[mythtv-users] Broadcast Flag Article mentions MythTV and quotes Issac

Jay R. Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Thu Mar 3 20:08:52 UTC 2005


On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 11:56:29AM -0500, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 11:47 -0500, Maverick wrote:
> > Will MythTV obey the broadcast flag if it where to become law? Being
> > an open source project, seems like everyone would just remove that
> > section of code using "illegal" patches.
> 
> You are missing the point of the problem.  Software like Myth will not
> even get access to the content to strip/remove/skip/ignore the flag.
> The knowledge (i.e. programming specs) needed to get the information
> from the HDTV capture card will not be available to a project like Myth
> for those very reasons.

Alas, Brian, even *you* are missing the point.  ;-)

My understanding of the requirements of the broadcast flag are that
hardware implementations like those on tuner cards, *would be required
to do the filterinf (forcing down-convert) *inside the silicon of the
card* -- there's some question as to whether even firmware is secure
enough.

It's akin to cellular scanners (which, incidentally, are *still*
illegal, even though maybe as much as 0.5% of cell phone calls are at
800-Analog these days): you couldn't just put in a jumper that user's
could clip: you had to program the blocks inside a chip.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

      If you can read this... thank a system adminstrator.  Or two.  --me


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