[mythtv-users] CableCard???

[Craig Partin]

On 11/14/06, Joel Ostheller <j.ostheller at gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking from my experience as a hardware design engineer, and looking
> into the publicly release cablelabs (tm) cable card reader spec... I
> honestly don't know why this technology is not available in the Linux
> world right now.
>
> Before I started looking into it, I figured it had something to do
> with the legal right of the cablelabs cable card reader... but guess
> what... the physical hardware is your standard PCMCIA card... Nothing
> special. Thus it is my belief that you could design a pcHDTV card with
> an included PCMCIA card slot that could be used to descramble
> encrypted cable signals that you legally paid for. The firmware may
> have legal issues but as long as that wasn't developed by the same
> people, who do they sue? no one...
>
> I think the legal issues with the firmware would stem from the
> hardware implementation. The spec has this handshaking mechnisim where
> the cable company not only verifies the cablecard (tm) but the
> hardware it is running in. From my limited understanding, the cable
> companies keep a list of known cablecard (tm) approved products. Thus
> the firmware would want to report a valid cablecard (tm) approved
> serial number. I imagine one could acquire this serial number simply
> by watching the data transaction between an already approved cablecard
> reader device.
>
> Anyways... getting to the point... This is not rocket science. I am
> one who wants this feature for my Myth box. I am paying for the cable,
> and I want it recorded in high def. I just finished moving so I have
> not had a lot of free time for spare hardware design projects, but
> this is one project that I'm just dying to get into. Unfortunately I
> doubt I will be selling it to anyone... Any card I make will probably
> just be a re-engineered HDTV card of some preexisting card (like the
> pcHDTV card) with my added hardware mod....
>
> for any other hardware design engineers out there who want to make a
> buck... I'd love to spend a few hundred for a card like I described...
> and I'm sure there are at least 2000 other in the community who would
> also like this. so that would be 200x2000=400k for you pay pal
> account. probably a Conservative number.
>
> On 11/13/06, Greg Ferreri <gferreri at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm thinking of making the jump to HDTV in the next month or so.  So far,
> > MythTV has been awesome and I'm planning on taking it with me when I make
> > the jump, probably getting a PCHDTV card.  But there's one huge shortcoming
> > -- I can't subscribe to any encrypted HDTV channels and expect to be able to
> > watch them through my Myth box.  I've heard rumblings about the CableCard
> > technology that will apparently allow devices to legally decode these
> > channels... does anyone know whether MythTV will be able to work with these
> > things???  It sounds like Myth could be dead in the water in a couple years
> > without them.
> >


In this case, Microsoft is our friend.  They want to be in the living
room badly.  They will work out a deal with the content providers the
get decryption in the media center PCs.  Someone will find a way to
make this work in Linux.