An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC

Talinom writes "AnandTech has a writeup on how ClearQAM appears to be headed for an early death. From the article — 'At this point there's no reason to believe that cable companies won't deploy Privacy Mode across their networks, so it's a matter of 'when,' not 'if' this will happen. It goes without saying that if you're currently enjoying the use of a ClearQAM tuner to receive EB tier channels, you'll want to enjoy what time you have left, and look in to other solutions for the long-haul. At this pace, it looks like cable TV and computers will soon be divorcing.'" Update: 08/27 23:59 GMT by T : "EB" here stands for "Expanded Basic (cable service)"; Wikipedia as usual has a time-sucking, digressive, fascinating explanation about the tiers of cable TV service in the US.

Comments

No, its not game over

[nurb432]

You don't seem to understand the percentages, and how the big picture works.

Let me try to help: .0001% of your hardcore customers find a way around your DRM and you lose a few cents at most.. While the actual paying customers are locked in to their changes and continue to feed the beast that makes it harder to get around and buys more laws.

They really don't care if a few hardcore tech types get around it. Really they don't, since you end up viewing ads in the process anyway and STILL make them money..

In the end, they win. Hell they already have.

Kill your cable

[szquirrel]

I finally got tired of the $75/month, the cable box meltdowns every three months (Scientific Atlanta FTL), and the generally craptastic quality of over-compressed video from Brighthouse. Six months ago I told them where to shove it and never looked back. Now I get TV series on DVD from Netflix, occasionally catch a new show on Hulu, and use some good ol' rabbit ears to get my local channels (which look great in over-the-air digital, better than they ever did through the cable).

Screw cable. I'm done with paying for a raft of crap I don't need to subsidize their other businesses. And I'm certainly done with their obsessive consumer lock-in.

Inflammatory headline much?

[blhack]

All this means is that the same techniques that HTPC users currently use for satellite will need to be used for cable as well.

You clip an IR transmitter to the front of your cable-box, and it changes the channels for you. The analog out on the cable box goes into the mythbox, and the mythbox goes out to the TV.

This is a pain in the ass, but not THAT much of a pain in the ass.

Re:badtitle

[mrchaotica]

I have Comcast digital cable in Atlanta. Currently, Comcast sends SD (480i) extended basic cable stations (e.g. Discovery) in ClearQAM, albeit on weird frequencies (e.g. channel 103.5 for the afore-mentioned Discovery). The set-top box is allegedly "required" not in order to do any decrypting, but rather merely to translate the channels to their "official" frequencies (e.g. channel 40 instead of 103.5). Now, what they're planning to do is to start encrypting those channels for no good reason.

There are several major problems with what Comcast is doing:

1. Comcast's boxes are the shittiest piles of garbage on the face of the Earth. When Comcast shut off the analog History Channel I tried them, but after going through three that would work for a while and then flake out I gave up and just did without until I figured out how to tune to History Channel via QAM (channel 82.7, by the way).
2. It's a blatant money grab: by turning on the encryption, Comcast is instantly forcing everyone to fork over an extra $5 or so per month, per TV (give or take the single "free" box Comcast "generously" "offers" with certain types of accounts).
3. It's a blatant power grab: with unencrypted QAM, there can be a free market for digital TV tuners (and "digital cable ready" TVs) -- a situation which is intolerable to the fascists running Comcast. This way, they control the only supply of devices that can decode the signals, which means that they can hold features hostage, lock out competitors, etc.
4. It's fucking absurd to begin with, because there's no legitimate reason whatsoever why I should have to have an extra stupid box with an extra stupid remote (that isn't compatible with my TV, by the way) when my "digital cable-ready" TV is perfectly capable, sans Comcast's meddling, of tuning the damn channels itself!

In other words, the situation that's developing now is exactly like how AT&T used to control telephone equipment 30(?) years ago: it's monopolistic, murderous to technological process, and should not be allowed!

And that brings me to my final point: I really want to do everything I can to stop and/or punish Comcast for this. Is anybody planning to sue over it, and/or do you know of a class-action I can join?