Ceton Echo & Xbox cannot play H.264 protected content

Troubleshoot and discuss the XBOX 360, XBOX One, Linksys, and other extenders.
john321

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#281

Post by john321 » Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:54 am

webminster wrote:I contributed way back when as well. There's claims that DRM on Live TV works, at least on Android clients. DRM for recorded content does not. An announcement is supposedly imminent on this support, at least for Android clients. Other stuff is missing, like pause/rewind on live TV. It's "getting there," painfully slowly.

Note I'm going by what's said on the forums - it hasn't sounded useful enough yet for me to spend the money and time setting up a test system.
I think lots of us are getting very restless about the HDHR DVR thing.

joeer77

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#282

Post by joeer77 » Wed Jul 13, 2016 10:42 pm

Update. Just added Showtime and Encore to my Comcast package. Still receive black screen with audio on both Xbox 360s. Have resorted to HBO Go and Showtime app as a workaround on the 360s.

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#283

Post by glugglug » Wed Jul 20, 2016 2:17 am

It's kind of ironic those on Comcast are having trouble with the H.264 channels, while on FIOS, the playback of H.264 channels has gotten better. They used to play back more jittery on the extender, as the XBOX couldn't handle them well. Now that they are putting 5 H.264 channels per QAM instead of 4, the bit rate dropped a bit and the XBOX plays them smoothly.... as long as none of the copy protected channels gets switched I suppose...

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spanner

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#284

Post by spanner » Tue Aug 09, 2016 6:38 pm

Just an update on this. I accidentally selected the recorded HBO show ballers on my echo today and to my surprise it played fine. Turns out HBO signature hd 855, HBO2 HD 853 are working. its just the main HBO HD 851 that gets only audio. I am "almost" certain these did not work before. I tried these channels live on both my ceton and xbox and they played. Could Comcast be making some adjustments or did i miss that these channels have been working all along.

Comcast Portland Or

RyC

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#285

Post by RyC » Tue Aug 09, 2016 7:16 pm

spanner wrote:Just an update on this. I accidentally selected the recorded HBO show ballers on my echo today and to my surprise it played fine. Turns out HBO signature hd 855, HBO2 HD 853 are working. its just the main HBO HD 851 that gets only audio. I am "almost" certain these did not work before. I tried these channels live on both my ceton and xbox and they played. Could Comcast be making some adjustments or did i miss that these channels have been working all along.

Comcast Portland Or
Can you check the recordings and see if they're marked copy-once? (should say copy protected or not at the bottom of the synopsis box)

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spanner

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#286

Post by spanner » Tue Aug 09, 2016 7:31 pm

RyC wrote:
spanner wrote:Just an update on this. I accidentally selected the recorded HBO show ballers on my echo today and to my surprise it played fine. Turns out HBO signature hd 855, HBO2 HD 853 are working. its just the main HBO HD 851 that gets only audio. I am "almost" certain these did not work before. I tried these channels live on both my ceton and xbox and they played. Could Comcast be making some adjustments or did i miss that these channels have been working all along.

Comcast Portland Or
Can you check the recordings and see if they're marked copy-once? (should say copy protected or not at the bottom of the synopsis box)
the same episode of ballers recorded on channel 851 HBO HD, and HBO signature 855. They are both listed as Copy protected at the bottom of the synopsis. the recording on 855 works the recording on 851 does not

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spanner

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#287

Post by spanner » Tue Aug 09, 2016 7:41 pm

I have had some time to let it play on the echo, it is watchable , but very pix-elated at times no were near perfect, but it is playing which is new. I will give it a try on the xbox next

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#288

Post by IownFIVEechos » Tue Aug 09, 2016 7:44 pm

You just need to see if it is MPEG2, if so they reverted (or never changed) those channels. Echo plays HBO chunky always.

You will see it is MPEG2, extenders can not handle copy protection in other formats :(

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spanner

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#289

Post by spanner » Tue Aug 09, 2016 9:11 pm

IownFIVEechos wrote:You just need to see if it is MPEG2, if so they reverted (or never changed) those channels. Echo plays HBO chunky always.

You will see it is MPEG2, extenders can not handle copy protection in other formats :(
I just checked with 411 info on the recording and it is a H.264 on Hbo signature channel 855. it is working on xbox 360 and echo

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#290

Post by joeer77 » Thu Aug 11, 2016 3:20 pm

Checked my HBO channels. Main HBO is still black with audio on Xbox 360. HBO west and HBO signature have some video but it is very sluggish. Like watching a slide show version of the movie with audio. Comacast Hillsboro/Portland here.

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spanner

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#291

Post by spanner » Thu Aug 11, 2016 3:48 pm

joeer77 wrote:Checked my HBO channels. Main HBO is still black with audio on Xbox 360. HBO west and HBO signature have some video but it is very sluggish. Like watching a slide show version of the movie with audio. Comacast Hillsboro/Portland here.
Same here, both these channels were both black audio only when Comcast first switched. Makes me wonder if they are tweaking things. I am going to check often and hope for the miracle.

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#292

Post by RyC » Thu Aug 11, 2016 6:45 pm

Very interesting...definitely interested to see if ends up working

I just moved to Eugene where Comcast also has all non local channels in H.264, but I don't subscribe to HBO anymore so I can't check for myself.

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#293

Post by coolwhip » Sun Aug 14, 2016 2:47 pm

joeer77 wrote:Checked my HBO channels. Main HBO is still black with audio on Xbox 360. HBO west and HBO signature have some video but it is very sluggish. Like watching a slide show version of the movie with audio. Comacast Hillsboro/Portland here.
Same here and I can add that all of the HBO channels have the "One Copy" (0x02) flag on. Comcast Portland.
Did Mr Softy change something or is it something Comcast changed?

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#294

Post by coolwhip » Sun Aug 14, 2016 3:55 pm

Also, 782 MGMHD now works as described above with H.264 "One Copy" flag but 783 STZEH maintains the black screen with audio like HBOHD.

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#295

Post by glugglug » Sat Aug 20, 2016 6:24 pm

Are you sure that the channels you are able to play again are still h.264? (What codec does it say on the 411 info screens?)

I was thinking.... The reason for this could be that h.264 was not part of North American cable when CableCARD or possibly even Vista WMC was introduced, but is there in the newer specs and part of ATSC 2.0. There would have been no need for an h.264 codec in the protected video path in 2007, but Nvidia/ATI drivers maybe provide one.

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#296

Post by coolwhip » Tue Aug 23, 2016 9:24 pm

glugglug wrote:Are you sure that the channels you are able to play again are still h.264? (What codec does it say on the 411 info screens?)

I was thinking.... The reason for this could be that h.264 was not part of North American cable when CableCARD or possibly even Vista WMC was introduced, but is there in the newer specs and part of ATSC 2.0. There would have been no need for an h.264 codec in the protected video path in 2007, but Nvidia/ATI drivers maybe provide one.
All channels are H.264 except the local HD channels and the SD channels.

Your thinking is inline with how I look at this issue but the fact that Ceton claims that their box just takes data from WMC and displays it seemingly complicates the problem. This recent change does move the pointer more in the Comcast direction. FWIW I think the Comcast implementation of H.264 Copy Protection maybe correct by the book but is not compatible with the older video hardware that we want to use.

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#297

Post by webminster » Thu Sep 29, 2016 1:52 am

Question about the XBox360... do you have to have the "optional media pack" or whatever it's called to support the post-MP4 conversion, or does it just work (for the non-DRM channels of course).
-Alan

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Cyterio

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#298

Post by Cyterio » Mon Oct 03, 2016 1:37 am

Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but it fixed my problem with the scrambled HBO channels on Comcast and the audio only premium channels. I am currently running a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate on an Alienware Alpha i3. I am using a cable card from Comcast with the HDHR Prime Tuner. After setting everything up on my new HTPC I was disappointed at the quality on some stations (stuttering, blocky). I didn't have this before on my 8 year old HTPC with inferior hardware. After a few days of trial and error I found that by using the generic Microsoft drivers for the i3 processor, everything worked great.

I'm curious to see if this will fix everyone else's issues. Maybe those of you running i5 or i7 that are also having issues can try this also.


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#299

Post by Windom » Mon Oct 10, 2016 1:41 am

I just noticed some improvement viewing Comcast protected content via my Xbox 360. Previously I had just gotten the black screen with audio on Showtime and HBO. Tonight, I tried playing Westworld and Shameless from the main HBO and Showtime channels. This time I actually get some video playing. It is not normal quality though. A lot of paused or jerky video. I think this may have been similar to what some of you others had recently reported. If only they could get it working normally again, I would be so happy.

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#300

Post by ERIC8585 » Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:29 pm

Windom wrote:I just noticed some improvement viewing Comcast protected content via my Xbox 360. Previously I had just gotten the black screen with audio on Showtime and HBO. Tonight, I tried playing Westworld and Shameless from the main HBO and Showtime channels. This time I actually get some video playing. It is not normal quality though. A lot of paused or jerky video. I think this may have been similar to what some of you others had recently reported. If only they could get it working normally again, I would be so happy.
I've been having the black screen with occasional paused/jerky video on HBO since some time after 10/2/16. HBO worked fine before this. The file size of the recordings also went down so I'm assuming Comcast switched to MPEG4.

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