Video recorded from certian channels wont play on other media players besides WMC

[Minas6907]

Hey all.

This is an issue I've had occur only a few times, I think its for the most part hopeless, but I thought perhaps someone could comfirm its hopeless or on the slight chance there is a fix, tell me about it.

I have a Pinnacle 801e SE TV tuner, which I use to record a few shows and the occasional movie, and then re-encode with MCEbuddy. The problem comes when I have recorded a movie from a certain channel (this case I was recording Ice Age 2 from FX). I am able to play the entire recording in WMC, but if I were to use another media player, such as MPC Home Cinema (which is what I normally use) it will play only about 15 seconds or so of the video, then stop. The time will keep going, but the video and audio will stop. I did some searching around, and found a link that describes my problem.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/141570-45-recorded-media-play

So I was wondering, is there any program that will remove whatever protection is on this file? I have spent some time looking, and wasn't able to come up with anything. When I try to encode it, the video comes out unplayable. And I also tried to weasel my way around it and not use mcebuddy by first using DVRMStoMPEG, but I cant even begin to describe how long it was going to take, waaaaaaaaaaay too long, this file was processing a ton slower then a file normally would.

Anyways, it anyone has any comments, they are welcome. Thanks.

[Ghitulescu]

If WMC means Windows Media Center as opposed to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Winter Music Conference or World MuayThai Council, then you can use WMC to create DVDs off this show if you're permitted to, then rip the DVDRs in your favourite software.

If you can't then you have to use WMC (as World MuayThai Council AKA Thai Box:)) on FX broadcasters.

So drop off your subscription at FX and start buying DVDs, it might be even cheaper if you count your time and electricity in. ;)

[Minas6907]

Hey! Yeah, I thought of burning the movie to a dvd, but Media Center only burns a movie directly to a dvd, it does not prepare it to play on other computers or dvd players, so thats a bummer. As for buying movies, I really dont watch too many of them at all. When I do watch something on tv, its usually Iron Chef and a few other food shows, I guess I dont care too much about movies (although I could watch the squirrel from Ice Age all day long) to go purchase them. The few movies I do own seem to just sit there and not really do anything.

[Ghitulescu]

Are you saying that MPC does just a COPY/PASTE like you can from Explorer?

I don't use MPC, nor I'll use it, but the MS webpage says that MPC can create DVD off your recordings to be watched on DVD players.

[Minas6907]

Hmmm, I sure feel like a knuckle head. For some reason I thought that was the case with WMC, but evidently not. I just tried burning an episode of Iron Chef America, but it didnt turn out to be playable. Lately I've had a few problems burning things, so I'll mess around with it later, thanks.

[Ghitulescu]

I'm afraid that's not enough if one needs to be helped.
"It's not playable" says nothing to me, as there are thousands if not millions of possible causes, including the oldest one, the DVD player cannot support DVDR. What are the files MPC loads on that damn DVDR?

[Minas6907]

I assumed it was my dvd burner that was acting funky. By 'not playable' I meant that after I burn the disk, it wouldnt open up and play in a media player, nor would it get recognized in 'my computer.' Bringing it to the dvd player, it basically did the same thing as my pc, just seemed like it was trying to read the disk over and over, but nothing ever happened, and I did wait quite a while. As for the files that wmc load onto the dvdr, it was one .dvr-ms file, one hour in length and 3gb in size. I couldnt see what this disk structure was like after it burned, because I couldnt read it. Like I said, I assumed it was my burner, though I've never burned anything with wmc, but, eh, by this point I'm sure I'll figure something out, and if not, no biggie, I was just wondering if anyone had put up with programs from certain stations where there seems to be some sort of block or restrictions on modifying the recording. I have a few other ways of coverting .dvr-ms to dvd, but it doesnt work with video recorded from this specific station. , in this case, FX. Anyways, Ghitulescu, I appreciate you replying to this thread.

[Ghitulescu]

So it's a copy/paste thing.

I think I're read somewhere about a DVR-MS converter. Maybe it helps you changing it into a something more "human". You may also google for DRM and DVR-MS, maybe there's a "decoder" for this. If the file is not encyrpted (yes, there are good chances), then we are talking here about the Unsetting of a single bit.

Sorry, I can't help you further, as I'm a hardware man, all this kind of software intentionally incompatible formats and stuff makes me sick.

[Minas6907]

There are .dvr-ms decoders, that is not the problem. I have a few of them which work very well. However, they dont work, for example, on programs recorded off of FX or AMC. When I try to work with shows from these channels, they really just dont process, I get errors, or the video processes at such a crazy slow speed, it would take days upon days to finish, and in the end, the video doesnt work. Other channels, such as food network and tcm, work just fine. There seems to be some sort of block on a small handfull of channels. Anyways, the link in my first post describes my problem perfectly (much better then I can) I was just wondering if anyone had a fix. I did quite a bit of searching, and came up with nothing except that link. Its something I can live with, just thought I'd post it here to see if anyone had a solution. Thanks.

[Ghitulescu]

When I see that the content providers make the things so difficult, I simply opt out and find another way.

My solution is to buy the BD/DVD. At least in Germany they are not plagued with unskippable trailers, yet. My price limit is 10€ (new) and my collection grows. In your case, IA2 is 12.99€ or some 30€ in the pack of three (IA, IA2 and IA3).