[mythtv] 6100 series STB boxes - FOUND THE PROBLEM!

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 09:10 -0400, Joe Borne wrote:
> 4. Whether the channel is a "premium" channel (TNTHD, ESPNHD etc) or a
> channel that is free OTA (ABC, NBC, CBS etc) is not a factor. I have
> examples of both being blocked.
> 5. The CCI bit on every channel that is blocked is set to 0x02, and on every channel that works
> it's set to 0x00.
> 
> Josh has confirmed my findings on several pieces of equipment in their labs. He is going to
> request they fix this situation. He is in contact with a technician at the head office and
> has promised to get back to me in the next day or two with their response concerning this.

It sounds like you have a good cable company, I might still have cable
if I had gotten this level of cooperation from my local cable companies.

Anyway, I believe "CCI=0x02" means "copy once", which is not allowed
to be set for broadcast channels, and really shouldn't be set for other
channels when you are paying for them. But, I can see it possibly
making sense for preview channels, and the EFF only asked that the
FCC require DRM be disabled on the main tiers of programming, containing
things like C-SPAN, SciFi, etc. 

According to google a CCI of:
  0x00 => copy freely
  0x01 => no more copies
  0x02 => copy once
  0x03 => copy never

And from AVCForum's toadtaste, "Any Channel that is unencrypted should
have no CCI value other than 0x00" (sic).

Some AVCForum members also espouse the hypothesis that the copy once on
OTA broadcasts is a remnant of the "Broadcast Flag" regulation. It
wasn't declared illegal until just before it was to take effect so the
STB software writers had already implemented it in all their software
and shipped out firmware that was suddenly illegal to ship. Scientific
Atlanta appears to have fixed the illegal to use firmware and shipped
it to their customers, while Motorola only appears to have provided
a working new firmware for their newest boxes.

-- Daniel