[mythtv] TiVo versus MCE versus my cable company

[Alan Gonzalez]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:23:35 -0800, Brad Templeton
<brad+mydev at templetons.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 09:21:05PM -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> > Brad Templeton wrote:
>
> If I were trying to make it really secure, I see a few things I could
> do.   It's limiting, but you could put all video-needing operations
> right into the decoder card.   For example, rewind/ff/seek would be
> done via the card.  OSD would also be done that way, though frankly
> you want to do that in the card anyway.  The card could give
> unencrypted access to all the metadata streams if they are not
> unencrypted already, and to the index to allow the controlling software
> to know how to seek.   The card could allow access to a scaled down
> version of the stream which would allow things like preview window,
> program guide display, picture in picture, and yes, even commercial
> elimination.
> 
> All the features we've thought of so far, but none or few of the ones
> we will think of in the future.
> 

ILast year I sat down and read the Cable Card specs and security
extensions.  I haven't done any bare metal discovery for a while, but
the security extension is pretty tricky.  The cable card and the slot
on the other side have an exchange protocol which relies on two sets
of keys (one is a static exchange the other is dynamic) and the
process has a licensing Board/Consortium who won't license the device
until you abide by their rules.  (seemed they might have a patent or
two).  Their rules say the stream will be protected if the protection
bit is on coming off the cablecard.

So like Brad said, I seem to remember a disable feature so they may be
able to detect a type of workaround and deny it through the cablecard.
 It's been a year since I read the spec, so I'm a little hazy on it.

Alan