[mythtv-users] Switching away from comcast to online streams

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:51 AM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
....
> Hence, the need to replace the hardware should it get its key revoked.
> Key revocation means all other HDCP hardware will refuse to communicate
> with it, not that it will suddenly stop working on its own.

Right.  However, it also needs a key revocation input from
some media content (often a Blu Ray disk) that has the new
list.  If one does not use the receiver with new(er) disks, it may
never get revoked (and the device "bricked" as far as HDCP
is concerned).

Since DLP LLC does not document what keys are revoked
(and on what media that revocation is placed, for fairly obvious
reasons), it may be unknown when/if your particular device
might be lobotomized.

Given that HDCP (v1.x) is "broken" (and generating new keys
can be almost trivial), I suspect that DLP LLC may have
stopped revocation except for the egregious examples of
some "interesting" vendors whose entire claim to existence
is to enable bypassing DRM restriction.  And then there are
the "interesting" vendors who have chosen to clone a specific
vendors (set of) keys, the vendor being "too big to fail".

HDCP v2.2 is intended to "solve" the brokeness of
HDCP v1.x (and HDCP v2.x, where x < 2) (for some
values of "solve").  We shall see.

Regardless of the technical capability of smart people,
intentional bypassing of technical controls for DRM is
considered (in the US) to be generally prohibited under
various laws of the nation (specifics, as always, matter).
Without the safe harbor provisions of a declaratory
judgement regarding non-infringement, it is usually in
ones interest to avoid being a member of the test case
(unless you have the resources of Barry Diller to pay
your lawyers :-).

Gary