MediaPortal Adds Native CableCARD Support
Looks like it’s a little DIY to setup, but either way a really nice addition to MediaPortal’s Feature set.
Requirements
These patches are compatible with MediaPortal 1.3 and 1.4.
Please refer to the MediaPortal requirements for further details.Supported Tuners
The following CableCARD tuners have been tested and are compatible:
- Silicondust HDHomeRun PRIME*
- Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe
- Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH
*Latest beta firmware required.
Other Ceton and Silicondust tuners should also be compatible.
The Hauppauge DCR-2650 is untested but should also work.
Support for ATI CableCARD Tuners is completely unknown.…
Nice idea and everything, but
Nice idea and everything, but appears to have the same problem as all other non-WMC solutions. They only support “copy-freely” content.
For many people that’s all
For many people that’s all that’s necesary. When I lived in Chicago, I didn’t have any copy-once channels…
That’s all anyone will be
That’s all anyone will be able to support without Cable Labs certification. If you’d like to send them a donation to cover the cost I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
captain_video wrote:
That’s
[quote=captain_video]
That’s all anyone will be able to support without Cable Labs certification. If you’d like to send them a donation to cover the cost I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
[/quote]
Does anyone know exactly how outrageously priced it is to get the certification?
I really hope one day soon there is a change to the way we can get copy once material.
FantaXP7
[quote=FantaXP7]
[quote=captain_video]
That’s all anyone will be able to support without Cable Labs certification. If you’d like to send them a donation to cover the cost I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
[/quote]
Does anyone know exactly how outrageously priced it is to get the certification?
I really hope one day soon there is a change to the way we can get copy once material.
[/quote]
CableLabs certification is not required for MediaPortal. In order to access copy-protected content, MediaPortal only needs to utilize a CableLabs-approved DRM scheme. There is already a CableLabs-approved DRM scheme that MediaPortal could use (PlayReady), but they would need to license it from Microsoft. The cost to license PlayReady is $5,000 for the licensing fee, plus $10,000 for each major MediaPortal release that utilizes PlayReady. Alternatively, MediaPortal could come up with their own DRM scheme and submit it to CableLabs for approval. I’m not sure how much that would cost, or the exact process that they would need to go through. Even if it costs nothing, I’m betting it’s probably a bigger headache than it’s actually worth. It would probably be better just to license PlayReady.
Thanks for the
Thanks for the clarification. I knew there were licensing issues and involvement with CableLabs at some point as well as DRM issues, but I wasn’t quite sure how they all fit together. $15K doesn’t seem that monumental other than the fact that MediaPortal is free software. I’d bet that if they asked for donations to license PlayReady they’d have no trouble getting enough donors. Otherwise, they could sell licensed copies of MediaPortal with PlayReady included. I know a lot of people would like an alternative to Windows Media Center for recording DRMed content that also had native support for Blu-Ray playback and other types of video that Microsoft doesn’t support out of the box.
It’s not as simple as “just
It’s not as simple as “just license Play-Ready”. The A/V pipeline has to support secure playback as well. It would be difficult to do this with FOSS components.
I appologize if anything I
I appologize if anything I said in my previous post implied that it would be that simple. It certainly isn’t.
As far as getting a protected pipeline using FOSS, I’d say difficult is an understatement. I’d lean more toward impossible. But hey, I’ve never tried it. Maybe it’s easier than I think.
richard1980 wrote:
I
[quote=richard1980]
I appologize if anything I said in my previous post implied that it would be that simple. It certainly isn’t.
[/quote]
You didn’t imply that. I just wanted to make sure that it was explictly called out for the casual reader.
[quote=richard1980]
As far as getting a protected pipeline using FOSS, I’d say difficult is an understatement. I’d lean more toward impossible. But hey, I’ve never tried it. Maybe it’s easier than I think.
[/quote]
Impossible is probably the best way to describe it :). You can’t do secure key management when anyone can modify/recompile your rendering pipeline.
It might be possible to use a different rendering path (MediaFoundation supports PAVP OOTB) for protected CableCARD recordings though, but AFAIK even that would require significant effort to enable the use case.
I’m Copy Free only thankfully
I’m Copy Free only thankfully but I also know that could change easily.
mikinho wrote:
I’m Copy Free
[quote=mikinho]
I’m Copy Free only thankfully but I also know that could change easily.
[/quote]
I remember people were saying this a few years ago. You sir are very lucky.