DRM/Play Ready Question

[droopie]

I mucked up my DRM/Playready trying to figure out why my extender quit playing after a minute or two Wednesday night, before I came here and found out it was a bad Windows update. I removed the update and got Playready fixed today.

Now, everything works as it should, except movies I have recorded from HBO say copying prohibited. It says this even on my WMC machine itself. I realize this is a DRM problem. Is there anyway to fix this? Can I do a system restore to a time previous to the 12/9/14 Windows update?

If not, it's not a huge deal...I've only been using WMC for about 2 months with a SD Homerun Prime, do I only have about 15 movies recorded. I have a bunch of stuff off of Paladia that still works.

ALSO, in this regard....when this issue is fixed...if I record movies off HBO to my internal 3tb harddrive, can I later move them to a NAS or will that mess up DRM? What about non copy protected channels like Paladia? Could I move them to a different drive and they still play?

Or should I just record to the NAS when internal storage fills up?

And finally or P.S.S. I am going to upgrade to a SSD by doing a drive clone on my system drive. Will that mess with DRM???

[droopie]

OK, doing a restore to Monday the 8th fixed the DRM. But I still have two questions...can I clone my HD to an ssd and not break DRM? Can I move previously recorded DRM shows to another drive and not break DRM?

[Space]

OK, doing a restore to Monday the 8th fixed the DRM. But I still have two questions...can I clone my HD to an ssd and not break DRM? Can I move previously recorded DRM shows to another drive and not break DRM?

You may be able to clone your HD to an SDD and not break DRM, but it is complicated, so it may or may not work. The DRM is based on a signature which is based on several pieces of hardware in your system. If you change too much hardware it may change the signature too much and cause you to be unable to play existing recordings that have DRM. I will leave it to others on this forum to give a better answer since I have never attempted to do this.

You can move recordings that have DRM anywhere you want (another hard drive, a file server, a USB flash drive, etc.), but you will only be able to play them on the machine that recorded them. For instance, I have moved many of my DRMed recordings to another system and then share them over the network with the original machine that recorded them (my HTPC), the HTPC is able to play them back without any problem.

[droopie]

An extender is part of my htpc so if I move something can I still watch on extender? Xbox360 in my case. I don't use my htpc to actually watch anything. Well, ok, maybe football while I am doing something... But why squint at a 24"monitor when I have a 54" TV, right?

[Crash2009]

An extender is part of my HTPC so if I move something can I still watch on extender?

No problem, you are not really watching the extender you are watching the HTPC through a remote control session which is enabled by the extender.

[Crash2009]

OK, doing a restore to Monday the 8th fixed the DRM. But I still have two questions...can I clone my HD to an ssd and not break DRM? Can I move previously recorded DRM shows to another drive and not break DRM?

Here is a great explanation to your question (s).

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 873#p61873

[droopie]

OK, doing a restore to Monday the 8th fixed the DRM. But I still have two questions...can I clone my HD to an ssd and not break DRM? Can I move previously recorded DRM shows to another drive and not break DRM?

Here is a great explanation to your question (s).

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 873#p61873

That's the only post I found doing a search that I could find that was related...but there are so many contradictory posts. Anyhoo, I cloned my hd, had to do a little configuring of the guide for some reason to get channels to show back up, but other than that it is working fine. I took my old OS drive and converted it solely to a backup drive. I am doing weekly OS images and then may set it up to take a monthly and upload to my google drive or Amazon so I have a backup somewhere no matter what. Or until I post something bad about North Korea and they hack me.

[Crash2009]

Weekly images....Great...If something bad happens, now you can only lose what you recorded during the last week. I image to a network location occasionally, and to DVD once in a while. I likely should put my BR burner to use also. Planning to get a NAS this year. It's nice to have choices and multiple images on various media.

[Crash2009]

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/mem ... ofile&u=81 Here is another great research source. Search User's Posts. I trust his advice.

[Space]

Weekly images....Great...If something bad happens, now you can only lose what you recorded during the last week. I image to a network location occasionally, and to DVD once in a while. I likely should put my BR burner to use also. Planning to get a NAS this year. It's nice to have choices and multiple images on various media.

An alternative to doing frequent OS image backups is to do infrequent image backups and then making frequent (daily) backups of the files in this folder:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Playready\*

Then if you have a system drive crash, you can load your most recent image and then restore the latest version of this folder and all DRMed recordings should still work (assuming that any hardware you replaced did not break DRM).

You can also backup these folders/files to retain the log history and Series recording history/settings:

C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs\Media Center.evtx
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\*

You may not be able to copy some of these files "live" using a regular copy, so a program that can do a shadow copy may be needed.

Copying these files instead of doing an entire image of the OS drive on a daily basis should reduce the time it takes to do a daily backup as well as the resources needed.

I would definitely test that it works before relying on it (although there have been posts here that say back up/restore of the Playready folder works). I have seen no such testimony about backup/restore of the other folders working, however.

Only do this if you are ready to test that everything works! Otherwise the frequent full image backup is the simplest way to go.