[mythtv] TiVo versus MCE versus my cable company

[Brad Templeton]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:46:56PM -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> On Thursday 03 March 2005 15:06, Florin Andrei wrote:
> > If you didn't see it on Slashdot:
> > 
> > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/03/1747237&tid=129
> > 
> > Actual article here:
> > 
> > http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000509.html
> > 
> > Essentially it's a comparison between 3 DVR solutions. MythTV is not
> > mentioned, unfortunately.
> 
> Anybody catch this link embedded in the article?
> 
> http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000373.html
> 
> As I've said before, I'm curious to see what kind of solution MS MCE 
> uses to satisy the 'robustness' clause of the broadcast flag 
> regulation... obviously they believe they'll have a PC-based (Shuttle 
> XPC) solution that accepts a CableCard by Q3 this year.

There are a number of approaches I could speculate on them taking.

I don't think it's ready yet, but clearly Palladium (TCPA) would be
the long term answer to this question.

If they have to do this before it's ready, they would do similar
stuff.   The cablecard slot would refuse to decrypt for any
applications it doesn't trust.   This could be as simple as the
card demanding a magic key from the applications, or it could be
much more.

However, it might be that simple.  Yes, careful reverse engineers
could find out the keys (though they might be custom to that particular
PCI card or cablecard and thus only useful to you) but you might risk
a DMCA violation by using them.

And besides, that's all a lot of work, even when you can do it.
They know the systems don't secure the content perfectly and there
will be leakage.  If leakage is limited to the people who can hack the
keys out of their card and possibly violate the DMCA to get it to decrypt
the video, they appear to be happy.  Even though that one decrypted copy
might spread all over the net.

Of course, they might also arrange for each card to insert a custom
string steggo'd into the video it decrypts, if they want to find out
who did it.

Cards could also expect to be able to call home for new keys on
a regular basis.

But they don't need to work that hard, just hard enough to raise the
bar until they can deploy Palladium in the MCE computers.