# Begining of the end for cablecards? Verizon agrees to set "do not copy" flag for FOX programming.



## jeffinva (Jan 5, 2015)

I hope that this title ends up being hyperbole, but as some of you might have noticed there have been a bunch of threads about Verizon FiOS cable card users in the Washington DC area no longer being able to record / pause / rewind local FOX programming for the past 3 or so weeks.

At first I thought the problem might be my Romio Pro, and was thinking I'd need to format the drive and or replace it. I decided to do some googling first and found that I was not alone with the issue recording FOX programming on my Roamio. Most / all reports of the issue appear to be in the Washington DC area.

I just got off the phone with Verizon FiOS tech support, and they confirmed they have an internal document (they wouldn't send me a copy) that states as part of their new contract with FOX, they are enabling/passing the "Do Not Copy / Single View" flag. I apologize in advance for not knowing the technical name, but essentially its a copy protection flag.

The tech also confirmed that this is only enabled for cable card users, and normal FiOS DVRs still have full DVR ability for all channels, including FOX.

So, I'm assuming right now the Washington DC FOX affiliate is one of the few setting this flag on their programming, and that is why we haven't seen more wide spread reports. I imagine that we will start to see more reports of this issue in the near future.

I can only imagine more content owners will start requesting this "feature" from Verizon, and Verizon will happily oblige as they don't really care about cable card users.

So... what can we do now, and do we have any chance to fight this?


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Copy protection for digital cable channels is set by the CCI Byte. Go into Tivo Box Diagnostics and each tuner will have a CCI Byte value. What are the values for the offending channels? Typical values are:

0x00 = No copy protection
0x02 = Copy-once protection, which means unrestricted viewing and recording on one device only. This protection would NOT prevent fast forward, rewind, etc. I believe this allows a transfer to another TiVo but with the restriction that it is no longer viewable on the first TiVo.


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## jeffinva (Jan 5, 2015)

dlfl said:


> Copy protection for digital cable channels is set by the CCI Byte. Go into Tivo Box Diagnostics and each tuner will have a CCI Byte value. What are the values for the offending channels? Typical values are:
> 
> 0x00 = No copy protection
> 0x02 = Copy-once protection, which means unrestricted viewing and recording on one device only. This protection would NOT prevent fast forward, rewind, etc. I believe this allows a transfer to another TiVo but with the restriction that it is no longer viewable on the first TiVo.


Thank you for the technical details. Right now it's working on fox and I'm seeing a 0x00 ... I'll check again when the DVR functions start acting weird.

Can you think of anything else that could cause this? It's really odd... on live TV pause works, but when you hit play again it acts up and skips to the beginning, but then if you try to skip forward or fast forward to where you were it skips over the entire buffer. On recordings, everything looks normal when you start to play it, but if you try and skip ahead or fast forward ahead it will jump to around 38 minutes... if you try and rewind it skips back to the beginning. If you let it play it stops early after 2 minutes as if the recording was over.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

jeffinva said:


> Thank you for the technical details. Right now it's working on fox and I'm seeing a 0x00 ... I'll check again when the DVR functions start acting weird.
> 
> Can you think of anything else that could cause this? It's really odd... on live TV pause works, but when you hit play again it acts up and skips to the beginning, but then if you try to skip forward or fast forward to where you were it skips over the entire buffer. On recordings, everything looks normal when you start to play it, but if you try and skip ahead or fast forward ahead it will jump to around 38 minutes... if you try and rewind it skips back to the beginning. If you let it play it stops early after 2 minutes as if the recording was over.


If you haven't already, check out this thread. I'm assuming you are seeing the same issue.

DC area, Fios Fox (505) has no play buffer, anybody else?

Scott


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

There is no copy protection flag on 505. I can transfer any 505 recording like normal from my Roamio Pro and two Bolts on FiOS. Now the cable Fox channels, that is another story. They have been copy protected for almost 1.5 years now.

Back in July 2015, FiOS enabled the copy protection flag on all of the FoX cable channels like National Geographic, FX, Fox news etc. So that is nothing new and has been that way for a long time now.

The Copy protected content can still be streamed to another TiVo, Mini, or tablet as long as you are in home. But those copy protected recordings cannot be streamed out of home.

Back in 2012 FiOS enabled the copy protection flag for the Cinemax and HBO channels. But so far these are the only channels that have the copy protection flag on FiOS. Fox cable channels, HBO channels, and Cinemax channels.


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## HoosontheTeevo (Feb 9, 2015)

hmm. i just got normal buffer function for 505 on fios NoVa. it is pausing, resuming, buffering normally for the moment.
my cci byte was 0x00 when i just checked. maybe it got fixed? or just momentary?


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> There is no copy protection flag on 505. I can transfer any 505 recording like normal from my Roamio Pro and two Bolts on FiOS. Now the cable Fox channels, that is another story. They have been copy protected for almost 1.5 years now.
> 
> Back in July 2015, FiOS enabled the copy protection flag on all of the FoX cable channels like National Geographic, FX, Fox news etc. So that is nothing new and has been that way for a long time now.
> 
> ...


100% correct!


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## jeffinva (Jan 5, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> There is no copy protection flag on 505. I can transfer any 505 recording like normal from my Roamio Pro and two Bolts on FiOS. Now the cable Fox channels, that is another story. They have been copy protected for almost 1.5 years now.
> 
> Back in July 2015, FiOS enabled the copy protection flag on all of the FoX cable channels like National Geographic, FX, Fox news etc. So that is nothing new and has been that way for a long time now.
> 
> ...


Thank you... I figured that the info I received was either not accurate or not related to the problem.

So based on what you have said, does that mean you haven't seen the issue others are reporting on WTTG 505 on Fios? I've noticed it primarily on Redskins games (yesterday) and when recording the Lethal Weapon and Last man on Earth TV series.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jeffinva said:


> Thank you... I figured that the info I received was either not accurate or not related to the problem.
> 
> So based on what you have said, does that mean you haven't seen the issue others are reporting on WTTG 505 on Fios? I've noticed it primarily on Redskins games (yesterday) and when recording the Lethal Weapon and Last man on Earth TV series.


I have not seen the issue. For whatever reason it hasn't affected my Roamio Pro and two Bolts on FiOS here in Northern Virginia.


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## The Merg (Dec 2, 2007)

I think the issue is something with the broadcast itself that is causing this sporadic issue with FOX 5. I've only noticed it during the Redskins game, but I also have 4 episodes of Lethal Weapon I haven't watched yet.

When the issue occurs for the Redskins game, the only way to watch it is to do so as QuickPlay.

- Merg 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Sure smells like the 720p Tivo bug we had with Comcast, not any CP stuff especially if the reported CCI byte is 0x00. Tivo wasn't handling the mpeg4 encoding correctly - check and see if these channels are reported as H.264 in DVR Diags. Symptoms were the same until they fixed it - can't record and no play buffer or a play buffer that skipped around all over the place when you tried trick play.

I would escalate to Tivo if so.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The Merg said:


> I think the issue is something with the broadcast itself that is causing this sporadic issue with FOX 5. I've only noticed it during the Redskins game, but I also have 4 episodes of Lethal Weapon I haven't watched yet.
> 
> When the issue occurs for the Redskins game, the only way to watch it is to do so as QuickPlay.
> 
> ...


It doesn't seem to be a broadcast issue. I recorded around twenty hours of channel 505 on my Roamio Pro the past couple of days and finally saw these issues with some of the recordings. But I also had these same recordings on my Roamio Basic and Roamio OTA. The recordings that exhibited issues from 505 were fine on the OTA recordings. But even on 505 things were inconsistent. There was no way to predict which recordings would be fine and which recording would have issues.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Isn't this violating an FCC rule? Even though nowadays they can _encrypt_ local channels (they used to not be able to do even that), I thought it was still against the rules to put this kind of protection.. and especially since it's sporadic (even between episodes of the same TV show?) it sounds like some kind of configuration error, not intentional..

But still, complain to the FCC.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

mattack said:


> Isn't this violating an FCC rule? Even though nowadays they can _encrypt_ local channels (they used to not be able to do even that), I thought it was still against the rules to put this kind of protection.. and especially since it's sporadic (even between episodes of the same TV show?) it sounds like some kind of configuration error, not intentional..
> 
> But still, complain to the FCC.


The channel isn't encrypted, they just can't use trick play with the recordings.

Re MPEG4, Verizon only uses MPEG4 on a handful of channels in the higher programming tiers. They still have too many old, MPEG2 only, STBs in the field to start using MPEG4 on basic cable channels, let alone a broadcast channel.

FWIW, we have seen the same issue here in NJ at times around public service inserts on FiOS. The inserts can be fast forwarded past, and an attempt to jump past them just sends you to the start. I'll bet this is the same basic issue and is caused by Verizon encoding errors.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

And the issue only happens on the Roamio on FiOS. I know my Bolts have never run into this issue.

But when I do run into it on my ROamio Pro, it doesn't jump back to the start(well I guess it does if you are watching the first commercial break and try to rewind before the commercials). WHat it does is allow me to FF/REW through commercials, then it jumps to the next commercial break, skipping over the programming. You have to watch it at normal speed to be able to see the programming. But there is no way for me to tell when a ROmaio Pro recording will have this issue. Most 505 recordings I have are fine. Only some of them exhibit the issue. It was only when I started recording a bunch of stuff from 505 as a test, that the issue cropped up on some of the recordings.

It's still surprising that this hasn't been corrected yet. From what I've seen, it's specific to FiOS and the ROamio series of TiVos.


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## PCurry57 (Feb 27, 2012)

jeffinva said:


> I hope that this title ends up being hyperbole, but as some of you might have noticed there have been a bunch of threads about Verizon FiOS cable card users in the Washington DC area no longer being able to record / pause / rewind local FOX programming for the past 3 or so weeks.
> 
> At first I thought the problem might be my Romio Pro, and was thinking I'd need to format the drive and or replace it. I decided to do some googling first and found that I was not alone with the issue recording FOX programming on my Roamio. Most / all reports of the issue appear to be in the Washington DC area.
> 
> ...


The following link explains the CCI copy control information bits

Copy Control Information - Wikipedia


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

The only way to deal with copy protection BS from cable companies is to just cancel the service. If enough people do that, they will stop pretty darn quick.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

It's NOT CP'd channels, it's encoding that Tivo is not handling correctly. Folks have already said that the CCI byte is 0x00 for these channels, which means no CP.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

Diana Collins said:


> The channel isn't encrypted, they just can't use trick play with the recordings.
> 
> Re MPEG4, Verizon only uses MPEG4 on a handful of channels in the higher programming tiers. They still have too many old, MPEG2 only, STBs in the field to start using MPEG4 on basic cable channels, let alone a broadcast channel
> p.


I'm pretty sure Bloomberg TV channel 604 is MPEG4 and is found on lower tier packages.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

mattack said:


> Isn't this violating an FCC rule? Even though nowadays they can _encrypt_ local channels (they used to not be able to do even that), I thought it was still against the rules to put this kind of protection.. and especially since it's sporadic (even between episodes of the same TV show?) it sounds like some kind of configuration error, not intentional..
> 
> But still, complain to the FCC.


The court ruling only applied to local OTA signals. The media companies can negotiate any sort of flagging they want with MVPD's IF the MVPD agrees. Often it is part of the contract to continue retransmission rights, and more and more channels on MVPD's are benig flagged. However, the local programming you receive from OTA only--not via an MVPD like a cable or sat co--has _no_ restrictive flags as per court ruling, which the broadcasters never took to the Supreme Court. The lower court ruled that enforcing flags for content was beyond the scope of the FCC's regulatory authroity. Frankly, I don't like the idea of the govt. working on behalf of big media companies to enforce restrictions of how a private individual wants to view or move his or her recordings for PERSONAL, PRIVATE use initiated by the individual, and Slingbox is legal because of this right of the individual--at least ONE stream at at a time, not necessarly multiple streams, that would require payment to the media companies. So, in the reahlm of MVPD's, the media companies can require any restrictions they like. So, the only work around if you have a Slingbox is to use the analog (component or composite) connections because the HDMI will prevent restricted channels or content from passing through to the Slingbox. Using analog connectins allows ALL content on all channels to pass through, while I use HDMI for my TiVo's for OTA content and all passes though just fine.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

lew said:


> I'm pretty sure Bloomberg TV channel 604 is MPEG4 and is found on lower tier packages.


You are correct, but Bloomberg HD can only be received on 7000 series boxes or later. The older 6000 series can not decode MPEG4.

The current list of MPEG4 channels on FiOS is:

558 ES.TV
567 Universal HD
571 ESPN Goal Line/Buzzer Beater HD
584 Fox Sports 2 HD
596 beIN HD
597 One World Sports HD
599 Cars.TV
604 Bloomberg HD,
615 Newsmax HD
616 One America News HD
633 Pets.TV
657 evine Live HD
658 WOW HD
659 Enrich HD
660 Esquire HD
662 Z Living HD
674 MyDestination.TV
676 Recipe.TV
687 Logo HD
688 Ovation HD
695 Comedy.TV
697 ViceLand HD
720 Centric HD
726 Revolt HD
732 FXM HD
735 Sundance HD
737 Sony Movie Channel HD
744 MGM Channel HD
738 Up HD
755 TeenNick HD
771 TV One HD
772 Aspire HD
793 Daystar HD
806 Willow HD
810 MAV HD
834 MLB Strike Zone HD
818 Pursuit HD
950 Playboy HD
1515 Antenna3 HD
1516 Multimedios HD
1534 Fox Deportes HD
1537 ESPN Deportes HD
1538 beIN Spanish HD
1539 Univision Deportes HD
1759 MBC Drama USA HD
1769 TV Japan HD
Spanish Ultra HD Plex Channels 1570, 1585, 1650, 1691, 1693, 1670, 1690, 1692, 1730

*Part time channels*
ESPN College Extra Channels: 821, 822, 823, 824, 825, 826, 827, 828
NBA/Major League Soccer Season Pass HD Channels: 1450, 1451, 1452, 1453, 1454
MLB/NHL Season HD Channels: 1466, 1467, 1468, 1469, 1470, 1471, 1472, 1473, 1474


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> And the issue only happens on the Roamio on FiOS. I know my Bolts have never run into this issue.
> 
> But when I do run into it on my ROamio Pro, it doesn't jump back to the start(well I guess it does if you are watching the first commercial break and try to rewind before the commercials). WHat it does is allow me to FF/REW through commercials, then it jumps to the next commercial break, skipping over the programming. You have to watch it at normal speed to be able to see the programming. But there is no way for me to tell when a ROmaio Pro recording will have this issue. Most 505 recordings I have are fine. Only some of them exhibit the issue. It was only when I started recording a bunch of stuff from 505 as a test, that the issue cropped up on some of the recordings.
> 
> It's still surprising that this hasn't been corrected yet. From what I've seen, it's specific to FiOS and the ROamio series of TiVos.


Noticed something yesterday that may be related. I was editing out commercials from a TV show recorded on one of our Roamio Pros, broadcast on WABC here in New York and received over FiOS. I was working in VideoReDo Suite, and could not move a single frame at a time in either direction. Attempts to do so would jump anywhere from 4 to 20 or more frames, depending on the starting point. I had exported the skip information from kmttg and was trying to fine tune the cuts.

So, I finally ran it through Quick Stream Fix and was now able to select an individual frame without it jumping multiple frames. However, the skip information was now off...it was accurate for the first skip point, but thereafter it got progressively late, so that by the final skip point it was leaving in a good 15 seconds of the first commercial, and was missing the first 15 seconds of the program after the break.

Every single recording I make from our local ABC or FOX stations exhibit the same behavior. There is clearly something odd about these channels and how they end up recorded. The only thing the two channels have in common, AFAIK, is that they broadcast in 720P. I wonder if this may be somehow related to the issues some users are seeing on their DVRs. If anyone has VideoReDo it might be interesting to see if they find the same anomalies in one of their troublesome recordings.


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## jerryez (May 16, 2001)

The best way to solve the problem is to delete the channel from your favorites and not watch it live. The few programs on Fox that are any good are very few and before long, you will forget about them.


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