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<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Eric Mesa <<a href="mailto:ericsbinaryworld@gmail.com">ericsbinaryworld@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">I've been doing a lot of reading and research with respect to current cable trends in the US as well as reading the MythTV lists daily and some of the archives. First of all, I don't understand the point of QAM cards. Everyone on this list seems to always say that all they get are the local channels in HD. Can it be that Hauppauge and all those companies are including QAM tuners just for that? It would seem that, where available, it would be much better to just use ATSC. You're going to get all the local channels PLUS subbands and it won't be compressed so the picture quality will be better.<br>
<br>Second, there is not and does not seem there will ever be a Cablecard implementation for MythTV. And, forget reverse engineering it because according to some people on the MythTV mailing list, it's pretty much impossible to crack and can be reset instantaneously if they find out it's broken. Fine....Cablecard seems to be on the way out anyway as the cable companies move to DCAS/OCAP solutions.<br>
<br>So, we come to DCAS/OCAP which will be released REAL SOON NOW (TM) and basically would work by having a programmable chip that runs some program on Java and determines what you can record and what channels you're allowed to watch. So I think the hope lies here, if companies such as Hauppage start producing cards with the DCAS/OCAP chips, then you should be able to hook up the card to the cable network and lie to Comcast (et al) and tell them you have a TiVo, please send the authorization codes down the line. I figure something like this should be a lot easier than Cablecard because since the cable company can reprogram the chip on your card, they don't have to worry as much about the encryption keys leaking or whatever. So we get MythTV to lie and say it's a TiVo or a TV or something like that so that the Java app will allow it to work.<br>
<br>I think if we can't get that to work, then there will be a very limited usage case for MythTV in the USA. From what I read on the mailing lists all the time, everyone seems to have an incredibly hard time interfacing with the STB, which is the only alternative. Also, I've been wondering, how do you record multiple channels? I imagine this would require multiple STBs. Ok, if that's where we end up, I'm ok with that - it's not a perfect solution, but what the heck. So how in the world would I change the channels on all these boxes? With an IR blaster how do I ensure that I only change one box and not all of the boxes? I recently got rid of my Comcast STB (after I got my MythTV working) and it doesn't have serial or Firewire ports. So IR blasting would be the only way to go if everything went to digital.<br>
<br>Finally, so is there no longer any such thing as stealing cable? I remember when I was a kid, certain adults I knew had boxes that allowed them to get Pay-Per-View, HBO, etc But if Digital is SOOOO hard to decrypt that we're left without options - have the cable companies finally won against those who were accessing channels they hadn't paid for? And if illegal cable still exists, then don't users have the "right" to decrypt those channels they have paid for? In other words, if there's a method for decrypting and I only use it for the channels that I paid for, what would be their argument? Sure, there's the DMCA, but that allows for breaking encryption for access. According to an article I read in IEEE Spectrum, the deCSS library on Linux is actually legal. </blockquote>
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<div>My cable subscription is $14/mo and get 12 stations, 10 of which are also delivered to me via unencrypted QAM. Now I may be the minority of cable subscribers, but I already have enough TV to watch on those 12 stations that I don't miss the others and what I do miss I get via Netflix on DVD or online methods. CableCARD isn't the death of MythTV but MythTV does need to continue to expand into online media arenas. Of course, those arenas are just as rife with DRM as the Cable industry. We make due with what we can and the analog hole (see the Hauppauge HD capture card) will always be there for us to employ.</div>
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<div>Kevin</div></div>