Remove copy protection with HD-PVR and an extender

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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barnabas1969

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Remove copy protection with HD-PVR and an extender

#1

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 4:05 pm

This thread is a continuation of a discussion that started in (this post).

I've been experimenting with an HD-PVR as a means to remove copy-protection from recordings that were recorded from a CableCARD tuner. I've been thinking about this for a long time. My idea was to write some kind of program or batch script that would search for new copy-protected recordings, play them on an extender, and record what is playing on the extender using the HD-PVR.

I bought an HD-PVR (used, from e-bay) several months ago, and just put it in a box. Recently, I moved my new HTPC into production. I have lots of copy-protected recordings on my old HTPC, and I would like to get them off of it, so this idea has been resurrected.

I installed the Hauppauge driver version 1.7.1.30059 from the Hauppauge website. It was awful. It took more than 60 seconds to "tune" the channel. So, I tried the older version 1.5.7.0. It locks-in to the video stream in about 5 seconds. Any recommendations on drivers and/or other software (e.g. DVBLink) is much appreciated.

I connected the component outputs of an HP X280N extender to the HD-PVR's component inputs. On my test system (which is my old production system), I set it up so that the HD-PVR is the only "tuner" in Media Center, and told Media Center that it is connected to a cable box so that it would populate the guide. This was only for testing purposes, but it allowed me to play a channel, and see whatever is playing on the extender.

I started a copy-protected show playing on the extender, and recorded it from the HD-PVR. The copy protection was gone, and it played fine.

This test tells me that the X280N/HD-PVR combination removes the copy protection.

So, now I need to figure out how to automate it. I already know how to automate starting playback on an extender. That part is pretty simple. I also know how to write a VBScript to look for recorded TV files that have copy-protection. There VBSCript can also get the meta data from the original wtv file (title, episode name, original air date, etc).

The part I'm stuck on is three-fold:

A) How can I use the HD-PVR and insert a single channel in my guide that is the "HD-PVR channel"? The post linked above is where I learned that DVBLink can be used to do this. I'd like more detail. Please explain how I can do this.

B) How can I automate starting a recording in Media Center? I can't find any documentation on how to tell Media Center to start/stop recording. I've thought about sending keystrokes to Media Center to start a manual recording, but this is less than ideal. I'd really like to find a better way.

C) How can I make the new recording contain the metadata (title, episode name, original air date, etc) that I retrieved from the original recording? Looking at the Microsoft documentation on these extended file properties, I can see that many of them are read-only, so I need to find a way to do this. My ideas are: 1) Somehow put that information into the guide for my HD-PVR channel before I start the recording. Can I do that with DVBLink? 2) Use an already-existing tool to do this somehow. Does anyone know of such a tool, that will leave the file extension as WTV?

brendabryg

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#2

Post by brendabryg » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:09 pm

barnabas1969 wrote: A) How can I use the HD-PVR and insert a single channel in my guide that is the "HD-PVR channel"? The post linked above is where I learned that DVBLink can be used to do this. I'd like more detail. Please explain how I can do this.

B) How can I automate starting a recording in Media Center? I can't find any documentation on how to tell Media Center to start/stop recording. I've thought about sending keystrokes to Media Center to start a manual recording, but this is less than ideal. I'd really like to find a better way.

C) How can I make the new recording contain the metadata (title, episode name, original air date, etc) that I retrieved from the original recording? Looking at the Microsoft documentation on these extended file properties, I can see that many of them are read-only, so I need to find a way to do this. My ideas are: 1) Somehow put that information into the guide for my HD-PVR channel before I start the recording. Can I do that with DVBLink? 2) Use an already-existing tool to do this somehow. Does anyone know of such a tool, that will leave the file extension as WTV?
I'm by no means an expert on DVBLink or programming automated widgets, but I'll give it a shot:

A) I haven't used the native Hauppauge implementation for media center but it sounds like what you achieved is sucess. You could disable all but one channel and try to remove it's guide data so that this channel would just show up empty to make it cleaner.

For DVBLink it basically uses the same hauppauge drivers, but calls up the stream independantly of MCE and routes it through it's own server framework. The DVBLink server is free, the tuner source plugins (HDPVR, Colossus, etc) are not free. The tuner source plugins for HDPVR and Colossus are by 1geek1tool and have been abandoned though I believe you can still purchase (30 day free trial I think) and they still work well; with the caveat that you are limited to version 4.1 of DVBLink server framework. Newer versions aren't compatable. Once you have the tvsource plugin for HDPVR there's some pretty good guides around to help with setup. You basically end up with manual control over channels and guide data (can still use MCE guide data if you want). I've configured an instance of the colossus tvsource plugin with just 1 channel and gave it # 900 so that I can tune to it once it's picked up in MCE. I leave the guide data empty. For just one channel like this there may not be any advantage over using the native hauppauge implementation that you already have setup since it's really the same driver with an added layer of customization. I can try to do a more in depth explanation if this isn't clear enough.

B)Not sure how to automate starting a recording other than the guide data, or manual recoding for channels without guide data. One advantage of DVBLink that may help here is the guide import ability. You can import gide data from various sources one of which is the XMLTV format. I was thinking you could try to do a batch dump of all your existing metadata for recodings you want to process, then figure out a way to create a XMLTV file with all of this metadata (start and end times of each show would need to be custom to line up end-to-end in the guide). Then once that channel guide is setup on the HDPVR channel for all the recordings you want to process, set them all to record and have your extender start automatically playing the same list at just the right time. All the recordings would then happen for the proper duration and have the correct metadata.

C) My idea above is related to this part.

That's my quick patched together answer. It would probably take me too long to figure all that out, but it sounds like you have a good handle on automating things already so maybe it's possible?

hope that helps a bit...

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#3

Post by brendabryg » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:35 pm

Just thinking about this some more and I'll throw a few other ideas into the pot. There must be a way to automate starting a recording because I'm sure that's all remotepotato and all the other similar type programs use; the new serverwmc is another example. Somehow they are tapping into the recording backend starting recordings and catching the streams. All you really need to figure out is how they start the recordings automatically. Then you don't have to deal with all that DVBLink and XMLTV stuff. Just get a bunch of blank recordings and figure out a way to batch transfer all the metadata afterwards...

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#4

Post by RyC » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:45 pm

What bit rate are your HD-PVR recordings? Do you notice a difference in quality? Back in the old days, I used an EyeTV HD which is pretty much the same thing as the HD-PVR for Macs. I had the bit rate too low (but I didn't know that at the time) and during fast motion, the picture would pretty much turn into a blur.

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#5

Post by brendabryg » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:46 pm

Found this related to editing metadata

http://babgvant.com/forums/t/760.aspx

barnabas1969

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#6

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:57 pm

Regarding the DVBLink setup:

Are you saying that all I need is the DVBLink server (version 4.1) from DVBLogic, and the "DVBLink for HD-PVR" from 1geek1tool.com? Or, are you saying that I would also need DVBLink TVSource from DVBLogic? Also, are you running the DVBLink for HD-PVR version 3.x or 4.x?

Regarding adding the channel to the guide:

For my test, and for recording shows from my old HTPC, deleting all but one channel will work fine. However, my long term goal is to connect the HD-PVR to my production HTPC, and schedule a task that will record all of the day's copy-protected shows each night... so that the following day, all of them are copy-freely. This would allow me to use automatic commercial skipping software on ALL of my recordings, instead of only on the copy-freely ones.

I like the idea of populating the guide with the metadata via an XML import. It wouldn't be difficult to create the XML. The only thing that would still be incorrect is the date recorded (at least for the recordings that I want to get off my old HTPC... going forward, they would usually be re-recorded from the HD-PVR within hours of the original recording). So... this brings me to a question. Does the DVBLink software allow me to import guide data for ONE channel without disturbing the Microsoft guide data for the rest of my channels?

You have a good point about the servermce thing... I played with that a long time ago, hoping to get reliable data from it in order to display it using LCDSmartie. I never got the LCD display working correctly, I think it was an incompatibility with my USB ports or something, and I gave up on that. I'll look into it again.

From memory, there is a tool that will do a container swap from e.g. MKV to WTV, and has command-line options to add title, episode, etc. I can't remember which tool it is. That is one possibility for getting the metadata into the file, but I don't know if it will "swap" from WTV to WTV... I think I would need to start with either an MKV or an MP4 file in order to do this. That would require me to use some other software (WinTV?) to create an MP4 file instead of a WTV file as the first step in the process. I don't like this idea much.

To summarize, I think that if you can help me understand the whole DVBLink thing, AND if it's possible for DVBLink to import guide data for only ONE channel while leaving all my other channels alone, then I'll be pretty close to a solution. So, please help me with my questions above regarding DVBLink setup. Most importantly, can I import guide data for one channel without disturbing the guide data for all my other channels?

It appears that DVBLink can even generate events (they call them "hooks") on certain activities. If it can run a custom program whenever a recording starts, and pass some metadata (e.g. program title, start time, etc) to my custom program, then I could handle the starting of the playback on the extender using my custom program.

barnabas1969

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#7

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:18 pm

brendabryg wrote:Found this related to editing metadata

http://babgvant.com/forums/t/760.aspx
That's very interesting. I'll have to look at DTB and see if it has a profile built-in for this. If not, hopefully I will be able to find some documentation on the DLL.

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#8

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:21 pm

RyC wrote:What bit rate are your HD-PVR recordings? Do you notice a difference in quality? Back in the old days, I used an EyeTV HD which is pretty much the same thing as the HD-PVR for Macs. I had the bit rate too low (but I didn't know that at the time) and during fast motion, the picture would pretty much turn into a blur.
I left it set to the default, but I don't remember what that is. I experimented with a recording that didn't have a lot of fast motion, but it did have some scenes where the whole screen panned, and it looked fine to me. There are definitely bitrate settings, but I haven't gotten that deep into the settings yet. I only spent enough time to get it to "tune" fairly reliably, and let it record a whole 2-hour movie. I watched parts of it, and it looked OK to me.

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#9

Post by IownFIVEechos » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:31 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:
RyC wrote:What bit rate are your HD-PVR recordings? Do you notice a difference in quality? Back in the old days, I used an EyeTV HD which is pretty much the same thing as the HD-PVR for Macs. I had the bit rate too low (but I didn't know that at the time) and during fast motion, the picture would pretty much turn into a blur.
I left it set to the default, but I don't remember what that is. I experimented with a recording that didn't have a lot of fast motion, but it did have some scenes where the whole screen panned, and it looked fine to me. There are definitely bitrate settings, but I haven't gotten that deep into the settings yet. I only spent enough time to get it to "tune" fairly reliably, and let it record a whole 2-hour movie. I watched parts of it, and it looked OK to me.

Some things to look at, I used to use mine (I put it up for sale on here, not one response btw :)). I know that when I run the .ts files over an extender my receivers are not too fond of it. They come in as stereo. This is when I play via the roku too. Don't just look at it on the HTPC. I found the bitrate of 6 or 7 was the sweet spot. 9 was overkill etc.. Have fun.

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#10

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:42 pm

IownFIVEechos wrote:Some things to look at, I used to use mine (I put it up for sale on here, not one response btw :)). I know that when I run the .ts files over an extender my receivers are not too fond of it. They come in as stereo. This is when I play via the roku too. Don't just look at it on the HTPC. I found the bitrate of 6 or 7 was the sweet spot. 9 was overkill etc.. Have fun.
First, thanks for the info about the bitrate. I used optical audio between the X280N and the HD-PVR, and Media Center definitely detected it as 5.1 audio. I'll have to try playing it back on my new HTPC and my bedroom XBox to see if the AVR's recognize it as Dolby Digital 5.1. It's possible that your problem is the extender (Echo, I presume).


Second, you could easily sell your HD-PVR on e-bay. If you price it right, it will definitely sell. I paid $70.00 plus shipping for mine.

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#11

Post by IownFIVEechos » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:51 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:
IownFIVEechos wrote:Some things to look at, I used to use mine (I put it up for sale on here, not one response btw :)). I know that when I run the .ts files over an extender my receivers are not too fond of it. They come in as stereo. This is when I play via the roku too. Don't just look at it on the HTPC. I found the bitrate of 6 or 7 was the sweet spot. 9 was overkill etc.. Have fun.
First, thanks for the info about the bitrate. I used optical audio between the X280N and the HD-PVR, and Media Center definitely detected it as 5.1 audio. I'll have to try playing it back on my new HTPC and my bedroom XBox to see if the AVR's recognize it as Dolby Digital 5.1. It's possible that your problem is the extender (Echo, I presume).


Second, you could easily sell your HD-PVR on e-bay. If you price it right, it will definitely sell. I paid $70.00 plus shipping for mine.

Just double check they work on your stuff on your receivers. I know you have a nice receiver. I would imagine most of your extenders are on TV's without receivers so just keep it in mind.

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#12

Post by brendabryg » Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:50 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:Regarding the DVBLink setup:

Are you saying that all I need is the DVBLink server (version 4.1) from DVBLogic, and the "DVBLink for HD-PVR" from 1geek1tool.com? Or, are you saying that I would also need DVBLink TVSource from DVBLogic? Also, are you running the DVBLink for HD-PVR version 3.x or 4.x?
Yes just the DVBLink server and the "DVBLink for HD-PVR" from 1geek1tool.com; TVsource is just another plugin to the server for different tuners like DVB cards, ATSC etc.

I'm running 4.x (for colossus); though I'd consider 3.x for server and HD-PVR plugin if you're running alongside a cablecard becuase I think the version 4.x can break playready which may be an issue.
barnabas1969 wrote:Regarding the DVBLink setup:

Regarding adding the channel to the guide:

I like the idea of populating the guide with the metadata via an XML import. It wouldn't be difficult to create the XML. The only thing that would still be incorrect is the date recorded (at least for the recordings that I want to get off my old HTPC... going forward, they would usually be re-recorded from the HD-PVR within hours of the original recording). So... this brings me to a question. Does the DVBLink software allow me to import guide data for ONE channel without disturbing the Microsoft guide data for the rest of my channels?
Yes you most definitely can add ONE channel with specific guide data (via XML or other) into an existing setup with other Tuners and other guide data without messing it up. There's definitlely a few wrinkles getting it all set up but now I'd say it's 99% stable for me... I should say a new setup (not existing) since I think you have to run the setup wizard for DVBLink tuners to be incorporated into MCE

You could probably fix the recorded date using those metadata tools aftwerwards if you need.

One idea if all the protected recordings are from one channel is to find a timeshift listing for the guide and set that to the HD-PVR channel...
Come to think of it you could have the full guide setup as you do now using the native hauppauge implementation, offset the guide (change timezone? ...would require you to keep your separate production machine or VM), set recordings for this HD-PVR setup as a duplicate of your main MCE server for all the copy once channels and then trigger the those to play on the extender with the same offset. That would result in perfect metadata.

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#13

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:12 pm

I would prefer to keep this on one machine if possible, so using a 2nd PC for recording through the HD-PVR would be a last resort. My recordings come from all over the place... I have hundreds of copy-protected channels. It's possible for multiple copy-protected shows to be recorded simultaneously because I have 6 CableCARD tuners, so I don't think a time-shifted channel would work very well.

Thanks for the info about CableCARD compatibility with DVBLink. You've given me lots of info so I can search around for what I need. I hadn't thought of DVRMSToolbox and the possibility of using its DLL's for modifying metadata... I'll definitely look into that.

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#14

Post by dotbatman » Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:28 am

Just wondering if you'd made any progress toward a solution on this. I'm interested in doing the same thing. Around here there is only TimeWarner, and of course they (like brighthouse) mark everything copy-once.

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