So I recently grew tired of my Directv/ultimateTV service and maxed out the hacks I could do on my series 1 tivo, so I thought about building my own media PC.  I looked at both Vista Ultimate and MythTV and decided to go with Myth (I guess just to be different) and built a Shuttle XPC to run it in my den.  I initially wanted to just record HDTV using a $60 HD tuner card, but I discovered I could also get content through the firewire port on the back of a cable box.  The Motorola 6200 series has a port and is required by the FCC to be functional.   Functional is used loosely in this case.

So I canceled my directv service and bumped up my comcast to include the HD box with the firewire port and only had minor issues.  Sometimes when Comcast would insert their local advertising on the cable network channels it would glitch and cause the player to crash... much to the frustration of my wife trying to watch forensic files.  One day I find out that Verizon is now selling cable TV service in my town and since I already had Fios internet, it would be easy to switch over.  I made my appointment and they didn't show up the first time, came 1 hour late to the second and finally got a box set up.  The moment the guy was gone I hooked it up to my MythTV box and noticed that I only got a few channels... broadcast channels.  Looking into it further I discovered that this is caused by the CCI flag.

The CCI Flag

The Copy Control Information Flag is a bit that is set by the cable operator to control how the content can be viewed and recorded.  It works along side the DTCP (5C) technology on the firewire port.  Normally, the output of the firewire is sent in the clear in the form of a MPEG2TS stream.  This is great since then the computer or device doesn't have to re-encode anything.  It can be written directly to a drive and then viewed later on as file.  However, if the cable operator turns the flag to anything other than 0x00, the device has to be 5c compliant to honor the copy protection setting.

In Verizon's case, they have most channels set to 0x02 (copy once).  Since MythTV (and I am guessing, MCE) are not 5c compliant, a connection can't be established to record the data.  So I called and asked and within a few minutes I was connected to a tech that actually knew what this was but not sure why it was set.  He told me I should just look into using the analog outputs (!?)  Try doing that for HD. 

Being rather disgusted with it, I told him I would like to cancel my service.  I also found a form on the FCC's website for making complaints.  So I did.  And I got some good attention.  Basically, they told me that they were being required to turn it on by the cable networks, and that the law states that you can only not enable it on broadcast channels, which they were fully compliant with. 

"Unencrypted broadcast television – no copy restrictions may be imposed; "http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-225A1.pdf

So good thing I kept my Comcast service and after a few phone calls to really hammer it into them, I was able to cancel my Verizon TV service.

My boss at work told me that he was getting great reception with RCN (yes there are 3 cable operators in my town) and that most of their channels weren't even encrypted let alone, copy protected.  So I signed up, the guy was ON TIME and every single channel worked!  For the price and the quality, I was very happy with RCN. 

A few weeks later I was surfing through the channels and discovered 3 that all of the sudden were broken.  I took a look at the diagnostic menu to see what CCI was set to and there it was, 0x02 for 3 over the air channels. 

Motorola 6200:  Tune to the channel you wish to check, press power and then the OK button a few times.  This should bring up a gray screen with lots of stuff on it.  If you pressed OK too many times you might have gone into the first menu option, so click the left arrow to go back to the list.  You'll see lots of options that start with the letter d.  Go down to d06 and click the select button.  You'll see down in the left hand corner the CCI flag and what it is set to.  On 159,160 and 161 it is set to 0x02 for me.  Press power twice to get back to normal.

So I emailed them since I didn't want to deal with someone on the phone initially and I after a week I got a response back that stated that it wasn't up to them to set this flag but the broadcaster.  So I emailed WCVB and WBZ in Boston to find out.  I got a response right away from WCVB basically stating that not only do they not have control over this, but that they shouldn't even have it on! 

I called RCN and finally got through to someone who at least knew where to forward the info to internally and at this point, I am just waiting for the answer.  Its not that I really really care about these channels, but since its seemingly prohibited by law I feel that I should at least try to do something about it.  Hopefully they won't turn around and do what Verizon did and turn on 0x02 for all of their other channels.

I think that as flat panel tv ownership grows and as pc's become cheaper and better suited for this more people will be using set ups like this, either with firewire or with a cable card tuner.  Hopefully the TV industry will see that FORCING copy protection at this level only really pisses off the legitimate customers and doesn't stop the thieves from doing what they do now already.

I have a good post about this on the mysettopbox forum that you can find just by googling 5c verizon. http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17679

I'll update my blog when I have more info about this soon.

It has been a while since I've posted on here.  I've been so busy with my family and work.  But things are starting to fit in order and I am starting to take on new things.  I married Melissa on September 16th, 2007 and the planning for that took a lot of time.  But it was all worth it in the end because the wedding was absolutely beautiful!  It was the happiest day of my life.  I wish to thank Jason for being there and helping us the most, he really came through for me. 

Madrid is almost 2 years old and every day getting more cute.  She's super smart and is learning new things every day.  I'll have to post pictures of her on here.  She looks a lot like daddy.  Work has been busy but good, ATG is growing and doing very well right now and it keeps us busy and more importantly, employed lol. 

Here's an update on things I've talked about in the past:

• The MG is doing fine, while it is a little scratched up from being in the garage over the past 4 years, it runs great and is only leaking a little fluid from the clutch master cylinder.  I suspect I will get to fix that over the winter.  I haven't driven it much this year, but I did a few times on the mass pike and it ran very nicely.
• Marie and Cleo are living with my parents, and seem to have settled in very nicely.  Marie sleeps on the leopard pillow in the living room and Cleo likes to sleep on the cable box in my sister's room.  She falls off of it every so often, just as she did with me.
• I haven't been doing really any TV lately, but I was just elected onto the board of directors at fpac-tv.  Hopefully I will be able to get more involved with public access again.  I've been uploading old Toukon shows in mpeg4 to Google video.  The Great Riki was at my wedding.

I've also been tinkering with my home theater pc, based on Mythtv (www.mythtv.org) which I am fascinated with.  Most others that I know are going with the Vista ultimate route which you'd think I would have as well as a Windows guy.  But I think this is something that linux is well suited for and lets me tinker more than you would be able to on windows.  The listing service that is pretty much required is now down to $20 /year which is almost free in my opinion.  I am also going to try running it on my xbox so that I can watch shows in my bedroom that are recorded in the den.  Mythtv is a rather distributed media solution that lets you have multiple systems work together seamlessly. 

I've been dealing with a lot of wireless networking at work, I've designed and implemented a wireless network solution for the entire corporation, and it handles more than 200 clients per day.  I've been working on lots of projects as well in that time.

Over the coming months I plan on just taking it easy, working with the board at fpac-tv.  I want to get Verizon to implement an all-digital solution for the signal to the headend for their new FiOS service in Framingham.  That should be interesting. 

I listen to a lot of podcasts and I heard about this tool on the Windows Weekly one with Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott that was written by Microsoft and is part of their "Live" suite.  Its called Windows Live Writer.  It seems to work very nicely on Vista and with Livejournal.

So having said that I hope to have more updates on here more often, it looks like I went for more than a year without any updates at all!

I'm adding a digg this icon to see if it even works.  I'm not a huge fan of digg.com only because it is basically all articles about the iPhone and how it "rocks," how much President Bush sucks and how much Microsoft Sucks and Linux rules.  But whatever, lets give it a try:

Now if only I can figure out how to populate the "mood" option...

Hi there, this is a test post to see if this thing actually works. yyayayyayaa

• Well in an effort to save money, Melissa and I took a trip up to building 19 in Burlington on Saturday because according to the weekly email I get from the owner, they were having a children's rug event.  So we got a $90 rug for $15 and it looks great.  We also got her poster framed finally (not at building 19!) and hung that up on Saturday. 
  
  So while we were at the wonderful building that is #19, we took a look around at the other stuff.  Hidden away in with some little figurines and other total shit I found the complete 5th season of the Gillmore Girls for $20 (RANDOM?) and then came across Building 19's "Bottoms Up" Baby Wipes shown here:
  
  
  The picture was the most bizarre thing featuring Jerry Ellis as a baby (For those unfamiliar with the building 19 story) with these instructions on the back:
  
  
• Do Not Flush
• Do not Re-Use even if they look unsoiled
• Do not let the little darlings eat these wipes (even though it is good for business) the are probably hard to digest and will put baby in a grumpy mood
• Store at room temperature
• Please do not Launder these and use them
• Keep resealable label closed, hard dry wipes hurt baby

Directions:
Simply pull back top label.  Remove wipe and reseal label when finished using.  IF YOU CAN'T FIND WIPES AND YOU'VE SEARCHED THE PACKAGE INSIDE AND OUT, YOU MAY HAVE A PROBLEM, YOU MUST HAVE RUN OUT.  DO NOT USE HAND OR SLEEVE JUST BUY ANOTHER PACKAGE.

Ok well that was probably more effort than any normal person would have put into showing this item lol.   Anyways, I don't think we'll use them on Madrid, but maybe when I'm out in the garage and I need to wipe the oil off my hand or something.  We also got a loaf pan so Mel can make her banana bread recipe that she got off of babyzone.  It is TD4 (to die for). 

Needless to say we had a lot of fun at building 19 with Madrid.  She was a good little girl.  She has her moments that are very stressful and I won't lie to you, its HARD WORK to take care of a baby day in and day out.  I can barely get anything else done around here when the day is over, and it takes all my energy.  Mel had to stay with her all day long and I don't know how she does it.  But things get easier, little by little every day.  And its all worth it when she gives me the giggley face.  I'll post pics of her room when it is 100% done.

Well its time to shower and then bed and then the same crap again. 

We put Madrid into her crib tonight and long past her regular feeding time she's still sleeping!  I hope this holds up...  Its my duty to pick her up in the middle of the night for feedings... I hope this isn't harder than how we had it before.