[mythtv-users] What's the point of MythTV HD?

[Tom Dexter]

On Dec 3, 2007 9:35 AM, Ken Mandelberg <km at mathcs.emory.edu> wrote:
> What's really missing here is a cable card HD tuner that MythTV could
> access. A cablecard hdhomerun would be optimal, and since CableLabs has
> blessed DTCP-IP it seems that one is possible. This would work a whole
> lot better than renting an expensive HD cablebox and manipulating it
> with a blaster to get a single channel of flakey firewire output.
>

I see this mentioned quite a bit and my first thought is usually
"don't hold your breath".  If cable card HD tuner that could be
accessed by open source projects were made available, it would
essentially obsolete all the encryption used by cable companies...it's
just not going to happen.

Out of curiosity, I just looked at the CHILA (CableCARD Host Licensing
Agreement):

http://www.opencable.com/downloads/CHILA.pdf

Without looking very hard, I found this on page 26:

"2. Controlled Content Paths. Content shall not be available on
outputs other than those
specified in the Compliance Rules, and, within such Licensed Product,
Controlled Content shall
not be present on any user accessible buses (as defined below) in
non-encrypted, compressed
form."

I'm not a lawyer, nor am I in the mood to wade through pages of
legalese, but I'm willing to bet that the holy grail cable card tuner
that so many would love to have would never comply with that
agreement, and is just about as likely as the cable companies simply
abandoning encryption in the first place.

I'm with Michael Dean...I've been using nothing but OTA since
1989...which now consists of a three-tuner DTV mythtv system, with
virtually everything recorded in HD.  The more I hear about everyone's
headaches with cable, encryption etc, the happier I am with it.  I
make sure to tell CableVision all about it when they call trying to
sell me pay TV.

Tom