[mythtv] A new angle on High-Def Satellite capture?

[luitjens at cs.utah.edu]

DirectTV doesn't make the laws.  They give DMCA take down notices to 
places that develop this stuff but a notice doesn't mean it is illegal.  
Unfortunately no one has bothered taking something like this to court in 
order to see if fair use can apply.

Justin

Mark Buechler wrote:
> Um, this isn't a legal gray area at all. DirecTV has made it very 
> clear it is quite illegal. Sites which discuss this topic in any great 
> detail are very quickly closed down. Any software released is quickly 
> squashed. This sort of conversation should really take place off of 
> any MythTV list.
>
> - Mark.
>
> On 3/2/07, *Chris Hamilton* <chamilton at cs.dal.ca 
> <mailto:chamilton at cs.dal.ca>> wrote:
>
>     > The only thing I'm not so sure about is whether Directv is
>     sending out a
>     > standard DVB signal. If it is, there's plenty of DVB cards on the
>     > market, and I'm thinking allthats needed is a user-space decoding
>     > process which should be relatively trivial in the scheme of
>     things. If
>     > its not a standard DVB signal, then the plausibility of this
>     angle is
>     > murky. Does anyone know the answer here?
>
>     The DirecTV signal is not standard DVB, but is closely related. Some
>     older TwinHan DVB cards are able to be tweaked to process the DirecTV
>     signal, and there is also a custom built card (I forget the name,
>     check
>     the forums at dvbn.happysat.org <http://dvbn.happysat.org> ) that
>     can also handle the DirecTV
>     stream.  Thus, it is possible and is already being done.
>
>     Presently, the creator of the custom DVB card (actually a USB based
>     device) and another guy are working on creating a DVB loopback device
>     that wraps the DirecTV stream to make it look like DVB-S standard.  As
>     such, MythTV would be able to natively handle the signal without
>     difficulty.
>
>     The only open question is the authentication. As far as I know, there
>     are already people doing exactly this, involving an external
>     (serial or
>     USB) based interface to the smartcard, passing appropriate data and
>     allowing the smartcard to provide the decryption keys.
>
>     > So, what do you guys think? Any comments are appreciated. I'd
>     like to
>     > stress that I'm a legitimate, paying subscriber, and this idea would
>     > only be able to work for other legit subscribers with a valid,
>     active,
>     > account card. Unfortunately I can't make the time to work on
>     this. But
>     > I'd like to spread the idea around, so if a talented programmer
>     who has
>     > the desire to make a big difference to a lot of people like me, (and
>     > hell, make a stand against DRM) that the idea is available.
>
>     Well, the entire thing is likely only quasi-legal.  Unfortunately, all
>     of the above pieces also make it only a small leap to illegally
>     grabbing
>     the signal.  There are mechanisms of 'subscription' sharing,
>     whereby one
>     card is used to generate the keys/authenticate video for many
>     different
>     front ends.  Couple this with the internet, and you can have
>     geographically diverse people sharing a single subscription.
>
>     So, technically feasible, and already working to some degree.  I
>     actually imagine it won't be much longer before you see a released
>     version of the dvbloopback wrapper, and then you'll have Myth support.
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Chris
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