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NBC CCI Flagging HD as Do Not Record

1K views 18 replies 5 participants last post by  Foxbat121 
#1 ·
There are some sporadic reports in addition to my own that as of yesterday there is a problem in recording NBC HD channels. I noticed it this morning as Chicago Fire did not record and tonight none of the NBC shows will record. Verizon tech support says they have heard from people but this is beyond their control. I believe this only impacts those with cable card tuners. Before I get hell bent on complaining to the FCC I would like to know if there are others experiencing this problem.

TIA
 
#3 ·
It's a little different than that. In some cases, CCI information wasn't transmitted at all, so analog copy protection went into effect of it was present (CCI, even copy free overrides all analog copy protection). Ceton submitted the change so that in those cases, analog copy protection could be ignored and it was treated essentially like copy free.

In any case, this seems to be a different issue. If copy-never is being transmitted on NBC, it should be in Verizons control. I had a similar issue on Charter here and had to go through Ceton to contact someone at Charter who fixed the CCI flags. The local office/phone support had no clue.


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#4 ·
Hauppage Support is Poor

Good to hear that Ceton was responsive. Problem is my tuner is a Hauppage and they have very poor product support and firmware updates are notoriously slow. I have a message into them but it usually takes two days for them to respond.
 
#7 · (Edited)
The cable company sets the CCI flag not the network... Traditionally, clear qam will not have any CCI set as it isn't expected unless encrypted. When this occurs legacy protections can take effect such as CGMS or APS (there is also at least one company that had delivered APS the "new" way rather than the legacy way which really messes things up as "CCI" reports protected APS Copy Never) There may be some equipment at Verizon that sees the APS in the stream then mistakenly decides to add it the new way if it is indeed showing up as a CCI restriction.

Both SD and Ceton the day of the restrictions being lifted had firmware out that would ignore legacy protection, however, WMC may still act on any protections it sees (I haven't really seen WMC 7 do this but in the vista days if you had the digital cable add on, almost everything in my area was reported as copy never including analog tuners, atsc, and clear qam)
 
#8 ·
@signcarver - I was on with a Verizon tech rep over at Broadband DSLreport.com and he said that this was a network issue and not Verizon. If there was a Verizon glitch wouldn't it show up on more than one channel? I know that there are frimware updates for Ceton and SD but unfortunately I'm on a Hauppage tuner and they are always the last ones to update firmware and they take forever to answer support queries. I did get a response from my local NBC affiliate as noted above even local broadcasts were flagged. They are looking into it. I'll get back with Verizon if you think that's also a decent avenue to pursue.

This is more of an aggravation than something critical as all the shows can be streamed online these days but you do have to watch the annoying commercials. I actually don't record much on NBC these days.
 
#9 ·
Most likely it is a network/station issue, I'm not arguing that (there have been many reports from NYC to LA of problems with NBC)... my point is you said it was CCI... in the conventional sense that is on verizon as the "cable" company equipment sets CCI. So I want to know why you mentioned CCI and what told you it was a problem with CCI.

CGMS or APS (delivered the legacy way) is on the network/station and is not referred to as CCI but as CGMS (even though it also can be APS and RC so is more often referred to as legacy SCTE 21 protections). In my area the local producer of commercials would use a camera that added CGMS of copy never so whenever a local commercial popped up WMC threw fits after about a year the cable company actually started to deliver CCI of copy freely on clear qam stations (I am only aware of cisco markets ever doing this... everything I have seen from both moto and cisco only say that CCI is for encrypted content not clear qam) and within the next couple of months the stations also finally took care of it as they can change the value which is a good thing as about another year later my provider switched to 1.5.3 cisco firmware which does not report CCI of copy freely (which is probably the major reason we got the change in the rules, as only OCURs had this restriction still in place).


The new firmware (if you ever get it for the Hauppauge) will allow cablecard tuners to ignore legacy protections put in by the networks (but WMC still may not as the legacy protections are still delivered for WMC to act on if it chooses). Usually it is CGMS that causes the problems not APS... There is a way for the cable company to deliver APS using the New way as there are 8 CCI bits... the ones we usually care about are bits 0 and 1 which give us the copy freely, copy no more, copy once, and copy never... Bits 2 and 3 are APS bits and sometimes when there is no other CCI set, some piece of equipment will detect the legacy APS and assign those bits to match (this would be on "both" as the network did it in error but the cable company was also in error as a result of the network's error (and they will go back and forth blaming each other). My point in bring this up is that when you say CCI, that is on the cable company as their equipment controls that


I do believe I have one document out of hundreds that may refer to SCTE 21 protections as CCI-A while "conventional" CCI was referred to as CCI-D but it was in just one sentence and didn't specify any differences between CCI-A and CCI-D so I was guessing analog (legacy) and digital (new) in the context of it.
 
#13 ·
The new firmware (if you ever get it for the Hauppauge) will allow cablecard tuners to ignore legacy protections put in by the networks (but WMC still may not as the legacy protections are still delivered for WMC to act on if it chooses). Usually it is CGMS that causes the problems not APS... There is a way for the cable company to deliver APS using the New way as there are 8 CCI bits... the ones we usually care about are bits 0 and 1 which give us the copy freely, copy no more, copy once, and copy never... Bits 2 and 3 are APS bits and sometimes when there is no other CCI set, some piece of equipment will detect the legacy APS and assign those bits to match (this would be on "both" as the network did it in error but the cable company was also in error as a result of the network's error (and they will go back and forth blaming each other). My point in bring this up is that when you say CCI, that is on the cable company as their equipment controls that
Hauppage came through late yesterday with new firmware that they sent to me. I assume the will eventually post it to their support site. Problem appears to be resolved as per your discussion of the issue. Many thanks for the details you provided. I'm not sure I'll ever find out whether it was Verizon or NBC that caused the problem in the first place.
 
#12 ·
To clarify:


1. Broadcasting channels use CGMS flag to control DRM but according to FCC, they are not allowed to use Copy Never. However, various local stations constantly screw up and accidentally leave Copy Never on.
2. Cable Cards use CCI to control DRM but since those broadcasting channels are typically sent out in Clear QAM and considered no copy protection, Cable providers typically leave out CCI flags and let CGMS flag to take over the DRM indicator.


Before the rule change by CableLabs, you are in the mercy of your local TV stations' competency of engineers not to screw up CGMS. After the rule change and with the updated CableCard tuner firmware, the CGMS flag is ignored in this case (when CCI absent).
 
#14 ·
In my area, it was actually most of the cable channels that were marked CGMS copy once (with no CCI being sent). The broadcast channel issues I had were that they were all marked CCI copy once, which was fixed by Charter once Ceton got in contact with someone who knew what to do. Orange14 should confirm on the Hauppauge tuner diagnostics what the copy protection scheme is (CCI or CGMS, I think the tuner web page should say, even the Hauppauge version)


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