HDCP "Legacy" Issues

Attached

Here is some interesting/additional information.

1) One reason that we have this oddball TV/VHS thing is that my wife knows
how to program it (she does over half the programming and mostly drives TV
watching in our house - thank God she is a golf fan). I recall about a month
ago (second time that the oddball message appeared instead of video),
absolutely believing that the show had been recorded in the 'no box path' on
the combo TV/VHS. I questioned my wife very hard on this (again) and she now
admits that she only "probably thinks" that was the case (as opposed to
being recorded on a different VHS off the A/V outputs of our cable box). I
honestly don't know if she said this to get me to leave her alone, or if
that is what she really thinks.

2) I was messing around with the settop box to VHS (via A/V) path this
morning. Twice (when viewing the TV screen on the signal being put out by
the VHS, but not recording anything on VHS), I saw the offending message
"flash" VERY briefly. Not long enough to be able to read it, but it
certainly had the same 'black top and orange bottom' look that the message
has. I can't reproduce this (and I had no trouble recording that channel on
the VHS box that is attached to the settop box.

FYI, but if this has only happened when connected via settop box it at least
looks technically possible (and fixable by TimeWarner, in principle). But I
still wonder if that error message isn't encoded somewhere in the digital
signal and was accidently put into the analog stream and picked up by
whatever copy protection mechanism exists in VHS (I think there are some -
or at least were some).

FYI.

dave

"Dave Lee" wrote in message
m...
I am assuming that I am having unintended HDCP issues when using my (VERY
old) VHS recorder(s). We use our VHS (2 of them actually) to occasionally
record shows (not HD, obviously) for viewing later. In one case we are
recording directly off Time Warner cable to the "Cable In" input to a VHS
recorder. In the other case it is an AV set-top box output to AV input to
another (old) VHS box.

I would guess that 10% of the time when we try to record something we get
the audio and the video is just a screen with the (mostly not readable)
error message number 65511 HDCP DLG and text saying that this program
cannot be viewed through a DVI input, please use another input (or
something like that).

Of course the boxes that we are using were built before a DVI
specification even existed. So I assume that we are being victimized with
unintended consequences of HDCP protection and I also assume that there is
nothing that can be done about this.

But is there any way to know in advance which shows will present this
problem? My wife enjoys the show "NUMBERS" and we regularly record it for
later viewing. Last Friday's show suddenly presented the dreaded 6551
error message. Is this predictable?

Thanks.

dave

Attached

I should have added that the 'event' that seemed to trigger the 'message
flash' (that I can't reproduce) was a channel change via the cable box.

dave


"Dave Lee" wrote in message
m...
Attached

Here is some interesting/additional information.

1) One reason that we have this oddball TV/VHS thing is that my wife knows
how to program it (she does over half the programming and mostly drives TV
watching in our house - thank God she is a golf fan). I recall about a
month ago (second time that the oddball message appeared instead of
video), absolutely believing that the show had been recorded in the 'no
box path' on the combo TV/VHS. I questioned my wife very hard on this
(again) and she now admits that she only "probably thinks" that was the
case (as opposed to being recorded on a different VHS off the A/V outputs
of our cable box). I honestly don't know if she said this to get me to
leave her alone, or if that is what she really thinks.

2) I was messing around with the settop box to VHS (via A/V) path this
morning. Twice (when viewing the TV screen on the signal being put out by
the VHS, but not recording anything on VHS), I saw the offending message
"flash" VERY briefly. Not long enough to be able to read it, but it
certainly had the same 'black top and orange bottom' look that the message
has. I can't reproduce this (and I had no trouble recording that channel
on the VHS box that is attached to the settop box.

FYI, but if this has only happened when connected via settop box it at
least looks technically possible (and fixable by TimeWarner, in
principle). But I still wonder if that error message isn't encoded
somewhere in the digital signal and was accidently put into the analog
stream and picked up by whatever copy protection mechanism exists in VHS
(I think there are some - or at least were some).

FYI.

dave

"Dave Lee" wrote in message
m...
I am assuming that I am having unintended HDCP issues when using my (VERY
old) VHS recorder(s). We use our VHS (2 of them actually) to occasionally
record shows (not HD, obviously) for viewing later. In one case we are
recording directly off Time Warner cable to the "Cable In" input to a VHS
recorder. In the other case it is an AV set-top box output to AV input to
another (old) VHS box.

I would guess that 10% of the time when we try to record something we get
the audio and the video is just a screen with the (mostly not readable)
error message number 65511 HDCP DLG and text saying that this program
cannot be viewed through a DVI input, please use another input (or
something like that).

Of course the boxes that we are using were built before a DVI
specification even existed. So I assume that we are being victimized with
unintended consequences of HDCP protection and I also assume that there
is nothing that can be done about this.

But is there any way to know in advance which shows will present this
problem? My wife enjoys the show "NUMBERS" and we regularly record it for
later viewing. Last Friday's show suddenly presented the dreaded 6551
error message. Is this predictable?

Thanks.

dave

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:26:42 -0500, Dave Lee wrote:

The only good news here is that it is not repeatable. WHile that makes
it hard to explore it also means it doesn't happen often (my original
concern was that this was going to become more common and unavoidable).
Since I have experienced it on both CBS and USA, I am going to start
'sampling' those channels periodically to see if I can find a pattern or
something else to go on here.

And note that it has happened on two different VHS recording devices,
so this issue isn't unique to a single manufacturer.

There is an analog broadcast flag to disallow recordings. Don't recall
what it is called, but if it's set and your recorder supports it, it
won't record. I had this happen with an S1 Tivo many years back. At the
time, no one was supposed to be using it either. And this was an OTA NTSC
broadcast, not cable. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGMS-A

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

Attached

THANKS!

dave

"Wes Newell" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:26:42 -0500, Dave Lee wrote:

The only good news here is that it is not repeatable. WHile that makes
it hard to explore it also means it doesn't happen often (my original
concern was that this was going to become more common and unavoidable).
Since I have experienced it on both CBS and USA, I am going to start
'sampling' those channels periodically to see if I can find a pattern or
something else to go on here.

And note that it has happened on two different VHS recording devices,
so this issue isn't unique to a single manufacturer.

There is an analog broadcast flag to disallow recordings. Don't recall
what it is called, but if it's set and your recorder supports it, it
won't record. I had this happen with an S1 Tivo many years back. At the
time, no one was supposed to be using it either. And this was an OTA NTSC
broadcast, not cable. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGMS-A

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

Wes Newell wrote:

There is an analog broadcast flag to disallow recordings. Don't recall
what it is called, but if it's set and your recorder supports it, it
won't record. I had this happen with an S1 Tivo many years back. At the
time, no one was supposed to be using it either. And this was an OTA NTSC
broadcast, not cable. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGMS-A

I've never seen or heard of a standard analog VHS VCR affected by CGMS-A.
Plus, the OP stated that his warning message was a 65511 HDCP DLG message.

RickMerrill wrote:

G-squared wrote:
On Jan 11, 6:50 am, "Dave wrote:
...

I believe it to be a cable company problem as your analog VCR has no
way to generate HDCP messages. It can only capture what is on the
analog carrier. Call the cable company and show them the tape if they
ask.

G²

Big G, did you notice that the VCR is built-into the TV? That means the
message could come from the TV.

cable==TV==VCR

No, it means the TV is as old as the VCR and is equally ignorant of
HDCP. G-squared is right: there's no way an analog-only device can
know anything about HDCP since that form of copy protection is limited
to digital over HDMI and some DVI connections. Also, the OP stated
the TV/VCR combo predates HDCP.

I only see two ways that a message about HDCP could appear. If the
TV/VCR was connected directly to the cable and tuned to an analog
cable channel, then the image must have come from the cable switching
center and everyone on that drop that was watching that channel at
that time would have seen it.

If the TV/VCR was looking at the output of a cable box then the box
could have produced the message. It might have done so if the program
was flagged to output only to HDMI and no HDMI device was connected,
the HDCP handshake was unsuccessful or perhaps it always outputs that
message to all non-HDMI ports during protected shows. I don't think
that's the way a cable box should work, and broadcast content should
not be protected (IIRC, CBS was one channel affected) but it could
happen.

Del Mibbler

Del Mibbler wrote:
wrote:

G-squared wrote:
On Jan 11, 6:50 am, "Dave wrote:
...

I believe it to be a cable company problem as your analog VCR has no
way to generate HDCP messages. It can only capture what is on the
analog carrier. Call the cable company and show them the tape if they
ask.

G²

Big G, did you notice that the VCR is built-into the TV? That means the
message could come from the TV.

cable==TV==VCR

No, it means the TV is as old as the VCR and is equally ignorant of
HDCP. G-squared is right: there's no way an analog-only device can
know anything about HDCP since that form of copy protection is limited
to digital over HDMI and some DVI connections. Also, the OP stated
the TV/VCR combo predates HDCP.

I only see two ways that a message about HDCP could appear. If the
TV/VCR was connected directly to the cable and tuned to an analog
cable channel, then the image must have come from the cable switching
center and everyone on that drop that was watching that channel at
that time would have seen it.


Yes, that's certainly possible - I wonder if he was connected to a
local origination station!


If the TV/VCR was looking at the output of a cable box then the box
could have produced the message.

But it seemed certain that that was not the case for the OP.


It might have done so if the program
was flagged to output only to HDMI and no HDMI device was connected,

Is that possible for Cable systems?


the HDCP handshake was unsuccessful or perhaps it always outputs that
message to all non-HDMI ports during protected shows. I don't think
that's the way a cable box should work, and broadcast content should
not be protected (IIRC, CBS was one channel affected) but it could
happen.

Del Mibbler

Maybe you know why my ch 4-1 has vanished?

:-)

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:04:38 -0800, UCLAN wrote:

Wes Newell wrote:

There is an analog broadcast flag to disallow recordings. Don't recall
what it is called, but if it's set and your recorder supports it, it
won't record. I had this happen with an S1 Tivo many years back. At the
time, no one was supposed to be using it either. And this was an OTA
NTSC broadcast, not cable. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGMS-A

I've never seen or heard of a standard analog VHS VCR affected by
CGMS-A. Plus, the OP stated that his warning message was a 65511 HDCP
DLG message.

In the many years I recorded OTA NTSC, I only saw it a few times during a
short period of time (a couple of weeks) around the 2001-2003 time frame.
I don't think the flag was ever used much. It only happened on one
program iirc. And while he might not have seen this, it's still a
possibility that it could be used. IIRC, he wasn't sure of the message he
got, or if it was from the cable box VCR or the one connected directly to
the cable coax. At least he now knows of this and can use the info.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

"UCLAN" wrote in message
...
Wes Newell wrote:

There is an analog broadcast flag to disallow recordings. Don't recall
what it is called, but if it's set and your recorder supports it, it
won't record. I had this happen with an S1 Tivo many years back. At the
time, no one was supposed to be using it either. And this was an OTA NTSC
broadcast, not cable. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGMS-A

I've never seen or heard of a standard analog VHS VCR affected by CGMS-A.
Plus, the OP stated that his warning message was a 65511 HDCP DLG message.


Analog VCR's are, however, affected by Macrovision, and it appears that
Macrovision can be used to inhibit analog copying of digital signals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision

"A DVD recorder receiving a data stream encoded with Macrovision's legacy
analog copy protection (ACP) signal will simply display a message saying the
source is "copy-protected", and will pause the recording. This is achieved
through a signal implanted within the offscreen range (vertical blanking
interval) of the video signal—either physically recorded directly on the
tape (as with VHS) or created on playback by a chip in the player (as with
DVDs) or the digital cable/satellite box (as with all HDTV programs being
down-converted to standard definition)."

It's Wikipedia, so I'll try to find a more concrete/less subject to change
source. If the Wikipedia source is correct, then it would seem that the
cable box may support ACP, and if it does, then it could be generating the
error message screen to send as video to the recording device (in this case,
an analog VCR).

Daniel W. Rouse Jr. wrote:

I've never seen or heard of a standard analog VHS VCR affected by CGMS-A.
Plus, the OP stated that his warning message was a 65511 HDCP DLG
message.

Analog VCR's are, however, affected by Macrovision, and it appears that
Macrovision can be used to inhibit analog copying of digital signals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision

"A DVD recorder receiving a data stream encoded with Macrovision's
legacy analog copy protection (ACP) signal will simply display a message
saying the source is "copy-protected", and will pause the recording.
This is achieved through a signal implanted within the offscreen range
(vertical blanking interval) of the video signal—either physically
recorded directly on the tape (as with VHS) or created on playback by a
chip in the player (as with DVDs) or the digital cable/satellite box (as
with all HDTV programs being down-converted to standard definition)."

Pause the DVD recorder. You left out the effects on VHS:

"Macrovision inserts pulses into this non-displayed area. These signals cause
the automatic gain control on the recording VCR to compensate for the varying
strength. This makes the recorded picture wildly change brightness, rendering
it unwatchable."

Hardly what the OP related.

It's Wikipedia, so I'll try to find a more concrete/less subject to
change source. If the Wikipedia source is correct, then it would seem
that the cable box may support ACP, and if it does, then it could be
generating the error message screen to send as video to the recording
device (in this case, an analog VCR).

The OP related that there was *no* cable box - just the cable plugged
directly into the TV/VCR.