[mythtv-users] Partial and No Locks

Daniel Kristjansson danielk at cuymedia.net
Fri Jan 2 00:35:46 UTC 2009


On Thu, 2009-01-01 at 16:07 -0500, jr wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 3:42 PM, Brad DerManouelian <myth at dermanouelian.com> wrote:

>         On Jan 1, 2009, at 9:07 AM, jr wrote:

>         > On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk at cuymedia.net> wrote:

>         >         
>         >         'c' is for crypt, as in encrypt and decrypt.

>         > Ok.  But then why does my television pick them up from the same feed?  That is to say, if the signal is encrypted, then should it not be similarly unavailable to the tuner of my LG 50PG20?

Ok assuming the TV is plugged directly into the cable and not into
the STB which does decryption for you and your TV does not have a
decryption card in it, it can not decrypt the channels either. So
in that case my guess would be that the streams are marked as encrypted,
but are in fact not encrypted. SVN trunk should be able to detect this
condition and tune to the channel.

>         Your TV is able to decrypt the signal as most displays can.
>         This "luxury" is not extended to capture cards because we're
>          all criminals just trying to record TV and sell it for a profit.

Brad, while a few TV's can decrypt the channels off the cable, they
can only do so with a CAM or CableCard plugged into the appropriate
slot. jr would presumably know if he or his cable company installed
one of those, since they charge a fee for it.

> So what does checking "Unencrypted channels only" do when I scan for channels?
> I assumed that it filtered out the unencrypted channels.

Your logic is reversed, when checked it only adds channels to the
lineup which are unencrypted, when not checked it adds all channels
to the lineup. Unchecking it is needed if you have a CAM because the
channel scanner is not smart enough to detect whether it is possible
to decrypt the encrypted channels.

> Is there anyway around it?  If I get a cable box, then I am limited
> to the channel that the box is on, and thus only able to record the
> one digital channel, neh?

It depends on your cable company, in Europe they will usually sell you
a CAM card that will decrypt the channels you are subscribed to. In
North America they will generally force you to rent an STB which you
can then record SDTV from using a PVR-150 or HDTV from using an HD-PVR,
or in some cases Firewire. With an STB you will also need a means of
changing channels on the STB, in the USA you can demand a Firewire
capable STB from your cable operator if you have an HDTV plan which
usually works as a channel changer and occasionally decrypts your
subscribed channels for you so you can record them directly over
firewire, some STB's have serial input, and almost all will work
with an IR Blaster.

-- Daniel



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