Copy Protection -- What can Tivo do about it?

[NotVeryWitty]

I've got a lifetimed S2ST in my bedroom with an analog TV, and an S2DT in my livingroom connected to an HDTV. One of the main reasons I've held off updating my S2DT to a TivoHD is the MRV copy protection issue. From what I understand, my cable provider (Charter) sets the copy protection flags on all programs except for the OTA networks, and maps all of the 2-99 channels to digital if you have cablecards. So, if I upgrade to a TivoHD, I will lose the ability to transfer most of the shows I watch from the livingroom to the bedroom Tivo (which is the direction I usually go).

I understand Tivo is just following the law here in disallowing the shows to be copied. But, is there anything else Tivo could do to "solve" this problem? I know Verizon Fios has a multi-room DVR -- why can they do it and Tivo can't? Is it because they're streaming the video, and not "copying" it? If that is the reason, why doesn't Tivo provide a streaming mode?

[MichaelK]

The problem is tivo copies the programs.

The other dvr’s and things generally STREAM to the other room

Streaming is acceptable to the ruling powers where copies are not.

Streaming does NOT seem to be 100% foolproof possible with tivo hardware. (check out the tivo streamer thread- apparently sometimes 1080i MPEG2 programs just can’t be streamed to tivohd boxes.)

BUT- the rules seem to ALLOW TiVo to MOVE the content. I am not tivo but to me that seems like a fairly easy solution. Start to copy the show like they do now, add a procedure on the receiving box to not allow playback until the copy is complete. Add a procedure on the sending box to not mark the “moved” copy as complete until the original is deleted on the first box. Seems to me it isn’t that big a deal to do (famous last words- laughing)

Hopefully as more and more go digital and this issue shows up more TiVo reacts to the issue and implements a fix as above. Wouldn’t hold your breath for it anytime soon though…

[aaronwt]

I've got a lifetimed S2ST in my bedroom with an analog TV, and an S2DT in my livingroom connected to an HDTV. One of the main reasons I've held off updating my S2DT to a TivoHD is the MRV copy protection issue. From what I understand, my cable provider (Charter) sets the copy protection flags on all programs except for the OTA networks, and maps all of the 2-99 channels to digital if you have cablecards. So, if I upgrade to a TivoHD, I will lose the ability to transfer most of the shows I watch from the livingroom to the bedroom Tivo (which is the direction I usually go).

I understand Tivo is just following the law here in disallowing the shows to be copied. But, is there anything else Tivo could do to "solve" this problem? I know Verizon Fios has a multi-room DVR -- why can they do it and Tivo can't? Is it because they're streaming the video, and not "copying" it? If that is the reason, why doesn't Tivo provide a streaming mode?

Any program I record on my S3 and TiVoHD on FIOS I can transfer to another S3/TiVoHD or my PC(at least for now, although that could change at some point in the future). So the problem is Charter, not the TiVo.

Your solution is simple, get FIOS.

[ZeoTiVo]

well to be clear - a 3rd party is having trouble streaming

but sure i could see 1080i as the problem child of streaming with the data involved

the YouTube mpeg4 streaming seems to be going very well however. I for one think TiVo is working on moving towards streaming as the way around copy protection and DRM. Hopefully the ycould bring netflix on board with that as well.

[MichaelK]

well to be clear - a 3rd party is having trouble streaming

but sure i could see 1080i as the problem child of streaming with the data involved

the YouTube mpeg4 streaming seems to be going very well however. I for one think TiVo is working on moving towards streaming as the way around copy protection and DRM. Hopefully the ycould bring netflix on board with that as well.



but mpeg 4 is worthless when everything recorded from cable is currently mpeg2. The tivo hardware doesn't have the oomph to convert on the fly- right?

Aalso agreed that it's not tivo to tivo that is scetchy, rather a 3rd party, but my point was that apparently there's not orders of magnitude of cushion involved, toss in a wireless network, someone using an old router instead of a switch and the tivo might choke on an HD stream.

[JWThiers]

Your solution is simple, get FIOS.

I don't know about the OP, but, I would get FIOS IF it were available. Really wasn't a simple solution unless simple means either move to a place that FIOS is available, or String a really long ethernet cable from someones home that has FIOS to yours.

Fortunately for me, most of the programs that I watch are not copy protected and the ones that are I either record on both THD's or just watch the whole thing at one place.

[ncbagwell]

I just wish we could at least transfer all shows from Tivo to Tivo. From a content provider's perspective, I can't see the harm in that. If there was some way to differentiate between transfering copy-protected shows to the PC as opposed to the Tivo, I guess I could live with that short term.

[mikeyts]

Any program I record on my S3 and TiVoHD on FIOS I can transfer to another S3/TiVoHD or my PC(at least for now, although that could change at some point in the future). So the problem is Charter, not the TiVo.Exactly. FCC regs do not require that a provider use any copy protection flags--it simply limits what they can apply them to ("Copy Freely" on anything that they broadcast unencrypted, "Copy Never" only on PPV and VOD and "Copy One Generation" on anything else). I've heard that Comcast has established a national policy to not mark anything "Copy One Generation" unless explicitly requested by the content provider; Verizon would seem to be doing something similar with FiOS.

Find out who your local cable franchising agency is and make a complaint (on paper, through snail-mail), sending a copy to your cable provider management. They may have a right to do what they're doing per FCC regs, but if it makes customers unhappy the franchising agent can apply pressure on them to change.

Streaming would solve the problem for MRV, but TTG would still be forbidden.

[MichaelK]

good luck trying to get peopel to change the cci flags.

I think it's very valid and any logical person would listen to you and decide to chagne their policies.

But I've not had the best luck with finding any such logical person at a cable company- laughing

[TexasGrillChef]

Exactly. FCC regs do not require that a provider use any copy protection flags--it simply limits what they can apply them to ("Copy Freely" on anything that they broadcast unencrypted, "Copy Never" only on PPV and VOD and "Copy One Generation" on anything else). I've heard that Comcast has established a national policy to not mark anything "Copy One Generation" unless explicitly requested by the content provider; Verizon would seem to be doing something similar with FiOS.

Find out who your local cable franchising agency is and make a complaint (on paper, through snail-mail), sending a copy to your cable provider management. They may have a right to do what they're doing per FCC regs, but if it makes customers unhappy the franchising agent can apply pressure on them to change.

Streaming would solve the problem for MRV, but TTG would still be forbidden.


You missed 2 very important parts of the FCC regulation in regards to copy protection.

1. Local broadcasts from local TV stations, even if re-broadcast on Cable &/or satalite may not have copy protection set. ie... The copy flag must be set as "copy freely".

1a. They are also not allowed to set any type of copy prevention flags on any analog channels as well. Those are the ones below 99. Thats also one reason why you no longer find premium channels such as HBO being broadcast as analog. HBO in our area used to be on Channel 3. It was moved out of the analog channels about 3 years ago.

2. Any Premium channel that is available via cable/sat only & that you have to pay "Extra" for. Such as HBO/Showtime etc... Can have their copy flag set as desired. Even to "Never Copy". This of course includes VOD & PPV.


TWC has now put copy protection flags on many of the channels. Even those that the channel owners do not wish for them too. An example of this is HDNET & HDNET movies. Mark Cuban (A fellow texan from Dallas & co-owner of HDNET) has stated many times locally that HDNET does not copy protect any of its shows or channels & doesn't want cable companies doing it either. Although they are.

In another thread that I have. You will see that I record "True Blood" from HBO-HD. Sometimes that recording is Copy protected. Sometimes it isn't.


TGC

[mikeyts]

1. Local broadcasts from local TV stations, even if re-broadcast on Cable &/or satalite may not have copy protection set. ie... The copy flag must be set as "copy freely".Actually, it looks as though I mistated it. I thought that the phrase "unencrypted broadcast television" as used in the regs (Code of Federal Regulation, Title 47 §76.1904 (http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=98a4b2ad910a63ef4edd26cb041d16e1&rgn=div8&view=text&node=47:4.0.1.1.4.23.3.4&idno=47), "Encoding Rules for Defined Business Models") meant anything that the cable provider broadcasts on the wire without encryption, typically the basic tier channels, which regulations forbid them to encrypt . Actually, according to the definition in CFR Title 47, §76.1902 (http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c5ce8b45f61069e1c5add0aaf7a4c26f&rgn=div8&view=text&node=47:4.0.1.1.4.23.3.2&idno=47)(s), "unencrypted broadcast television" is any unencrypted, unprotected terrestrial broadcast that they rebroadcast, which would limit it to the rebroadcast local channels--whether they can restict copying of anything else in the basic tier is rendered unclear by that, though other regulations forbid them to encrypt basic tier stuff.1a. They are also not allowed to set any type of copy prevention flags on any analog channels as well. Those are the ones below 99. Thats also one reason why you no longer find premium channels such as HBO being broadcast as analog. HBO in our area used to be on Channel 3. It was moved out of the analog channels about 3 years ago.Can you tell me where FCC regulations say that? I know that HBO/Cinemax insists upon the use of CGMS-A copy protection on analog broadcasts of their services (see this (http://www.hbo.com/corpinfo/faq/cgmsfaq.shtml)). Except for the core basic tier (generally around 20 channels) they are perfectly free to apply encryption to any of that and once did, but they stopped doing it because it helped their business to be able to provide expanded analog basic to people who didn't want STBs. I think that analog HBO has disappeared because nobody's willing to pay $10/month for one channel out of a 9 channel tier.
2. Any Premium channel that is available via cable/sat only & that you have to pay "Extra" for. Such as HBO/Showtime etc... Can have their copy flag set as desired.Not true. As per the regs, normal premium channels can only be set to "Copy One Generation" at most. Only VOD and PPV are allowed to be set to "Copy Never". (b)(1):
(1) Commercial audiovisual content shall not be encoded so as to prevent or limit copying thereof except as follows:

(i) To prevent or limit copying of video-on-demand or pay-per-view
transmissions, subject to the requirements of paragraph (b)(2) of this
section; and

(ii) To prevent or limit copying, other than first generation of copies, of
pay television transmissions, non-premium subscription television, and free
conditional access delivery transmissions"Copy Never" is encompassed in (i) by "to prevent or limit copying" with no qualifier; copy protection of business models listed in (ii) is limited to "Copy One Generation" by the phrase "other than first generation of copies". Premium television channels like HBO and Cinemax fall under the definition of "pay television transmission" in [url=http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c5ce8b45f61069e1c5add0aaf7a4c26f&rgn=div8&view=text&node=47:4.0.1.1.4.23.3.2&idno=47]CFR Title 47, §76.1902 (]CFR Title 47, §76.1904[/url)(o):
(o) Pay television transmission shall mean a transmission of a service or schedule of programs, as to which each individual program is generally uninterrupted by commercial advertising messages and for which service or schedule of programs subscribing viewers are charged a periodic subscription fee, such as on a monthly basis, for the reception of such programming delivered by such service whether separately or together with other services or programming, during the specified viewing period covered by such fee...

TWC has now put copy protection flags on many of the channels. Even those that the channel owners do not wish for them too. An example of this is HDNET & HDNET movies. Mark Cuban (A fellow texan from Dallas & co-owner of HDNET) has stated many times locally that HDNET does not copy protect any of its shows or channels & doesn't want cable companies doing it either. Although they are.

In another thread that I have. You will see that I record "True Blood" from HBO-HD. Sometimes that recording is Copy protected. Sometimes it isn't.As written, the FCC left whether or not to put copy protection on a service up to the cable providers. I'd imagine that content providers like Cuban can make stipulations in their carriage agreements as to how they want their stuff protected.

[aaronwt]

Exactly. FCC regs do not require that a provider use any copy protection flags--it simply limits what they can apply them to ("Copy Freely" on anything that they broadcast unencrypted, "Copy Never" only on PPV and VOD and "Copy One Generation" on anything else). I've heard that Comcast has established a national policy to not mark anything "Copy One Generation" unless explicitly requested by the content provider; Verizon would seem to be doing something similar with FiOS.

Find out who your local cable franchising agency is and make a complaint (on paper, through snail-mail), sending a copy to your cable provider management. They may have a right to do what they're doing per FCC regs, but if it makes customers unhappy the franchising agent can apply pressure on them to change.

Streaming would solve the problem for MRV, but TTG would still be forbidden.


Comcast in my area didn't allow transfers on almost all of my HD recordings that were from NAtional channels. The recordings from local channels could be transferred as they should but basically nothing else I recorded could be. Comcast is too restrictive here while FIOS is too lax here(not that I'm complaining)

[TedE]

Why are TiVocasts copy-protected? They all seem to be podcasts and the like that are freely available from their publishers via the web... where direct to PC downloads are not copy protected.
:confused:

[NotVeryWitty]

Find out who your local cable franchising agency is and make a complaint (on paper, through snail-mail), sending a copy to your cable provider management. They may have a right to do what they're doing per FCC regs, but if it makes customers unhappy the franchising agent can apply pressure on them to change.

Been there, done that. Unfortunately, the folks at my local franchising agency (the town's cable committee) are actually too much on the ball. They know the cable company is not prohibited from setting the copy protection flags, and so they're not willing to go to bat for me (mainly because they're too busy fighting all the other fights where the cable company actually is doing something illegal).

[NotVeryWitty]

the YouTube mpeg4 streaming seems to be going very well however. I for one think TiVo is working on moving towards streaming as the way around copy protection and DRM. Hopefully the ycould bring netflix on board with that as well.
Well I hope you're right -- MRV is one of Tivo's huge advantages over the cable company DVRs, and it's a shame that the cable companies can cripple it.

[morac]

I thought about a way TiVo could get around the CCI flags for the purpose of MRV.

Couldn't TiVo allow MRV of programs flagged with CCI flag of 0x02, but mark the transferred programs as if they had a CCI flag of 0x3. That way a program could be MRV transferred, but would delete itself 90 minutes after the transfer completes. This should satisfy the content providers and at least allow the users to watch shows on another TiVo.

Is there anything in the cableCARD agreement that would prevent TiVo from implementing the above?

[mikeyts]

I thought about a way TiVo could get around the CCI flags for the purpose of MRV.

Couldn't TiVo allow MRV of programs flagged with CCI flag of 0x02, but mark the transferred programs as if they had a CCI flag of 0x3. That way a program could be MRV transferred, but would delete itself 90 minutes after the transfer completes. This should satisfy the content providers and at least allow the users to watch shows on another TiVo.

Is there anything in the cableCARD agreement that would prevent TiVo from implementing the above?Something like that would be effectively a form of streaming. Play-while-transfer into a a 90 minute buffer which is never saved as a permanent file. The transfer would have to be done with an approved secure protocol--as it stands, unprotected stuff can be transferred over the net in the clear, if they want to. You might as well implement a real secure streaming protocol though.

[MichaelK]

I thought about a way TiVo could get around the CCI flags for the purpose of MRV.

Couldn't TiVo allow MRV of programs flagged with CCI flag of 0x02, but mark the transferred programs as if they had a CCI flag of 0x3. That way a program could be MRV transferred, but would delete itself 90 minutes after the transfer completes. This should satisfy the content providers and at least allow the users to watch shows on another TiVo.

Is there anything in the cableCARD agreement that would prevent TiVo from implementing the above?

stop being loigical. ;)

the rules as written would NOT permit it.

the parties involved would need to behave like grownups and sit down and talk that through and then change the rules. With the players involved that's never going to happen- if some how they were forced to by the government it would likely take 6.5 years anyway....