Has there been WDRM "creep" with Media Center? Seeking some answers . . .

[BonzaiDuck]

I've used my old monster Q6600 system with terabyte RAID5 for watching TV on a second large monitor, with an AverMedia combo M780 tuner-capture card configured to Windows Media Center. This is Media Center under VISTA-64.

I've nearly completed building and tuning a Sandy Bridge system with the Z68 chipset. It runs Windows 7. I had planned to get a new license to Roxio Creator 11 and install it, having used it to previously to convert DVR-MS files to MPEG.

And I was able to make these DVR-MS to MPEG conversions occasionally -- one, two or three years earlier. There had never been a problem with DRM.

Now I've discovered that I can't any longer convert TV captures to strip them of the DVR-MS wrapper, and I get messages saying "You don't have the rights to copy/convert . . . . " etc.

Now . . . that's not so terrible, since I have no plans to write DVDs of these movies and TV shows, or distribute copies "illegally." I just want to continue being able to view some of the captures -- the HBO "Pacific" series, a few movies, documentaries, some episodes of "Breaking Bad."

But I am now worried that I may not be able to move the DVR-MS files from the old Q6600 system to the Z68-system and play them under Windows 7 Media Center.

Is Microsoft going to let me move my DVR-MS files to a new machine so I can continue watching them? Or have they somehow tied "digital rights" to the old hardware and its VISTA-64 OS?

Can anyone confirm what I can expect, as I stand at a crossroads for moving my AVerMedia tuner card to the new Z68 system?

 

[ViRGE]

Are these new recordings you're having a problem with, or are old recordings suddenly having issues? AFAIK nothing has changed with Windows Media Center - your cable company may be flagging the shows as Copy Once however.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Are these new recordings you're having a problem with, or are old recordings suddenly having issues? AFAIK nothing has changed with Windows Media Center - your cable company may be flagging the shows as Copy Once however.

Well . . . a few more hours will tell if I can play the captured content from the VISTA Media Center on the Windows 7 Media Center of another machine.

"Copy Once" can mean any number of things, or there are any number of ways to define it depending on the protections put in place to achieve the desired WDRM objective.

Even if it were the cable company, their strictures would have to be enforceable through Microsoft's own context. If I could burn to DVD some HBO movies a year or so ago from DVR-MS files, how is it that I cannot burn the new ones?

I'm going to find out, I guess ..

 

[ViRGE]

Well . . . a few more hours will tell if I can play the captured content from the VISTA Media Center on the Windows 7 Media Center of another machine.

"Copy Once" can mean any number of things, or there are any number of ways to define it depending on the protections put in place to achieve the desired WDRM objective.

Even if it were the cable company, their strictures would have to be enforceable through Microsoft's own context. If I could burn to DVD some HBO movies a year or so ago from DVR-MS files, how is it that I cannot burn the new ones?

I'm going to find out, I guess ..

Copy Once is defined by the Copy Control Information standard.

Copy Never: Cannot be recorded

Copy Once: Can be recorded. Copies cannot be transferred

Copy Freely: Can be recorded. Copies can be further copied and transferred

Windows Media Center (including Vista) enforces CCI. So if your shows were previously Copy Freely and are now marked at Copy Once/Never, then WMC will not allow you to copy them. What you're describing is consistent with your cable company changing how shows are flagged.

 

[Modelworks]

I haven't heard of any cable companies enabling the flags though they have been present for a very long time.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Since I last visited this, I've made more "discoveries" . . .

My new Z68 system had included a transferred AverMedia M780 TV-tuner-capture card from my VISTA system, reconfigured to Windows Media Center in the Windows 7 (z68) system.

During the three or so months since I first built the Z68 Sandy Bridge computer, I recorded a few TV shows and an old B&W movie on channels through my cable provider. Some of these were premiums; others weren't.

Of the two coax-in connections for the M780, one of them was connected to the cable-set-top-box for cable-TV input; the other brought in O-T-A HD broadcasts from an HD antenna.

Around November 1, the HD tuner in the M780 went on the fritz. It died. I could continue to watch cable-tv input -- or even record shows -- through the remaining analog tuner. To replace the Avermedia M780, I ordered the Hauppauge HVR-2250 -- not the optimal solution I've currently identified, but it worked. I also went down to the cable-TV companies offices and replaced an old "digital" set-top with one which "upgraded" us to HD. Of course, the HD cable channels were always "there," and the subscription upgrade depended on having a set-top which gave access to those channels.

Except for the fact that the HVR-2250 only receives a 480p-SD signal from the new "1080i-HD" set-top, I can still watch those "new" channels through Media Center.

Suddenly, though, I cannot play back DVR recordings made before I swapped out the M780 card for the HVR-2250 card -- unless I only want to hear the audio and watch a blank/black screen. This is true as well for PBS broadcasts -- a documentary I recorded -- which didn't have the other issues I mentioned in this thread earlier.

A SiliconDust HD Homerun PRIME three-tuner cable-CARD device is currently being shipped so that I can get streaming HD content to any computer on my LAN, and so I can remove the Hauppauge card or deploy it in another way. So I hope that any NEW broadcast recordings I make will at least be "playable" in this new configuration.

UPDATE: The plot thickens. As I said -- couldn't play recordings made with the replaced tuner-capture-card. But one of those recordings -- a PBS broadcast -- had been rendered into an ISO file. I can still burn the ISO to disc, and playback is normal.

But the DVRMS file of the original PBS recording will not have a picture when I play it back now.