[mythtv-users] XBMC + Myth = ?? Was:Comcast Cable encrypted channels

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 05 August 2009 07:46:11 Alan Marchiori wrote:

>
> As predicted everything went fine.  XBMC does support 64bit with their
> apt distribution.  I also got the playOn server working with hulu and
> netflix with little problems.  It is actually pretty nice (I was
> expecting less).  For now I'm running it on a core2 laptop @ 1.5GHz
> and it uses 50-60% CPU while playing SD-like resolution.  My main
> complaint is the video from netflix looks a little fuzzy to me.  I'm
> not sure if this is the source or the transcoding by playOn but I
> think analog captures from my PVR-150 are of better quality. FFWD is
> maybe about 5x max.  Rewind doesn't work at all.
>
> After playing around I'm thinking the best way to do this would be to
> have a upnp client tuner for the backend.  Then the backend would
> "record" the upnp streams just like it does with any other capture
> card.  Then playback would be just like any other source.  The upnp
> tuner would populate its "channels" by making a single channel for
> each video on the upnp device that starts now() and repeats forever.
> Seems easy enough, right? :)

Should be.

The problem might be the ToS for Netflix, and other services. The idea is they 
want you to watch them, not record them. Granted that if you can watch it you 
can record it, if you want to badly enough. Things like HDCP seem to make the 
content providers happy, even though we all know they are easily beatable.

But a system that records directly, and could easily produce DVDs that could 
be distributed, would almost certainly upset the content providers, who 
generally see Linux users as a "bunch of pirates".

To me the whole point is that you would not need to record any of these 
services, because you can watch them any time you want. Of course a 
particular program might be pulled for various reasons, but in general most 
of the material is always available, thus saving the expense and hassle of 
large storage arrays for people like us.

The whole internet TV scene is in a continuous state of flux, nobody seems to 
really know what they are doing or where they are going. Glitches like the 
Boxee/Hulu dispute will continue to crop up , and it will probably be a long 
time before things stabilize, business models settle down and advertisers 
decide what such services are actually worth. 

In the meantime I'll sit back and watch the show, and try to not invest too 
much money in anything that depends on the providers acting rationally.


-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org