copy protected tv movies

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Peter - 30 Oct 2006 23:01 GMT

I copied a movie from my tv card to the hard disk using windows media center.
I can play in back in Windows Media Center but if I try to view it in Window
Media Player I get the following error: You are not allowed to open this
file. Contact the content provider for further assistance.

It also will not let me copy the movie to dvd. Says it is a copy protected
movie. Is this correct? Do movies broadcast over cable tv networks come with
copy protection?

Thanks,

Peter

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Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] - 31 Oct 2006 22:57 GMT

>I copied a movie from my tv card to the hard disk using windows media center.
>I can play in back in Windows Media Center but if I try to view it in Window
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>movie. Is this correct? Do movies broadcast over cable tv networks come with
>copy protection?

Yes, since about December 2000 :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/12/22/sneaky_cable_crypto_scheme/

There were some reports of Tivo's misinterpreting a noisy analog
signal and mistakenly setting the copy protected bit on a broadcast.

I'm not fully sure how this all applied to media center though - there
is an apparently final answer here under "What is content protection,
and how does Media Center use it?" :
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/faq.mspx#Playback

As well as an old article for MCE2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-961376.html

If in doubt, you could also consider an open-source system which is
less likely to be commercially crippled by business interests.

Systems such as Myth TV exist, though obviously they're harder to set
up than a ready rolled media center device.
http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures

Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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