[mythtv-users] dreaming hardware configuration

Dan Lanciani ddl5 at danlan.com
Sun Nov 7 03:20:05 UTC 2004


nate s <nate.strickland at gmail.com> wrote:

|I'd also get some of those HDTV DTV recievers with firewire out and
|figure out a way to get mythtv to use it as input.

Have you noticed that those receivers are getting very hard to find?  The
MDR-200 (at least according to Digital Connection) has been "returned to
the factory" for a modification.   The SIR-T165 (and family) needs a firmware
"upgrade" to be compatible with the new DRM else (according to Samsung--see
http://www.samsungusa.com/stb_upgrade/) it will crash in the presence of the
broadcast flag (and perhaps even in other circumstances).

Note that in spite of the FCC's original promise that equipment purchased
before July 1, 2005 would be allowed to continue to operate as before, the
little explanation on Samsung's site says that the mandate is retroactive.
It seems unlikely that existing boxes have the spare horsepower to implement
encrypted firewire per the new standard, so I wonder if the "upgrades" will
just disable the digital outputs when the broadcast flag is detected (or even
always?).

I also wonder if the encoding of the broadcast flag was chosen to cause
existing receivers to crash in order to force the issue.  I wonder further if
it will have a similar effect on pcHDTV products like the HD-2000 and HD-3000.
We really don't know exactly what the big chunks of binary firmware in the
drivers do...

				Dan Lanciani
				ddl at danlan.*com


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