Colin’s Blog

So Recently I have been thinking it would be cool to have a DVR box in my room for recording shows off tv. First I began looking at what in terms of retail DVR boxes and let me tell you there is not much. Currently the options are basically a Comcast DVR for $12/m, A Tivo HD box($299), or a discontinued Sony DVR.
First of I really don’t want something that requires monthly fees so that rules out the comcast box and the tivo as well. There is a way to avoid the monthly tivo subscription currently by purchasing a lifetime subscript that runs an additional $399 on top of the box which basically puts it out of my price range. That left the discontinued sony DVR as the last option which was looking good because it didn’t require any subscription service and it got its guide data from tvguide(gemstar) through the cable system. Then after a little more research I discovered its downfall is the fact that the hard drive is not replaceable as they have some sort of system in the firmware/bios that restricts it to the drive it comes with. What happens if the hard drive craps out in it? Well it becomes an expensive paperweight and this is even more likely to happen since the boxes are all used and a few years old already. Also if I wanted to upgrade the drive to a larger size that would be impossible as well. So thats out as well.

One of the nice things about either of those three options was they both allow me access to all the encrypted or premium digital channels we currently subscribe to through comcast. This is something I’m currently not able to receive on my LCD TV with its built in qam tuner since it doesn’t have cable card support unlike the tivo, and sony. I got to thinking about that I would be really nice to have a device that supports the use of cable card as comcast will give you one free one if your a digital subscriber. I had then decided I would even be willing to forgo the DVR idea all together and just look for a digital tuner box with a cable card slot. Only to find out no one makes such a device. Why? there has to be a demand for it as not everyone wants DVR’s or wants to rent an STB from their cable providers.

So then I though well it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to go the cablecard route so I might as well build my own DVR htpc box since there are plenty of digital qam tuners available for pc’s. I first started looking at these and discovered that there are now even a few tuners that support cable card. I was stoked about this news! Then it quickly turned to disappointment. I found out that these such tuners are very limited thanks to restrictions put in place by cablelabs(consortium found by the cable cos that oversees the development of cable systems). The first restriction they had put in place is the only way one of these new tuners will work is if it purchased and installed in a OCUR (OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver) Certified system from computer manufactures ie: dell, hp, gateway, sony, toshiba, etc. They use some sort of a special bit flag in the hardware in these systems so that the tunner will break if any hardware is changed or moved to another system. Then Cablelabs took it a step further and gave Microsoft exclusive rights to the new cable card equipped tuners making it only work with vista because Microsoft was kind enough to through in all sorts of crazy DRM copy write schemes to protect the content. This leaves out the possibility of ever seeing one of these new tuners working on a Linux system and most likely macs as well. The only hope would be if someone were to crack not only broadcast cable encryption schemes(something darn near impossible) but figure out how the hardware checking works as well as discover how to make firmware for the tuner device as well and drivers and software to interface with the device. Mind you there is no documentation on how to do any of this. Cablelabs and Microsoft are the only ones with knowledge of how everything comes together as it is completely closed source and kept under lock and key so to speak.

What a crazy mess modern cable tv is these days! It really bugs me that all of this is causing major headaches for end users or the consumer. With all the technology we have now things should not be this complicated when it comes to TV. At any rate I have still decided that I might build myself my own HTPC DVR. I’ll talk more about that in a future blog post here.