How to record via IEEE 1394 (Firewire) to Windows XP - Page 99

From the Cable Box-6412 through firewire
File-Open Capture Device-DirectShow-OK


That will let you watch the show. The only way I have found to capture it is to use the wizard, and I was then NOT able to watch the show at the same time.

Maybe someone smarter can tell you how.

Thanks- I couldent figure out why INHD worked, but the OTA channels do not come through.

Am I correct that it is illegal for comcast to block the OTA channels? I am thinking I will have to raise a stink to get it corrected.

Thanks for the reply

Here's the para:

Tiers and Rates

# The Report and Order finds that digital television signals must be available to subscribers on a basic service tier. The Further Notice seeks comment on voluntary carriage of digital signals on a tier other than the basic tier.

# The Report and Order finds that there may be some cable systems undertaking significant system upgrades, a part of which will include a digital build-out. For these systems, the Report and Order finds that a Form 1235 upgrade rate adjustment would provide an appropriate incentive for a cable operator to upgrade its system and carry digital television signals.

which comes from a 2001 FCC Report and Order re Carriage of DTV on Cable:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/digital.html

Specific links to applicable Federal Code can be found here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...18#post5856618
in particular see sec 76.630:

§ 76.630 Compatibility with consumer electronics equipment.

(a) Cable system operators shall not scramble or otherwise encrypt signals carried on the basic service tier. Requests for waivers of this prohibition must demonstrate either a substantial problem with theft of basic tier service or a strong need to scramble basic signals for other reasons. As part of this showing, cable operators are required to notify subscribers by mail of waiver requests. The notice to subscribers must be mailed no later than thirty calendar days from the date the request waiver was filed with the Commission, and cable operators must inform the Commission in writing, as soon as possible, of that notification date.

So ask if there is a waiver....

I don't believe they are encrypting those signals. and they are in fact clear QAM on the wire. The cable box makes the embedded MPEG2-TS streams available using the HDCP firewire protocol. By setting CCI=2 (copy once), HDCP requires a handshake from a node that insures it is certified to respect the "copy once" flag, and not allow additional copying. TV's and real DVHS devices would have that certification. The PC driver does not, and will only succeed if CCI=0 "copy always" which does not require a certified node.

I think if you had your own QAM tuner you could receive these signals directly off the wire.

The regulation that would seem more relevant is that one that requires the cable companies to supply cable boxes with firewire outputs. I wonder what it says about what measures the cable companies can take to limit redistribution of the firewire output.

My recollection is that mandatory respect for both the "broadcast flag" on over the air broadcasts and the "CCI" flag on cable broadcasts was tied up in Congress, under the watchful eye of Ted Stevens.

Next week, I should be able to shed some light on this.
I currently am watching/capturing HD shows on Comcast. Some of the locals are fine, and some are black as you mentioned. I am getting a QAM tuner, and will check those same channels to see if they work.

Reading those FCC notices, I do not see where it is illegal to not have HDTV in the clear. As long as they provide the signals on the lowest tier, analog basic, I think they are meeting the "laws"

Thanks-

I guess I am out of luck then. It seems odd that comcast blocks something that is available OTA for seemingly no good reason.

Is there a way to make the computer comply with the HDCP handshake?

I have been meticulously following the threads for installation of the drivers using both the firestb and Motorola meistb drivers. I am running windows XP Pro SP 2. The device appears to install but always ends up with the following status

"Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)"

I have manually edited the registry to add SidSpeed under the appropriate registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Enum\\PCI\\VE N_1102&DEV_4001&SUBSYS_00101102&REV_04\\4&1c660dd6&0&12F0\\Device Parameters

Does anyone have a clue how to get around this. The result is any attempts to recognize the STB attached to the FireWire device is unsuccessful.

Thanks

I don't believe it is Comcast setting the CCI bit in this case. OTA channels are usually simply transcoded from 8VSB to QAM with no other processing involved. GENERALLY, CCI is set by the content provider, as it is their content that they want protected.

What KM said is essentially true:



What he is talking about is the Device authentication and key exchange (AKE). This handshake happens anytime the firewire originating device is asked to tranfer "valuable information", which is basically anything where the CCI bits are set to something other than 00 (Copy Freely). If it doesn't get a satisfactory answer to its AKE query, it refuses to transfer any data.

I see CCI defined in the DTCP spec which was inherited by HDCP, for the firewire. It's this flag that I can examine in the 3412's D6 diagnostic screen.

Whats not clear to me is how this directly relates to the OTA broadcast signal. Is there actually a CCI flag defined in 8VSB? I thought that there was a controversial "broadcast flag" for OTA digital broadcasts with which Congress was considering mandating compliance. Is the CCI flag for HDCP just a reflection of that flag?

I also wonder if Comcast even receives the local OTA digital signals via 8VSB, which is an RF modulation standard. I would think they would get a digital feed more directly.

I've been trying to contact engineering both at Comcast and the originating local stations to ask if they are actually setting CCI=2 on purpose. No responses yet. In my area its only the ABC and NBC affiliates that have CCI=2. CBS, FOX, TBS, WB as well as the premium cable channels are all at CCI=0.

HELP! I Have installed the drivers for the STB firewire config. I was wondering if there was a way to watch Live TV over the firewire port using the windows MCE software?! If so, how?!

Thanks.

The CCI flag is set in the MPEG2 encoding process, and really has nothing to do with either 8VSB or QAM. Since Comcast isn't encoding OTA HD, (it is already at MPEG2, the 8VSB or QAM is just the delivery method), they shouldn't be the ones to set the flag. There is an eMedialive article that talks a little about CCI. Unfortunately, being a newbie posting on this forum, I can't include the URL (I haven't had 5 posts yet.... ) However, if you go to the eMedialive site and search on CCI, you should get a hit on an article called "Changing of the Guard".

The pertinent portion in this discussion can be found on page 3, under the heading Protection in the Real World

Once you do decide that your content should be protected, the CCI flag must be added to the MPEG transport stream. Alas, the CCI flag can't be placed into a basic MPEG transport stream; it was created long before the HD copy protection standards were released. Fortunately, the creators of MPEG transport specification realized that they could not anticipate every possible future extension. Consequently, they set aside a special portion of the stream, called private data, where new features could be incorporated into the stream.

For example, the DTLA has defined a DTCP descriptor that is placed into this private data area. This descriptor contains the CCI flag and related info that source devices can use to detect if the stream is copy protected. The DTCP descriptor should be added to the MPEG transport stream when it is first created.

The article goes on to say that the flag could be set anywhere before it gets to the end user, but why would Comcast want to do that? It isn't their content, and they would need to buy another piece of equipment to insert it.


Getting an 8VSB signal off the air and transcoding, it is usually a whole lot cheaper than building a digital link from the studio to get it more directly. In the past decade or so, many cable companies have partnered with TV stations to get a direct link between the studio and the cable headend, BUT, it was usually built and optimized for the analog NTSC signal, as that was the signal that was most susceptible to interference. On the other hand, the links done most recently were probably designed and built so that both the analog and digital signals could be transported. I don't know what the deal is in your area, but where I am, in New England, the analog comes from a studio feed and the HD is received OTA and transcoded. The only exception I am aware of is one TV station that was waiting to get their DTV transmitter built and licensed, and built a digital link to the cable HE so they could at least get their HD signal in front of cable subscribers.

Hi, I just started recording TV shows off my 6412 yesterday and mostly everything works great. Most shows look perfect but I've ran into a few shows that simply look really bad when recorded. There's lots of artifacts in the video (I tried to take a screen capture but printscreen won't do the trick on video). I then try to re-record the video but run into the same problem.

I'm using the latest version of CapDVHS. Does anyone have any suggestions? The TV show looks fine while it's playing on the TV, only after it's been captured does it look artifacted. Is there an alternative program to use? Some different settings to try? Thanks in advance.

NO

You could try VLC media player to see how it looks as it is playing. I have not figured out how to watch while I record with it yet.

Thanks for the info, but I'm still a bit bothered by this. Recently the FCC issued a rule mandating a "broadcast flag"

http://www.eff.org/IP/broadcastflag/...cast%20flag%22

The rule was then over turned by the court saying the FCC exceeded its authority. The congress is now poised to pass legislation to give the FCC that authority.

Reading from that rule, the FCC says

"The ATSC flag itself represents a series of bits,several of which define the descriptor tag and length with others reserved for optional additional redistribution control information that may be defined in the future. The BPDG Final Report anticipates that demodulators in DTV broadcast reception equipment would recognize the presence of the ATSC flag and then signal the device to output the marked content to connectors associated with approved content protection or recording technologies. In order for a flag-based protection system to work, therefore, all demodulators used in DTV broadcast reception equipment would need to have the ability to recognize and give effect to the ATSC flag and a list of approved content protection and recording technologies would need to be developed.
.....
there is very little cost involved for a manufacturer to implement [flag recognition], assuming that existing technologies such as DTCP (5C) are accepted as approved BroadcastFlag protection technologies"

This makes it seem to me that they anticipate the flag as at the ATSC level at the OTA transmitter, not at the mpeg level, and that the CCI flag which is part of DTCP is implemented at the cable box (or maybe the headend) to reflect the intent of the ATSC flag.

Do you mean watching the TV show in VLC player while it's recording? I've watched the completed transport stream in both Windows Media Player Classic and VLC Player and they both display artifacts, but I've never tried to view the stream while it's recording. Can that be done in VLC?

Hey Guys,

Just got some new Firewire Cables, I Am Interested in trying this with My DVR Box,

So,

What Drivers Whould I Need for the Motorola 6416 Rev II HD/DVR Dual Tuner to work with Windows XP SP2 IEEE

Also, Would Adobe Premiere 6.5 Or Virtual Dub Correctly Tune to The IEEE connection?, I Plan On also using the IEEE for my HDCam as well.

I understand what you are saying, but the broadcast flag and CCI (or DTCP) are different animals.

The Broadcast flag was designed to limit re-distribution, while the CCI flag was designed to limit copying. It sounds like we are just talking semantics here, but if the Broadcast flag were implemented, it would not limit the amount of copies that you made, it would limit their distribution outside of your "personal digital network environment".

This is from comments filed by the MPAA with the US Patent and Trademark Office:

It should be noted that the Broadcast Flag Solution is not a means of "copy protection." It is a technical means of preventing unauthorized redistribution of digital broadcast television content outside the personal digital network environment. As such, the Broadcast Flag Solution does not prevent or limit the number of physical copies being made within the home. It requires only that such copies be sufficiently secure so as to prevent such copies from being a source of unauthorized redistribution outside the home.

I suspect that in the absence of the ability to use the Broadcast flag, your local OTA broadcasters have decided to use the CCI flag instead. The Copy Once flag of CCI effectively does the same thing as the Broadcast flag in securing content from redistribution, but at a higher personal cost, as it also limits the amount of copies that can be made, or whether they can be made at all, due to the handshake needed to determine a legal node.

Rereading your post, I *think* we are saying the same thing regarding the intent of the CCI flag. I think we may still have a difference of opinion on who is actually implementing the flag. I would submit that if it was Comcast doing the insertion, why just on ABC and NBC, and why NOT on the premiums? It would seem to me that the premiums would be the ones they would really like to protect.

thank you bdraw for the informative post 3 years ago.

I am new here trying to decide which way to record OTA HD channels - 1. buy an HDTV tuner with 1394 output, and record in Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP. 2. Buy an ATSC PCI card and high end PC, record directly on disk. I have access to latest Windows Media Center and Vista software. Anyone did this before? please email me at gmail, my alias is hdtvtech. maybe we can share resources and ideas to make HD recording easier/better. thanks,

shunyc,
if you are interested in Windows TV tuner based capture, you should really check out the HTPC computers section of AVS.
There are people discussing almost every single current(and past) solution.

If I use the outermost firewire port it works fine, but the inner one screws up my box. Use the other port and see if that fixes it.

I have an issue that has been reported by a few others, but I haven't seen a reply to any of them.

I appear to be recording; however, everything is blank in capdvhs (stuff that tells you about the stream you're copying). But the file size is growing just fine. I checked that 5C=0 (and it does).

This is not working on 2 different machines. same exact thing happens. The resultant output isn't viewable in anything.

Any advice?

Does it happen on all channels? Check the CCI flag. This has been recently discussed in this thread.

That's it. A thread with nearly 100 pages, I guess it's easy to miss a page or two if you don't know exactly what to search for.

For other's that wind up at my post looking to find out why you can't record anything...here's the deal.

Cox (or maybe your cable subscriber) started using the CCI flag (mine is set to 0x02). To check yours on a motorola box, on the remote click cable | power off | Select | Select

Scroll to the d06 menu and click select...look at the flags at the bottom and find CCI. If it isn't 0 then you can't copy via firewire.

Well this makes the DVR that less attractive to me. Might be time to look at satelite and TIVO.

EDIT: Now that I swapped tuners not all the stations are showing up as CCI = 2, so I think I was looking at the wrong tuner. This may not be a cox issue, but a broadcast issue as dr1394 stated below.

DTCP/5C is (or was) an approved way of implementing the Broadcast Flag, so they are tied together. In DTCP, there is a special mode called EPN (Encryption Plus Non-assertion). In this mode, the stream is encrypted, but the CCI is set to "Copy-free". By encrypting the stream, redistribution (especially to PC's) is controlled. But with DTCP devices, copying is unlimited.

My guess is that what folks are seeing with the inability to record OTA stations is an implementation of the Broadcast Flag that was never turned off when the Broadcast Flag was repealed. Many OTA stations are still sending the Broadcast Flag in their bitstreams. The cable companies and STB's were ready for the Broadcast Flag, so the software exists (remember, it got repealed at the last second).

People complain when an OTA stations forgets to "flip the switch" to HD. In this case, the cable companies and OTA stations have forgot to "flip the switch" back to no Broadcast Flag and/or recognition of it.

Ron

New issue. How can I tell if a PPV has CCI set? I can't copy it off, but now can copy other stuff (after I switched the tuner via the remote's swap button).

I Run COX Hampton Roads (moto, DCT6416R3, and my CCI = 0x00, Even if they disable it, I Have Ways of Doing it other than Firewire, i just started using Firewire Because its more convienent (as evident from My post above),

Can you elaborate? Does it involve connecting the box HD to a PC, or analog capture?

I've gotten my HTPC to change channels on my motorola DCT6412 via firewire. That works great. Anyone had any luck or tried to control their PVR functions via firewire? I've stumbled onto the "pause" and "record" ones , but nothing else. The codes listed in the "readme" file with the firestb file do not work.
Thanks.

Doc

I have read through almost the entire thread and have found an answer to almost every question I could possibly have. The knowledgable answers are astounding! I would like to thank everyone involved in the questioning and answering on this crazy 100 page thread!! My problem is in recieving certain stations and I think I know the answer to why. It all started when I found a beta program claiming to be able to control our local cable DVR box within Windows MCE 2005, at a recent expo and had tinkered with it but found little use due to the encryption. At the time I was unable to receive any video, but heard audio that was choppy on some stations. I was installing this system for a client and already had the IR blaster setup working flawlessly with the ALL IN ONE 8900RF remote so I completed the job as normal.

The program was titled MCE 2005 STB Controller and I havent been able to find the CD again but have had some free time recently and started working on the project at my home. I live in Maine where Adelphia was purchased by Time Warner Cable due to their legal problems. I wish I had been able to test these channels before the switch to know if the encryption was the same. I dont have a Digtal VHS recorder to try either. I am able to recieve all channels on the basic package (2-72) plus VOD including premium services (which is GREAT to record for a later date but cant be controlled within any of my HTPC frontends so as of now VOD is useless). When I try to view any digtal or movie station it fails. I get 2 HD stations (PBS, FSNHD). I have checked the 5C encryption and on one tuner it shows some channels locked and some not. On the other tuner is shows all unlocked (or set to =0). So I also checked the CCI which is set to =02. From what I have gathered thats the problem. No one is able to bypass the record once setting. I found a PDF by searching google with the search phrase "bypass cable CCI protection" - should be first link. That is incredibly in depth and even gets into the algorithms used to create the encryption. I am sure anyone that can understand that stuff has already seen or know that information. But incase no one has seen it maybe it will help lead to a solution.

I simply want to be able to create a media center that will play all cable broadcast stations in their native format. It just makes no sense to create an all in one system that cant access all the available media! I havent seen any legal problems that prevent use from acheiving this goal. So I guess my question is "Is this a dead issue with our current hardware options or is it a matter of someone creating a driver stack to handshake with the protection.

One thing that give me hope is that when I switch back to live TV from VOD while watching through VLC and PIP (to control the box) it shows about 5-10 seconds of the "encrypted" video. My guess is this means it shows the video until it checks the CCI protection again? Anyone know if that makes sense?

I also thank anyone who makes it through this post. I didnt intend for my first post to the forum to be this extensive. I also hope I can be a helpful tester for any future break throughs!