On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 09:58:17PM -0500, Jason Gabriele wrote: > doesnt mean that it wont be reversed engineered. windows media center > 2006 will supposedly have support for cable cards so expect to see pci > cards out at around that time. maybe someone will attempt to figure out > how to get it working. really i think this would be the "killer app" for > mythtv (or any other computer-based pvrs)
Problem is, in doing so you are likely to break some law somewhere. Which scares real companies from doing the work to sell such hardware to us at a good price. Now of course, when it comes to bootleg satellite, there is an industry with companies willing to take the legal risks, because the amounts of money are serious; people bootleg satellite packages that cost $100 pre month and PPV costing much more, so they are willing to hunt for under the table stuff. But when it's just, "I can buy a Tivo with a cablecard for $X and I can build a Myth box for a similar amount of money but you have to go underground to get the cable card" it's not an easy battle to win. Well, which is why were're trying to change the law, so companies can make this stuff without fear, and open source tools like Myth can run on it. Or we look for loopholes. Some systems (but I don't think cablecard is as strong as it could be) do things like include abilities to zap out keys that have been reverse engineered. Unfortunately for now, all circumventing of copy protection seems risky. The law _says_ that there is an exemption for making compatible products, but it hasn't been nearly as useful as we would like, DeCSS remains illegal, even if your only goal is to get Linux to play DVDs.
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