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Television Media

Getting An MPEG-2 Stream From Digital Cable? 18

Posted by Cliff from the can-it-be-done dept.
Alex Perez asks: "I recently moved to an area where AT&T was offering digital cable. I've subscribed to the service and I love it, but I want to find a way to get the MPEG-2 digital video (and some sort of audio) stream out of the decoder (It's a Motorola set-top box) and ultimately into my PC as an MPEG-2 stream so I can record shows in true digital. Technically, I know it's possible. Is this legal for personal use? I can make video tapes of my favorite shows, but the quality is unacceptable in my opinion. What are my options, here? Has anybody else attempted to do this? I'd love to find a way to get a digital video and audio stream, but I don't want to re-invent the wheel."
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Getting an MPEG-2 Stream From Digital Cable? More

Getting an MPEG-2 Stream From Digital Cable?

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  • Two things. First, as far as I'm concerned the DMCA and UCITA are basically irrelevant with regard to any decision I make.

    But they have an effect on what white-market consumer products are available to you. For example, go into an electronics store and try to find a DVD player that has all the capabilities that a DVD player logically should have (e.g. firewire output). You can't, because DVD-CCA's CSS license prohibits it. It's not available, and it won't be available unless DMCA is overturned, or you build one yourself.


    ---
  • There is a really simple reason for this. You are already getting all the analogs on your coax anyway, so that you can use analog cable where you do not have a digital cable box. Why duplicate them in digital format and waste 100 channels worth of digital content space.
  • The latest cable company in my neck of the woods, AT&T, is offering digital cable here also. The whole setup is pretty cool. I can browse TV listings on screen (it even has a search!), and the 200+ channels are well . . . intresting. What I found most intriguing, however, is that on the back of the cable box is a small plug labeled "Data". The plug looks like the 9 pin serial ports I see on PCs except the gender is wrong. Does anyone have any idea what this does? (None of my cables fit it, so I can't really explore)
  • The complicated answer is also "no". At least for premium content (HBO, etc), not only is the digital stream encoded, but the key changes at regular intervals. In the US, the key update arrangement typically uses one of two proprietary schemes, one owned by General Instruments (now owned by Motorola) and one owned by Scientific Atlanta. In Europe, an open standard for such key management is part of the DVB standard.

    CableLabs' OpenCable project is establishing an open standard for digital set top devices in the US. In that design, the key management and decryption hardware are physically put on a removable PCMCIA card that you have to get from your local cable company. This is intended to allow the cable company to continue using an existing proprietary scheme. Some estimates of the cost to replace the existing headend equipment (a necessary step to change schemes) for a national cable company runs upwards of $1B, so the proprietary schemes are unlikely to go away any time soon. While we may eventually see digital tuners for PCs based on OpenCable, you'll still need that card from your cable company.

    Much of the apparent paranoia here is a result of contracts with the big studios. As with DVD, they believe that we're all going to make those "perfect" digital copies of everything. So they require all of the encryption and the stuff that goes with it as part of the distribution agreement.

  • > It looks like it will do what you want.

    The digitizing those products do appears to be after the signal has already been converted to analog by the set-top box.
    Digital->analog->digital is going to lose some quality, rather than the digital->digital that the question was asking for.
  • Try DSS. I've got dishnetwork and it's cheaper than cable anyway. I get 115 or so channels for 29.99....whereas cable here (shitty comcast) is 35 bucks or so for about 50 channels (no cartoon network). Plus, I get digital audio whenever available....including the Simpsons.

    I've never had digital cable, so don't know the boxes at all, but my sat. receiver has digital audio/video outputs. For dumping to PC, I've been meaning to get a card with svideo inputs so I can ditch the $40 WinTV Go/coax job I've been using.

    For the 7200 model displayer (echostar), I've got svideo and optical audio outs. Oh, and the usual coax and RCA outs still exist. For all the folks drooling over TiVo, both DirectTV and Dish/Echostar offer set-tops that have Tivo or TiVo-like functionality. At this point, I'd be an unhappy camper to have to give this up.
    It's got a 17gb HDD, which can be replaced if you so desire. With the 17gb drive, I've so far managed to have 7 hours recorded, and then rewind through the 'cache' to what was on 7 hours earlier. I assume this means I'll have 14+ hours worth of space without swapping out the drive. I've only ever needed about 10 hours worth saved, so I have yet to hit my maximum.

  • The simple answer is no. Digital TV over cable and satelite is encrypted. Even if you had a digital TV "tuner card" Time Warner isn't going to tell you give you the conditional access keys which are encoded into the digital set top box you normall get from them. What you CAN do is piple the analog NTSC video from a DSTB into a TV card in your PC. This still kind of sucks becuase you cant do chanel tuning with your PC.

  • UK? (Score:1)

    by Ashok ( 167345 )
    This has stayed fairly US-centric. It'd be nice to know if my (ex-CWC) NTL digital cable box could be coerced into supplying the MPEG stream out of one of those oh-so-tempting-looking connectors on the back. It's a Pace box, and Telewest use the same hardware, I believe. Also NTL are switching over their existing digiboxes to the CWC style ones too.
  • Go to http://demo.singularis.com and record any program on your PC (MPEG-4). Just need a PC Tuner Card (ex: ATI All In Wonder), download the software and you can record anything with all the TV schedules for the all US. That solve the Problem - No?
  • Two things. First, as far as I'm concerned the DMCA and UCITA are basically irrelevant with regard to any decision I make. I should haven't to expound to Slashdot about what a farce both those laws are, so suffice it to say that at least in my opinion he has moral authority, if not an obligation, to violate those laws as necessary. Second, and related to that, it's only illegal if you get caught. Which he won't.
  • I am not saying these laws are right, just, morally or ethically sound - heck, IMHO, they are not even Constitutional.

    You are right that it will only "become" illegal if he (or others) get caught. Attempting to do it is one thing, though - most likely he won't be "caught" if he is attempting to do such a thing (as long as he doesn't brag to wide/far about it, lest some upright tightwad decides to turn him in for the moral fiber of the country). However, if he succeeds (or if another succeeds), and he publishes how he did it, via an easily tracked source, the hammer will come down, and hard.

    Jon Johannsen (sp?) should have had nothing to fear, since he wasn't even an American citizen - however, even he still had at least a little bit of fear put into him when he was taken down to the station for questioning (even though in the end he wasn't charged with anything). If you are an American doing this, you had better release the "how" portion as anonymous as possible lest retribution come your way...

    That being said, let me state that I am all for this kind of hacking. Fair use gives us all the right we need, regardless of the UCITA or DMCA...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • One may think that being able to record the output of the box, in it's full digital format, would be upheld by the time-shifting ruling of VCRs, but...

    Thanks to the DMCA (and possibly the UCITA), your agreement with the cable company may very well say that "decrypting" the MPEG output stream is a violation of your contract (aka, EULA). In fact, as devices such as the TIVO become more popular (or even integrated into the set-top box - I have COX digital cable, and under the "setup" mode of the box, one of the pages list the ability to have a hard drive attached), I can imagine that it might even disallow "recording" at the distributor's (like HBO) whim, based on signals embedded in the programming.

    Unfortunately, no one is going to care until it is too late (probably, American society will wake up when it finds out it isn't allowed to record the next Superbowl because of NFL licensing restrictions)...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • I had digital cable from AT&T for a few months. I quit subscribing to the digital channels because all the channels with a number less than 100 were delivered to my set as the same analog signal regardless of if I was paying for the extra digital channels and settop box or not. At least in my area, none of the local channels, the discovery channel, TLC, history channel, cartoon network, anything that I'd actually watch, are delivered in digital signals. Only the movie channels and the really weird special interest channels come in digital. This kind of confused me. Why would they deliver the channels where most of the programming came from a camcorder in some guy's basement with dolby digital surround sound and DVD quality picture? Why why why? Why doesn't my local Fox station broadcast in stereo? I want my surround sound during the Simpsons!
    _____________
  • I understand why this was done. I just find it frustrating that the channels I want to watch aren't avaliable in the quality that digital cable can provide. Getting a dish isn't really an option for me since I live in an apartment, I very well may do that when I move next time

    The question asked here was about if the MPEG stream could be captured direct to a PC. Even if this could be done you wouldn't be able to capture things on the low numbered channels (like the Simpsons) since they're analog anyway.
    _____________

  • I dropped my dishnetwork dish when I got the cable modem... I miss the dish terribly (the reggae was my favorite part), but I wasn't goint to shell out for both services.

    BUT... if dishnetwork has a tivo function... is it actually hardware-based, or does it just allow you to program shows to be taped to your VCR? I already have that built into my TV and it kicks ass...

  • Perfectly legal (Score:3)

    by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @06:05AM (#612778) Homepage Journal
    The supreme court has ruled that time shifting broadcast television is perfectly legal. I don't see how this could be construed as anything other than time shifting, so legally you should be safe. IANAL.

    Now there's just the whole technical problem. I imagine that there's a whole lotta reverse engineering required to pull an MPEG stream out of your coax, so good luck.
    --

  • Maybe this product (Score:3)

    by goldmeer ( 65554 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @06:39AM (#612779)
    Have you looked at the Hauppauge WinTV-D card?
    http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm

    It looks like it will do what you want.
    I have used one of their old PCI WinTV cards for a couple of years, and I really like it.
    And No, I don't work for them.

    -Joe

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