Copy Protection issues using Desktop Plus

2981 Views 7 Replies 5 Participants Last post by dlfl, Sep 20, 2011

ryansdadd

Discussion Starter · Sep 20, 2011

Hello,

i was very excited to purchase Tivos desktop plus tonight with the goal of putting some shows on my HP Touchpad (in mp4 format) Got it installed and set up fine, found 63 shows ALL but 7 were copy protected.

nothing worth even taking on the road.I dont understand this is not even adressed when I was considering the software on the website. Is there anyway around this. At this point I am considering asking for a refund

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jrtroo

· #2 · Sep 20, 2011

This issue is not unique to TD+. If the flag is set, the flag is set, even with TD Free or other available tools.

Search is your friend.

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ThAbtO

· #3 · Sep 20, 2011

Blame the Cable Co. for the protection flags through the cable cards. Tivo is only honoring it.

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dlfl

· #4 · Sep 20, 2011

This is a common nasty surprise for new TiVo owners with digital cable. All Time Warner and many other cable operator service areas apply the copy protection that prevents TTG and MRV for all channels except local broadcast stations. You can see this in DVR Diagnostics as the value of "CCI Byte". 0x02 means copy-once protected (bad) while 0x00 means no copy protection.

There are short obscurely worded disclaimers referring to this on the TiVo web pages, usually missed by almost every reader.

BTW, this topic has been beat to death on this forum. If you want more detail, I suggest searching for it. Despite letter writing campaigns there has never been any hope of overturning this, and in fact the trend is in the other direction, i.e., more operators are applying copy protection.

TiVo could get around the limitation by streaming for MRV so that more than one copy of the content never exists (i.e., the orginal recording). But TTG and MRV are done by transferring an additional copy and in fact TTG done by streaming would allow you only to watch the file on your PC but not end up with a copy -- thus it will never be done because there is no way for TiVo to prevent you from capturing the stream to a file, I think. Recently some unannounced test software on Premiere's seemed to be capable of streaming for MRV but it isn't clear where that's going.

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lrhorer

· #5 · Sep 20, 2011

ryansdadd said:
i was very excited to purchase Tivos desktop plus tonight with the goal of putting some shows on my HP Touchpad (in mp4 format)

That's probably your second mistake. TDT is by a wide margin the worst software - not to mention the most expensive - for transferring videos from the TiVo to an external PC. Kmttg and Galleon, and even pyTiVo beat TDT hands down, even though pyTivo is not primarily designed as TTG software.

ryansdadd said:
Got it installed and set up fine, found 63 shows ALL but 7 were copy protected. nothing worth even taking on the road.

Sixty-three? That's not very many. Oh, well.

ryansdadd said:
I dont understand this is not even adressed when I was considering the software on the website.

It really has nothing to do with the software, lousy as it is. This is a requirement for CableLabs certification.

ryansdadd said:
Is there anyway around this. At this point I am considering asking for a refund

Do you have a Premier? If so, that's your first mistake. If not, then yeah, there's a way around it. Visit the "other" TiVo website, and you can apprise yourself of other options. With an un-modified Tivo, though, there are no other options.

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lrhorer

· #6 · Sep 20, 2011

dlfl said:
TiVo could get around the limitation by streaming for MRV so that more than one copy of the content never exists (i.e., the orginal recording).

That only gets around the limitation for MRV. It does not get around the limitation for TTG, which is what the OP wants.

ryansdadd said:
But TTG and MRV are done by transferring an additional copy and in fact TTG done by streaming would allow you only to watch the file on your PC but not end up with a copy -- thus it will never be done because there is no way for TiVo to prevent you from capturing the stream to a file, I think.

Well, yeah, sure there is. What good is it, though? There are a small number of people who migbt want to stream to their PC, but most people either want a mobile solution - like the OP - or else want to transfer the videos for external / archival storage.

ryansdadd said:
Recently some unannounced test software on Premiere's seemed to be capable of streaming for MRV but it isn't clear where that's going.

It would make some people happy, but not most.

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lrhorer

· #7 · Sep 20, 2011

ThAbtO said:
Blame the Cable Co. for the protection flags through the cable cards. Tivo is only honoring it.

It's not voluntary. They could not use CableCards if they did not.

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dlfl

· #8 · Sep 20, 2011

lrhorer said:
That only gets around the limitation for MRV. It does not get around the limitation for TTG, which is what the OP wants.

..........

If only you were as thorough in reading other people's posts as you are verbose in yours! It is clear from reading my complete post that I fully realized the OP was interested in TTG and addressed that issue.

BTW, you quoted me twice in your post with attribution to the wrong forum member. These quotes were actually the remainder of my post, which demonstrated what I just said above.

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