Ceton Echo & Xbox cannot play H.264 protected content

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

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#261

Post by spanner » Sun May 08, 2016 2:50 pm

Space wrote:It is always best to uninstall the existing drivers before installing the new drivers. I went a step further and uninstalled all the way back to the Windows default driver and then used http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... ility.aspx to make sure all remnants of the old AMD drivers were gone before installing 13.1 again.

Also, I would make an image backup of your system drive before doing anything, just in case.
Success!! Just tested with game of thrones and looks sounds perfect. All i did differently was added the drivers from the supplied disk instead of going online for the most current. Its great to have hbo back but kinda sucks that my onboard intel 4400 couldn't do this and of course no extenders. I am lucky I had room for the new card. Thanks again crash2009 and space, I had given up.

Yes I always keep a spare current cloned drive available
Also Playready wasn't an issue

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#262

Post by joeer77 » Sun May 08, 2016 7:29 pm

spanner wrote:
Space wrote:It is always best to uninstall the existing drivers before installing the new drivers. I went a step further and uninstalled all the way back to the Windows default driver and then used http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... ility.aspx to make sure all remnants of the old AMD drivers were gone before installing 13.1 again.

Also, I would make an image backup of your system drive before doing anything, just in case.
Success!! Just tested with game of thrones and looks sounds perfect. All i did differently was added the drivers from the supplied disk instead of going online for the most current. Its great to have hbo back but kinda sucks that my onboard intel 4400 couldn't do this and of course no extenders. I am lucky I had room for the new card. Thanks again crash2009 and space, I had given up.

Yes I always keep a spare current cloned drive available
Also Playready wasn't an issue
I had no audio with the latest AMD drivers as well. I used the supplied driver disk as well. I also noticed my video quality was better with the disk drivers.

Keeping thread on topic. Has anyone found a solution for the Xbox 360 black screen extender issue? Only solution I can think of is to run a PC at each TV with discrete video card. Don't really want to go there.

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#263

Post by coolwhip » Sun May 08, 2016 8:01 pm

spanner wrote:
Space wrote:It is always best to uninstall the existing drivers before installing the new drivers. I went a step further and uninstalled all the way back to the Windows default driver and then used http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... ility.aspx to make sure all remnants of the old AMD drivers were gone before installing 13.1 again.

Also, I would make an image backup of your system drive before doing anything, just in case.
Success!! Just tested with game of thrones and looks sounds perfect. All i did differently was added the drivers from the supplied disk instead of going online for the most current. Its great to have hbo back but kinda sucks that my onboard intel 4400 couldn't do this and of course no extenders. I am lucky I had room for the new card. Thanks again crash2009 and space, I had given up.

Yes I always keep a spare current cloned drive available
Also Playready wasn't an issue
Glad to see your problem is resolved. Now that you mention it, I had the same problem with the AMD High Definition Audio Device. I had to revert the audio driver back to version 7.12.0.7712 dated 9/21/2012 in order to get it to work with WMC. My HD 6450 driver is at version 15.200.1062.1004 dated 8/3/2015. This video driver will likely work with your card. I seem to go through this every time I update the video driver. I'm interested in what versions are working for you.

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spanner

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#264

Post by spanner » Sun May 08, 2016 9:28 pm

Glad to see your problem is resolved. Now that you mention it, I had the same problem with the AMD High Definition Audio Device. I had to revert the audio driver back to version 7.12.0.7712 dated 9/21/2012 in order to get it to work with WMC. My HD 6450 driver is at version 15.200.1062.1004 dated 8/3/2015. This video driver will likely work with your card. I seem to go through this every time I update the video driver. I'm interested in what versions are working for you.
Thanks. HD5450 driver is 15.201.3101.0 Dated 8/19/2015 . I had a lot of flicker on one of the HBO channels, but after disabling most of the Catalyst quality settings it works fine.

Hdmi audio 17.12.0.7723 8/11/2015

Hope I am not hijacking this thread but it almost could be "Ceton Echo, Intel 2-3-4000 & Xbox cannot play H.264 protected content" We are all having the same issue on one device or another. Some of us all three

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mcewinter

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#265

Post by mcewinter » Mon May 09, 2016 1:59 pm

spanner wrote:
Glad to see your problem is resolved. Now that you mention it, I had the same problem with the AMD High Definition Audio Device. I had to revert the audio driver back to version 7.12.0.7712 dated 9/21/2012 in order to get it to work with WMC. My HD 6450 driver is at version 15.200.1062.1004 dated 8/3/2015. This video driver will likely work with your card. I seem to go through this every time I update the video driver. I'm interested in what versions are working for you.
Thanks. HD5450 driver is 15.201.3101.0 Dated 8/19/2015 . I had a lot of flicker on one of the HBO channels, but after disabling most of the Catalyst quality settings it works fine.

Hdmi audio 17.12.0.7723 8/11/2015

Hope I am not hijacking this thread but it almost could be "Ceton Echo, Intel 2-3-4000 & Xbox cannot play H.264 protected content" We are all having the same issue on one device or another. Some of us all three
The Xbox issue warrants a separate thread since there is no fix, as of yet.

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spanner

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#266

Post by spanner » Mon May 09, 2016 3:01 pm

mcewinter wrote:
spanner wrote:
Glad to see your problem is resolved. Now that you mention it, I had the same problem with the AMD High Definition Audio Device. I had to revert the audio driver back to version 7.12.0.7712 dated 9/21/2012 in order to get it to work with WMC. My HD 6450 driver is at version 15.200.1062.1004 dated 8/3/2015. This video driver will likely work with your card. I seem to go through this every time I update the video driver. I'm interested in what versions are working for you.
Thanks. HD5450 driver is 15.201.3101.0 Dated 8/19/2015 . I had a lot of flicker on one of the HBO channels, but after disabling most of the Catalyst quality settings it works fine.

Hdmi audio 17.12.0.7723 8/11/2015

Hope I am not hijacking this thread but it almost could be "Ceton Echo, Intel 2-3-4000 & Xbox cannot play H.264 protected content" We are all having the same issue on one device or another. Some of us all three
The Xbox issue warrants a separate thread since there is no fix, as of yet.
Point taken. I will start a new thread if there is more on the subject. I did have an option to change graphics card, But also intel has no fix at least as of yet.

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mcewinter

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#267

Post by mcewinter » Mon May 09, 2016 4:15 pm

Good point. Changing video cards is merely a workaround.

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#268

Post by joeer77 » Mon May 16, 2016 11:52 pm

Have any Comcast customers switched to Verizon FIOS and see the problem go away? Thinking about it...

Space

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#269

Post by Space » Tue May 17, 2016 1:08 am

joeer77 wrote:Have any Comcast customers switched to Verizon FIOS and see the problem go away? Thinking about it...
It appears that the problem is with H.264 content that is copy protected. Since FiOS does not (yet?) have H.264 content that is copy protected, I would think it would not be a problem.

The only copy-protected content on FiOS is HBO, Cinemax, and all FOX cable networks (and none of them currently use H.264).

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#270

Post by tangoalpha » Fri May 27, 2016 11:07 pm

I'll admit that I didn't read every single post in this thread, but I did see where the advise to install the Xbox Optional Media Update was suggested. I just wanted to reiterate that I not only had to install this app (using the xbox console) but also have to be signed in to xbox live for playback to work. Just my own experience.

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#271

Post by reyes136 » Sun May 29, 2016 8:14 pm

Hi All so has this been isolated down to WMC7 with Intel onboard video, and that using an external video card fixes it? The only thing that makes it a little more confusing to me is that I have Power DVD15 which plays from my HDHomerun Prime and when I select the HBO X.264 protected channel it plays fine. just not through WMC.

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#272

Post by webminster » Sun May 29, 2016 9:49 pm

I believe there are two problem here, people are confusing them.
1) Issues with playing back MP4 (h.264) DRM encoded content on their main HTPC after the switchover;
2) Issues playing back the h.254 DRM content on the extenders.

Some people have found that the Intel graphics caused (1) above, and replacing the Intel graphics allowed for watching DRM channels like HBO again on their main screen. IOW, the Intel graphics did not properly deal with the h.264 encoding Comcast switched to,

The other problem seems to be DRM channels on /externders/ post switchover to MPEG4. Appears to be a distinct issue not related to the first issue, and I've heard no solution to this issue. Extenders do not use the HTPC's graphics adapter, so swapping that out will not fix this issue.

This tread is focused on the extender issue, although it's gotten badly hijacked for the other issue.
-Alan

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spanner

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#273

Post by spanner » Sun May 29, 2016 10:24 pm

webminster wrote:I believe there are two problem here, people are confusing them.
1) Issues with playing back MP4 (h.264) DRM encoded content on their main HTPC after the switchover;
2) Issues playing back the h.254 DRM content on the extenders.

Some people have found that the Intel graphics caused (1) above, and replacing the Intel graphics allowed for watching DRM channels like HBO again on their main screen. IOW, the Intel graphics did not properly deal with the h.264 encoding Comcast switched to,

The other problem seems to be DRM channels on /externders/ post switchover to MPEG4. Appears to be a distinct issue not related to the first issue, and I've heard no solution to this issue. Extenders do not use the HTPC's graphics adapter, so swapping that out will not fix this issue.

This tread is focused on the extender issue, although it's gotten badly hijacked for the other issue.
I'm not so sure their not at least somewhat related. My HTPC, echos and Xbox stopped playing this content on the same day. the day Comcast made the switch to mp4 h.264 in my area. On all my devices only the h.264 DRM premium content was affected. all other H.264 worked fine. for intel all i can gather is that it seems to be hardware related and no fix is in the works. I have still to hear what problem XBOx and the echos have. No on seems to be working on it because of WMC legacy status, But might it not also be similar to Intel's problem

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#274

Post by webminster » Sun May 29, 2016 11:16 pm

spanner wrote:I have still to hear what problem XBOx and the echos have. No on seems to be working on it because of WMC legacy status, But might it not also be similar to Intel's problem
Read back through the thread for context on those problems.
-Alan

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spanner

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#275

Post by spanner » Mon May 30, 2016 12:22 am

webminster wrote:
spanner wrote:I have still to hear what problem XBOx and the echos have. No on seems to be working on it because of WMC legacy status, But might it not also be similar to Intel's problem
Read back through the thread for context on those problems.
Ok I did my homework and went back through the thread and i can now sum it up

1. Mpeg4 h.264 DRM Premium channels do not work with a Ceton Echo WMC extender
2. Mpeg4 h.264 DRM Premium channels do not work with a XBOX 360 WMC Extender
3. Mpeg4 h.264 DRM Premium channels do not work with some intel onboard graphics WMC computers

No fixes for any of it yet. ( although you can still replace a video card with a different brand and not an extender)
Respectfully, I just dont see much of a difference

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#276

Post by Silversee » Thu Jun 02, 2016 11:02 pm

spanner wrote:Respectfully, I just dont see much of a difference
I think the difference is that the extenders are broken universally, regardless of whether the HTPC works.

The extender issue is actually the problem the OP originally posted about, but the thread became a bit confused when people noticed the same issue with onboard Intel graphics. But for those of us who rely on extenders, this is not yet resolved (and may be unresolvable).

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#277

Post by mjrpes » Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:14 pm

I have a Ceton Echo and it looks like I will be out of luck when HD DRM channels get converted over to MP4. Comcast sent me a letter yesterday that this will happen starting August 2nd.

Does anyone know if I can still watch DRM over standard definition HBO? The Comcast letter suggests I should still be OK watching HBO over SD.

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#278

Post by soapdishbandit » Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:13 am

mjrpes wrote:I have a Ceton Echo and it looks like I will be out of luck when HD DRM channels get converted over to MP4. Comcast sent me a letter yesterday that this will happen starting August 2nd.

Does anyone know if I can still watch DRM over standard definition HBO? The Comcast letter suggests I should still be OK watching HBO over SD.
HBO GO is always an option ;)

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#279

Post by john321 » Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:20 am

What is happening with the HD HomeRun DVR? I contributed, but I haven't been keeping up with its "progress" lately. Is it anywhere close to working for DRM content yet?

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#280

Post by webminster » Tue Jul 05, 2016 4:04 am

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.
-Alan

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