The nuisance of HDTV "premium" encryption and HDCP

[BonzaiDuck]

Please comment or share your experiences.

My Z68 Sandy-Bridge system does "extra duty" as an HTPC as if the "home theater" were a minor background service.

I have a SiliconDust HomeRun PRIME network device, which pulls my HD-cable subscription (with premiums) through a CISCO "tuner adapter." Both the HomeRun and the CISCO are fitted each with a cable-card provided by my Charter provider.

Media Center integrates over-the-air broadcast HDTV with web TV (like NetFlix) and the cable-TV (via LAN). A person couldn't want much better.

Now . . . the plot thickens. I had originally set up the Z68 system to "Turbo" overclock the i7-2600K processor to 4.6 Ghz on demand. In BIOS, I had left HyperThreading enabled. Eventually, I decided to disable HT.

Suddenly, it appears that I would have to run the Media Center HD/cable-card wizard all over again and power-cycle both the CISCO and HomeRun devices to restore my channel-lineup and access.

So I decided not to bother.

The plot thickens again . . . . the system uses ISRT with the Intel IRST software to accelerate my HDD with a Patriot Pyro SSD. Media Center writes to a separate, non-ISRT hard disk. Like many, I chose a cautionary path and configured the ISRT in "Enhanced" mode. [This limits the write-rate to the HDD's write-rate.] "Maximized" mode offers much faster writes, but with greater risk in the event the system crashes. But this system doesn't . . . ever . . . freakin' . . . CRASH! So I decided to set ISRT to "Maximized."

After making that simple little change in the Intel ISRT, I suddenly discover that several encrypted HD channels don't deliver their signal properly -- there are screen freezes on the HDTV. So I had to power-cycle the CISCO and HomeRun for the second time in one day.

HDCP goes too far. You should be able to change your system's settings in any way that does not otherwise cause the Windows 7 OS to need reactivation. But . . . not with HDCP.

 

[NutBucket]

I don't follow what how your problem has anything to do with HDCP.

 

[kornphlake]

I didn't really follow either. Did a reboot of the affected devices restore proper function or is there some actual problem that needs further troubleshooting?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I didn't really follow either. Did a reboot of the affected devices restore proper function or is there some actual problem that needs further troubleshooting?

More than one cause may interact with these problems. Media Center's "cable-card" wizard also assesses HDCP compliance. Once the channel lineup for HDTV has been established (including premiums), the changes (Hyperthreading, etc.) seem to cause trouble with the premiums, and now -- I can't remember whether simple power-cycling restored everything, or if I didn't just revert to the original settings to get things straight.

With the change in software settings (IRST), power-cycling seemed to resolve the problem. When I changed the BIOS HyperThreading, the indications seemed to require a complete re-run of the HDCP "verification" in Media Center, and/or re-running the digital cable/cable-card wizard.

My post is more of an editorial remark, and I wondered if anyone else had experienced the same sort of annoyances.

 

[Destiny]

More than one cause may interact with these problems. Media Center's "cable-card" wizard also assesses HDCP compliance. Once the channel lineup for HDTV has been established (including premiums), the changes (Hyperthreading, etc.) seem to cause trouble with the premiums, and now -- I can't remember whether simple power-cycling restored everything, or if I didn't just revert to the original settings to get things straight.

With the change in software settings (IRST), power-cycling seemed to resolve the problem. When I changed the BIOS HyperThreading, the indications seemed to require a complete re-run of the HDCP "verification" in Media Center, and/or re-running the digital cable/cable-card wizard.

My post is more of an editorial remark, and I wondered if anyone else had experienced the same sort of annoyances.

What HDCP does for my stuff is just mute the Audio...

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I've swapped out ram, video cards, and made BIOS changes and they have never caused an issue with HDCP. The only time HDCP has been a problem was when swapping a hard-drive or CPU.

ime, the most difficult problems with CC tuners have been with video card drivers, audio drivers, tuner firmware issues, and maintaining signal strength and SNR in that "Goldilocks zone," where it's not too hot and not too cold.

Honestly I would never have an HTPC as a dual-/multi-use system. An HTPC should be dedicated to that and only that purpose and once it's finally tweaked and working properly, don't change it. It's the only way you'll get any reliability out of one.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've swapped out ram, video cards, and made BIOS changes and they have never caused an issue with HDCP. The only time HDCP has been a problem was when swapping a hard-drive or CPU.

ime, the most difficult problems with CC tuners have been with video card drivers, audio drivers, tuner firmware issues, and maintaining signal strength and SNR in that "Goldilocks zone," where it's not too hot and not too cold.

Honestly I would never have an HTPC as a dual-/multi-use system. An HTPC should be dedicated to that and only that purpose and once it's finally tweaked and working properly, don't change it. It's the only way you'll get any reliability out of one.

Interesting . . . per your list of hardware-swaps without problem. In my case, I'd changed a BIOS parameter (HT) that affects behavior of the CPU. I explored all the avenues you would test to resolve the problem without reversing the parameter change, but it was only a return to the "Enable HT" setting that resolved it.

Since then, I've only had to reset the SiliconDust HomeRun PRIME and the tuner adapter when something has changed from the cable-provider's end. For instance, I might have noticed that they added an "HD" channel for MSNBC (which had previously been part of the SD channel-lineup component). So those pieces of hardware needed to be re-initialized.

Also, I actually might agree with your notion that HTPC deserves a separate system. I think my own choices were driven by a desire to control power-consumption in the household generally. Except for using "DVR" features of Media Center and the SiliconDust device, the HTPC functions of this Sandy Bridge machine affect CPU and memory usage in ways almost too small to measure. So this "mixed usage" has otherwise been a great success for me. The "DVR" usage mostly seems to increase RAM usage, and leaves a big memory leak (say -- going from 35% RAM usage to 67% after an HD recording). The memory leak is resolved by closing the Media Center application and restarting it, and I might have to do something like that every few days. I could have to do a "Restart" on the computer more frequently just for the installation sequence to Windows Updates.

Probably, I'll make a "special day" to make BIOS changes such as those I mentioned, and then go through the entire "cable-card Wizard" routine again. Meanwhile, with this machine as stable as it is, I'll take time to just "think about it . . ."

Even so -- these HDCP and encryption features -- probably promoted by Jack Valenti (RIP) and his allied interests -- are still a nuisance. Nothing left to do about it, I suppose.

Let me sincerely thank you all for your comments.