[mythtv-users] HDHR Prime queries

[James Miller]

On Thu, 21 May 2015, James Miller wrote:

> In fact, I just stopped in at the TWC store and picked up an M-card to begin 
> some initial experiments. They tried to give me a digital transport adapter 
> along with it, but I declined. I'm interested, initially, to see what (if 
> anything) comes in without the DTA. I'll report back on that.

That turned out to be a pretty quick test. Setting up the M-card was 
fairly brief and painless: about a 5-minute phone call to dictate some 
configuration information and edit a couple of things was all it took.

After that I did a channel scan using the HDHDR3's web interface. It found 
close to 100 channels. It became immediately clear, however, that things 
were not going to go so well for my purposes: at least half of those 
channels had a little "DRM" graphic beside them. It looked to me like the 
channels without that graphic were mostly the clear QAM channels I'd 
previously detected, before having inserted the M-card, with this device.

I decided to test a couple of recordings, one of a channel marked with the 
DRM graphic, and another of a channel without the graphic (one of the new 
channels that did not show up in the scan list before I got the M-card). 
The results were predictable: the recording starts and finishes on the 
channel with the DRM graphic, but no video or audio content displays on 
playback; for the channel not marked with the DRM graphic, the recording 
also succeeds but it plays back fine. The DRM channel I tested is, by the 
way, one that I continue to bring in in analog format through one of my 
HVR-1950's.

So, obviously DRM restrictions are already in place for most digital cable 
broadcasting in my area. The HDHR3 therefore isn't going to be of much use 
to me. Looks like, for MythTV users in my area who get content from TWC, 
only a STB/DTA with component video out will allow them to continue using 
their systems as they had previously.

Just out of curiosity, had I gotten the DTA I was offered at the TWC 
store, would anything have gone differently (I have no component video in 
on this machine and I believe there was no component video out on the 
DTA)? The DRM restrictions would still have prevented me from recording 
anything, right?