[mythtv-users] Hauppauge USB CableCard Tuner for $129!

[Ken Truesdale]

> On motorola full cable boxes you can hit "Power, Select, Select" to get
> into the diagnostics menu and see copy controls, DTA's may have one too.
> Search for your boxes name and diagnostic menu. One of the menus should
> show a variable called CCI Flag and 0x00 is copy freely.
> This would have to be done per channel, you can also do it via firewire to a
> cable box with a script to get all channels status, but I haven't done that
> yet.
> 
> Lee 


Great info, Lee.  I didn't know about this trick and although you have to do it channel by channel, it does show a wealth of info about each channel.  I have Comcast and I discovered Comedy Central HD has CCI = 0x02.  Obviously that's not copy freely and I know from experience that I can't record to MythTV from Comedy Central HD so that does fit.  

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to read more about the values I might see in the CCI Flag field?  Or to read more about what else you can learn from this debug menu - what the other fields mean, etc.?  

For anyone reading that wants to try it, start with the cable box on.  Then, using the front panel buttons (not the remote), push the power button once and then the select button twice.  When the menu comes up, you can then use the remote to navigate.  Current Channel Status is the listing and on my box it is "d06".  And I got 3 pages of info - one for the channel tuned on the most recently active tuner, one for the channel on the other tuner, and one with additional info.  So With a dual tuner box, you'd be able to set both tuners to channels you want info about and then do the power-select-select trick.  


Ken.