Stripping Vista Media Center DRM on recorded Media

[QuadcoreHD]

I have a "Digital Cable Ready" Dell XPS 420 system with accompanying ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner. I have the tuner hooked up and cable card installed and am tuning/recording premium content (ESPN HD, HBO HD etc...) just fine. The problem arises when trying to manipualte these recorded files in any way due to Vista Media Center DRM protection.

I recently recorded several movies in HD from HBO (2 hours is suprisingly only about 8 gigs) but want to be able to convert/edit/burn the files, all of which are blocked by DRM employed by Vista.

Unfortunately this digital cable tuner from ATI is the only digital tuner equiped to tune Premium content via cableCard that currently exists, and it only works on Digital Cable Ready Computers (which at this point can only be purchased directly from the manufacturer). In addition, the tuner only works with Vista, so I dont think DRM stripping measures that worked with WMP or on windows XP will work as Miscrosoft re-engineered their DRM protocalls for Vista.

Does anyone have any information on stripping the DRM from content recorded in this manner or, programs that will convert these files despite DRM protection? Any help would much appreciated.

[lufia8899]

Bump... I'd also be very interested to know if this is possible or if anyone is working on it! :)

[Turtleggjp]

I wouldn't count on it. Based on what I have read about these systems, they have locked them down pretty tight, making you PC basically into a TiVo box, which can also do a few other things (Internet, games, etc.). The #1 reason I do not own a TiVo is that I know that recordings made by that device are forever locked to that device. If it should fail and need to be replaced (as all electronic components eventually do) all you recordings are lost forever. Even if you have backed them up onto an external hard drive, I'm pretty sure that a replacement TiVo box will not play them (somebody PLEASE correct me if I am wrong).

This is basically what your Vista Cable Card system is. As I understand it, these systems have special motherboards with extra crypto on them for the DRM. Therefore, breaking the DRM will involve not just lifting DRM keys out of memory, but breaking these crypto chips as well. If this were to be done, it would not be easy enough for most of us to do. I'm sorry if you bought this system thinking you could do that. I know that if it was easy to do that, I would have bought one myself already. After reading about them though, I'm glad I didn't waste my money.

[setarip_old]

@QuadcoreHD

Hi!I recently recorded several movies in HD from HBOCan you play these recordings? If not, it's likely that the HBO signal is where the copy protection is (after all, it is a premium channel)...

[QuadcoreHD]

@@setarip

Yes, I can play these on my system and I'm also able to put them on an external HD. I have not tried playing them on another computer.

Turtle, if ths DRM was sucessfully stripped in Win XP I'm cursious to know why you think it can't be/won't be for Vista?

Also, I didnt by the system specifcally for this : ) but, nevertheless it would be pretty sweet to build up a collection of movies in 1080i strait from HBO! Oh and done perfectally legally too : )

[Turtleggjp]

Turtle, if ths DRM was sucessfully stripped in Win XP I'm cursious to know why you think it can't be/won't be for Vista?

I've never done WM DRM stripping myself, because I would never buy music that way. What I had read though was the thread on FairUse4WM which strips the DRM off music you can download from services such as Napster or Yahoo music. This is very possible, since XP allows programs to view the memory of other programs and even alter it. This allows programs like FairUse4WM to grab the secret keys needed to decrypt the DRM'ed files and make them playable anywhere, much like you would like to do with your recordings. However, as I stated before, what you are dealing with is not Windows XP, but Windows Vista, which has the ability to run programs in protected space, thus thwarting simple extraction of keys. That's bad enough, and I thought that perhaps someone would devise a way around this (possibly using Virtual Machines). What makes this almost impossible is the fact that your motherboard has dedicated crypto chips for the very purpose of keeping this content secure. The only reason the cable companies allowed this sort of functionality in the first place was because all of the necessary security was in place to prevent what you are trying to do. The special cypto on the motherboard combined with Vista's protected video and audio paths created the secure environment needed for the cable companies to agree to allow recording of premium content on a PC. Granted, such a PC is nowhere near as freely usable as we would like, but it allows people to record cable programs on their PC. For me, this would involve also being able to transcode the shows to a more compact format, and be able to transfer them to other computers to be watched as well. Since these systems are unable to do this, I do not see them as a working solution to what I would want to do if I was paying for a digital cable service, therefore I will never buy one, and I say sorry to those that did buy them hoping they could do this.


Also, I didnt by the system specifcally for this : ) but, nevertheless it would be pretty sweet to build up a collection of movies in 1080i strait from HBO! Oh and done perfectally legally too : )

You can certainly do this, but if this system were to fail and need to be replaced, you can kiss your huge collection of movies goodbye. You can backup your shows to avoid loss due to HDD failure, but as soon as the motherboard goes out, that's it.

Again, I am writing based on what I have read and what makes sense knowing how paranoid content providers are these days when it comes to their precious premium content. :rolleyes: If what I am saying is wrong, I am very open to correction.

Matt

[QuadcoreHD]

@turtleggjp

Understood. I wasnt disagreeing with you, just asking for futher explaination (which you kindly provided). Well, I'm hoping someone out there can offer a possible solution. As I said a movie recorded this way is about 8 gigs so its not gigantic, but it would be nice to be able to compress it further. Maybe pressure will be put ont microsoft to at least allow for some sort of compression to be implemented on these files? I wont hold my breath though...