Strange DRM on SyFy

[Space]

Has anyone else noticed a strange issue with DRM when recording SyFy using the HDHR Prime?

Specifically with the show "Face Off".

It seems that the show itself does not have any DRM, but when the commercials come on, they are set to "CGMS Protection: protected-copyonce" (according to my HDHR Prime).

I have looked at one other show on SyFy and it had CGMS copyonce protection enabled during the entire show, but for some reason "Face Off" only has it during the commercials.

If you look at the metadata of the recorded show (the WTV file), it indicates that it is copy-protected, but there is also an entry that indicates the percentage that is protected is only 30% (all episodes I have recorded this season have been between 29-31%). I can also play these files in WMC on another PC, however when it gets to the commercials, it displays the blue "Update Playready" screen until sometime after the commercial is over, then it plays it again (it often doesn't start playing right when the commercial is over, but soon after).

I'm guessing this is because the entire channel is supposed to be protected, but for some reason they just forgot to protect this particular show, but it is just a bit weird...

[hooraah]

I'm not sure if I'm running into your exact issue, but something similar.

Went to record "The Walking Dead" on AMC this past Sunday. Turned on upstairs media center to several minutes of null recording (just black). Turned off recording, went to play live TV and got 'please update playready'. Okay....tried that but still wouldn't tune the channel.

Tried pulling up the channel in quickTV and it would play 2 seconds and then hang. Never did that before.

Tried a bunch of other things and assumed something borked big time, so I reformatted the computer. Reinstalled everything, tried to play AMC (this was several days later) in quickTV and got the same thing - would play 2 seconds of the channel and then freeze.

Tried a few different channels and they all played fine. Tried FX and got the 'play 2 seconds and then freeze'.

Then I tried pulling in the recording of walking dead my downstairs HTPC did and got the 'this show was recorded on another device' message which I had hardly seen until recently.

TL,DR; I think the 'copy-once' flag is becoming more common and messing with WMC, specifically playready. i think I also may have had a problem with my own setup (what, I have no idea) but copy-once seems to screw with playready from time to time.

You might want to see if you can confirm my results in quickTV regarding 'copy once' broadcasts freeze in quickTV, if that helps you at all in your diagnosis.

[Space]

I am aware of CopyOnce and how it affects recordings, that is not really what I was posting about. Just that it was weird that the main show was not copy protected, yet the commercials were. If I play these shows in WMC (on the same system that recorded them) they play back fine with not indication of any problem. They only show the blue screen during commercials when I play them back in WMC on a different computer. Seeing the blue screen is expected when playing back CopyOnce content on a computer other than the one that recorded the show, only I am used to seeing it during the whole show, not just during the commercials.

Trying to play CopyOnce content in QuickTV would never work, since only WMC can play back content that was recorded and has the CopyOnce flag set.

Reformatting the computer will make it so you won't be able to play any of your previously recorded CopyOnce recordings, even within WMC.

[sbaeder]

You never know, since it could be the cable company, and not the channel inserting locall commercials? I have seen instances on over the air stuff, where our local cable company forgets to switch it into 16x9 mode and we get the HD signal inside the 4x3 screen with the black side bars (along with the 16x9 picture inside the 4x3 window)...then all of a sudden, they fix it, and it switches back.

But it is a bit weird to swithc things like that in "mid-stream"...especially since they would probably like you copy the commercials