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Watching the Detectors

By Danny OBrien

In the absence of NBC or Microsoft coming clean about what they've done - what flags NBC sent, and what flags Microsoft obeys, we've been doing some detective work of our own -- and we'd like your help.

NBC have already said that their activation of their copy-control system was a "mistake". But when next mistake occurs is the best chance to uncover what copy-protection Vista obeys on digital, over-the-air TV.

We're looking to obtain raw data dumps of the ATSC stream next time your copy of Vista chokes on an over-the-air digital TV feed.

(Note that we're not looking for "Can't Record Program" errors with shows received via either CableCard units or analog TV tuners -- we know that Microsoft obeys copy controls on these systems. We just want cases where over-the-air, broadcast digital (HD) TV has been affected.)

Right now, we're asking owners of the HDHomeRun to watch out for this problem. We're concentrating on this device because many Windows users run this hardware in conjunction with Vista Media Center, so they'll be able to see when the problem arises. Also, it provides only digital HD information to your PC (allowing us to eliminate any analog copy-protection systems). Finally, it's relatively easy to make a complete copy of the digital TV datastream using HDHomeRun's command line utility. Here's how:

1. Go into Live TV mode in VMC and choose the problem NBC channel.

2. Check the HDHomeRun LEDs to determine if tuner 0 or tuner 1 is

   being used. The LEDs are in this order: (Power) (Ethernet, Tuner 0, Tuner1).

3. Record a 60 second sample of the stream:

   Open a cmd prompt and run:

   "C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" FFFFFFFF save /tuner0 sample.ts

   (specify tuner 1 if VMC is using tuner 1)

   Wait 60 seconds then press Ctrl-C to stop.

4. When you've got your sample, mail EFF at info@eff.org with a specification of your setup, the date, time and channel of the show. We'll get in touch.

If you know how to record the raw datastream (not just the MPEG2 data, the whole transport stream) on other hardware, let us know, and we'll add it to this blog entry.

Full post as published by Electronic Freedom Foundation - Deep Links on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).