoever they had design the cards, who came up with the pairing thing? Complain about them, not Microsoft.
WTF?
bug after bugSo no Linux distro has bugs? Your beloved Mac doesn't have bugs? Haven't there been around 30 Mac patches in the last 2 months?
spyware attack after spyware attackName ONE spyware attack that is Vista only. ONE.
slow op code after slow op codeThat's right, you can't.
I can, however, say that most spyware, viruses, trojans, and rootkits, have their functionality retarded due to UAC.
The perceived "slowness" of Vista is a product of immature drivers, one bug that affects some computers (slow file copy) and pure FUD.
I'm just so FREAKING tired of this all this bullIndeed. I'm freaking tired of all the bull in your post as well.
I prefer to remove "that is version 1.0" instead.
Don't worry, even though you were dead wrong you still got modded up. Gotta love Slashdot.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
no, that's EXACTLY how the hardware pairing is supposed to function. That's why in the beginning, it was only OEMS that were going to make the systems. The structure is DESIGNED to be brittle and byzantine. Microsoft and friends want this stuff soldered down, they don't want you to "upgrade" things anymore... it's too much hassle for their plans. If it doesn't work the first time, you, the customer or field tech, are supposed to send it back and get another.. only "manufacturing" is supposed to mess with keys and such. Besides, there's no money in windows on desktops anyway.. M$ wants the sales from cable companies and locked down hardware, so they're making a token effort that no sane person will put up with.
At least do a little research on the topic. Microsoft has no interest in seeing it locked down. It's cable labs who have requirements that pretty much lock out things like open source use of a cable card and most 3rd paty use to boot. You must be able to certify that there's no way for a user to gain access to the decrypted stream.