DRM question

I have Windows 7 Professional machine that I use Media Center with. The Win 7 box is a member of a Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory domain. It's connected to an HD set top box. I record TV using a Hauppauge Colossus PCI Express Internal HD-PVR TV Tuner and component cables. For some reason the machine account has corrupted and I need to remove the machine from the domain and add it back. If this were just a desktop PC I'd do it in a heart beat, but I'm concerned about doing it to this box because it has media with playback restrictions (HBO, etc...). The question is, does the machine's membership in the domain have anything to do with the digital rights assigned to the machine? I won't be changing the SID or the machine name, just rejoining it to the domain.

Thanks...

Never worked with this card. But if I understand it correctly it is fed externally from some external TV tuner (or DVR/STB output, etc.) via component video cables into a "dongle" that feeds your PCIe card. Yes? There is no actual TV tuner on the card itself, right?.

And the card then encodes what it receives to H.264 for playback.

As such, there is no DRM consideration whatsoever. The only DRM issues are from digital connections (i.e. HDMI) which deliver 100% bit-perfect original content digital streams. Nobody really cares about protecting analog or re-compressed versions of copy-protected content delivered via analog.

Now if you were using say a Ceton InfiniTV cablecard-enabled internal or external tuner, or an external Silicon Dust HD Homerun Prime tuner, to feed cable-provided copy-protected (marked copy-once by your cable company) digital content to WMC for recording, well now you'd have a DRM consideration going to a new install of Windows or a new machine. Yes, your previous WMC-produced recordings of originally copy-protected content would NOT be playable in the new environment.

But in your case, if I understand how it works properly, I think you have no worries.

Yes, that's how it's connected. Hauppauge released this card for people with gaming consoles to record their games but it also works great for HD output from other sources. I know there's no DRM in the actual signal since it's analog, but Media Center must be adding it when it knows it's HBO or something like that because if I try to play an HBO movie on another Media Center PC on my network it won't play saying it's not on the PC it was recorded on. If I record with the native recorder from the Hauppauge that problem isn't there but that's not possible to do when I use the Media Center box as a DVR, hence my concern.

Well, I guess my ignorance on this product is showing.

I didn't know you somehow told WMC that the analog input being provided was actually for a channel. And even then, how would WMC know that the content was "copy protected" since I thought that was only possible when the input was digital, since that's where the 5C flags are buried in the metadata.

Before using WMC I was using BeyondTV, and recording S-video analog input to the ATI TV Wonder card I was using at the time (which also had a single OTA/ATSC tuner for roof antenna coax input which was also handled by BeyondTV). The S-video input was analog from my DirectTV non-HD satellite receiver. So I could record either (a) OTA/ATSC local network broadcasts from roof antenna, and (b) D* satellite broadcasts, no matter whether premium or basic cable channels, in 480i SD.

Everything was encoded to MPG for recording by BeyondTV, with the OTA/ATSC recordings being exactly the MPEG-2 HD digital ATSC content recordings bit-perfect, whereas the analog S-video input from the D* receiver was simply "encoded" (in "best quality") by the ATI hardware/software as used by BeyondTV in support of S-video input.

There was NEVER an issue of playback of anything recorded to MPG by BeyondTV. All OTA/ATSC broadcasts are "copy freely" in their 5C flags, and S-video analog input doesn't carry any such copy protection flags since it's analog.

I just assumed that your component video input to your Hauppauge card would work the same way, but then I was not using WMC to do my old recordings. I was using BeyondTV.

Again, I don't know how this works, and I'm honestly very surprised that there is anything at all that could possibly be known about the component video input coming from what may or may not have been a copy protected program being delivered simply as "external line-input via component video".

I'll have to plead ignorance here, as I have never used this product and was really just speculating based on my own experiences.

WMC knows there's a tuner in the machine and you tell it you're using a set top box for a tuner and a remote IR device to change channels. You then tell it what cable system you're using so it knows what channels you have and it must then add DRM code to what it records for those channels that are DRM enabled regardless of how you get the signal.

TubaOrNotTuba said:

WMC knows there's a tuner in the machine and you tell it you're using a set top box for a tuner and a remote IR device to change channels. You then tell it what cable system you're using so it knows what channels you have and it must then add DRM code to what it records for those channels that are DRM enabled regardless of how you get the signal.

Fascinating.

Yes, I did know WMC could deal with external tuners and a remote IR blaster to change channels. But I'd never had experience with it.

My current WMC setup is all internal. Ceton InfiniTV 4-tuner cablecard-enabled card, connected to Time Warner Cable coax for non-SDV channels. Time Warner "tuning adapter" for SDV channels also connected to coax for input, and then USB output to the PC, which is simultaneously supported by Ceton tuners for SDV channels. Also I have a Hauppauge HVR-2250 OTA/ATSC 2-tuner card connected to my roof antenna coax.

So a total of 6 internal tuners (4 for cable/SDV and 2 for OTA/ATSC), all managed by WMC. The DRM information is based on the 5C flags coming in the digital stream from TWC. In fact TWC marks virtually everything "copy-once" (i.e. copy protected) including basic cable channels as well as premium channels. The only channels not copy-protected are the local broadcast networks carried over TWC, which I actually record from my OTA/ATSC tuner and not from the Ceton. TWC is notorious for re-compressing everything including local broadcast networks, and I prefer the improved non-recompressed video quality from the true OTA/ATSC version.

I find it remarkable that the copy protection information would be present in the GUIDE data that WMC sees on your system, so that DRM could be applied to recordings made to recordings. I had always thought it was in the content digital metadata itself, not in the GUIDE as well. I'm actually still a bit skeptical to be honest, but your results do stand on their merits.

Mine is an internal card.