# What % of Shows that you record are copy protected?



## Mike J6 (Dec 13, 2012)

I ask because I'm late to the game and am just finding out about the cool toys like Streambaby, KMTTG, and Roksbox. I had a simple two-step plan:
- Rip all of our DVDs and use Streambaby to be able to play on our Tivo-equipment TV and play through a Roku using Roksbox on the 2nd TV. This part is going fine. Haven't gotten to Roksbox yet but Steambaby is working great.
- 2nd part was to use KMTTG to get recorded shows off the TIVO to be able to view on the other TV through the Roku and Roksbox. I just installed KMTTG and now feel a little bit like Charlie Brown having the football pulled away. 90% of the shows we have recorded on the TIVO are content protected. Grand plan dashed.

For the shows that we record, it seems I'm stuck. I'm just curious as to what others are seeing in terms of copy protection. Shows like Myth Busters, NCIS, Leverage, even fly fishing shows on obscure channels are copy protected.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

On my cable system, anything that is not a broadcast channel is copy protected. I ended up putting Premieres in every room so we can just stream between them. Some of the boxes have duplicate season passes in cases where people watch the same show at different times in different rooms.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

NONE. 








I am OTA only.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

OTA also here. No copy protection BS. One of the big reasons I cut the cord.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Until recently, 100%, although really the question is mostly irrelevant. Every TiVo I own can transfer copy protected material. I recently switched service to a provider who only has 2 copy protected channels, and only one of those is a channel I receive. Thus, the only issue I encounter is recording that channel on the CATV provided Premiere. Any recordings from that channel are made on one of my other TiVos.



Mike J6 said:


> - 2nd part was to use KMTTG to get recorded shows off the TIVO to be able to view on the other TV through the Roku and Roksbox. I just installed KMTTG and now feel a little bit like Charlie Brown having the football pulled away. 90% of the shows we have recorded on the TIVO are content protected. Grand plan dashed.


I don't see where you mention what series of TiVo you own.



Mike J6 said:


> For the shows that we record, it seems I'm stuck.


Not unless you bought a Premiere.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Which channels are copy protected varies from *none-except-premiums *to *all-but-local-broadcast *depending on the cable system. Here is a thread where data from a lot of systems has been collected:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=451107

Post your cable system and location here and someone else on that same system may be able to give you specific information. Note that Time Warner Cable is notorious for protecting all but local broadcast stations. The general trend is slowly in that direction among the other operators.

lrhorer is referring to (bragging about ) how he has hacked his TiVo's, which is NOT a trivial thing to do. Among other complications it requires soldering a modified surface mount PROM on the motherboard. Detailed discussion of hacking is verboten on this forum BTW. Also, hacking methods for the later models (e.g., Premiere, Elite) have not yet been discovered.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

TiVo HD here.

OP, who is your provider?

On FIOS here in VA. HBO and Cinemax are the only channels that are content protected. I have considered dropping them because of this.

I do get some web delivered content from TiVo that is also copy protected.

Side question: I thought you had to make 5 posts or something before you could start a thread. OP is listed as having 1 post. This is total just a curiosity for me. OPs post is clearly legitimate and I welcome him to the forums. (Again just curious after seeing all the weird spam threads that people post. I thought they were trying to get to that magic number.)


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

dlfl said:


> lrhorer is referring to (bragging about ) how he has hacked his TiVo's, which is NOT a trivial thing to do.


Yes, it pretty much is. As always, one must know how, but it is not a tedious, drawn out, complex, difficult, or time consuming procedure.



dlfl said:


> Among other complications it requires soldering a modified surface mount PROM on the motherboard.


Which is not terribly difficult for anyone who has done any amount of soldering. It's not one of those monstrous high density, high pin count SMDs. It's also dead easy if someone else does it for you.


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## Mike J6 (Dec 13, 2012)

Thanks everyone. I have a Tivo Premiere. My provider is Fios and I'm in Oregon. After some experimentation last night, I found that every non-broadcast channel is protected. Bummer. This is consistent with the post that was referenced:

Code:
Oregon
Frontier FIOS on All but locals protected



Arcady said:


> ... I ended up putting Premieres in every room so we can just stream between them. Some of the boxes have duplicate season passes in cases where people watch the same show at different times in different rooms.


I had considered this but was looking at other solutions first. One of the questions that I had was if you could stream copy-protected material. Sounds like you've confirmed this. My understanding is that you can't transfer protected material between machines.

If I went this route, my understanding is that the 2nd box would need to have a subscription and a cable card. True?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Verizon FIOS used to be no copy protection on anything, but now HBO channels have copy protection. (Frontier FIOS, out west, is apparently different about that)

I watch a few shows on HBO, but mostly from networks or non-premium cable. So I'd say in terms of season passes maybe 5% have copy protection. But HBO has vastly shorter seasons, and usually bigger gaps between seasons, so it's probably less than 2% of my recording hours have copy protection. 

(I don't think Showtime has copy protection, but if so double those percentages)


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Mike J6 said:


> One of the questions that I had was if you could stream copy-protected material. Sounds like you've confirmed this. My understanding is that you can't transfer protected material between machines.
> 
> If I went this route, my understanding is that the 2nd box would need to have a subscription and a cable card. True?


If you did that today the second box would have to be another TiVo Premiere (of some sort) and would need to be subscribed to TiVo service. Technically it would only need a cable card if you wanted to easily record from your FIOS with it. If you used it purely as a streaming destination, or recorded from antenna it wouldn't need one.

Now, if you're willing to wait TiVo has announced a streaming only device called the TiVo Mini that we're hoping will be out sometime next year. It is not expected to require a subscription and it lets you view shows streamed from a Premiere on another TV.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Mike J6 said:


> ........ One of the questions that I had was if you could stream copy-protected material. Sounds like you've confirmed this. My understanding is that you can't transfer protected material between machines.
> 
> If I went this route, my understanding is that the 2nd box would need to have a subscription and a cable card. True?


You can stream (but not transfer) copy protected content, but only with the Premiere and Elite models. Older digital models (S3 and HD) can do neither.

My guess is you do have to have a subscription on all machines -- not sure about the CableCARD requirement.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

On Charter only the premium channels are protected, and apparently even that's not consistent. My wife recently recorded a couple of movies from the SD HBO channel and they were not protected. She also has a few episodes of a show on ShoHD that are not protected, but then other episodes of the same show are.

Everything else is unprotected. And in fact up until about a year ago nothing at all was protected. I regularly downloaded shows and movies from the premium HD channels for my family.

Dan


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## msmart (Jan 3, 2007)

Old school here...

TiVo S2 sitting between my TV and DirecTV SD DVR, none are copy protected.

I don't subscribe to any of the premium channels but when they have free weekend trials, I've recorded shows on HBO and such and are not copy protected.

The downside to this set up is that when the TiVo is recording, you can't watch anything on the D* DVR. However, the D* DVR allows recording on one channel and watching on another so I can still record TiVo and D* at the same time which is sweet.

If something is recorded on the D* DVR and I want to get it to the PC, I set up a manual recording of a TV show on the TiVo then play the show on the D* DVR. While the show name and metadata are incorrect and has to be changed, I still get it off of the D* DVR and onto the PC. I suppose this could be one way round copy protection if ever I run into it.


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## Mike J6 (Dec 13, 2012)

Jonathan_S said:


> If you did that today the second box would have to be another TiVo Premiere (of some sort) and would need to be subscribed to TiVo service. Technically it would only need a cable card if you wanted to easily record from your FIOS with it. If you used it purely as a streaming destination, or recorded from antenna it wouldn't need one.
> 
> Now, if you're willing to wait TiVo has announced a streaming only device called the TiVo Mini that we're hoping will be out sometime next year. It is not expected to require a subscription and it lets you view shows streamed from a Premiere on another TV.


Thanks everyone for the advice. I think I'm going to wait to learn more about the Tivo Mini. I hope they do this right... It would be really nice to stream to the other TVs with the Mini. We only have the 2-tuner Premiere so it sounds like we may have to wait a little longer.  Until then, we'll just keep doing what we've been doing and use the Roku upstairs.


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## nrnoble (Aug 25, 2004)

What I am surprised about is that all channels are not copy-protected like premium channels (HBO, SHO, MAX, etc). Nearly every content provider wants to maximize their profits thus they don't want any free distributions of TV shows and movies, which can be done much easier by duplicating recordings that are not copy-protected.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

nrnoble said:


> What I am surprised about is that all channels are not copy-protected like premium channels (HBO, SHO, MAX, etc). Nearly every content provider wants to maximize their profits thus they don't want any free distributions of TV shows and movies, which can be done much easier by duplicating recordings that are not copy-protected.


Quite the opposite. The other channels are ad supported, so the more you copy, the better for them. Of course, they would rather you not be able to cut out commercials, but even though one has the ability, many people do not bother.


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## nrnoble (Aug 25, 2004)

What maybe surprises me the most is that advertisers have not demanded somehow that anti-ad skipping technology be part of the copy-protection scheme. Given that nearly everything is now 100% digital, its would be easy to put in Ad markers in the data steam, thus DVRs could, in theory, honor those ad markers and disable skipping\FF at those points. The reason this comes to mind is because that is how Hulu works; you can FF to ad marker, but then must sit through the commercials at regular speed, or go use the bathroom like in the old days.


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## tluxon (Feb 28, 2002)

nrnoble said:


> What maybe surprises me the most is that advertisers have not demanded somehow that anti-ad skipping technology be part of the copy-protection scheme. Given that nearly everything is now 100% digital, its would be easy to put in Ad markers in the data steam, thus DVRs could, in theory, honor those ad markers and disable skipping\FF at those points. The reason this comes to mind is because that is how Hulu works; you can FF to ad marker, but then must sit through the commercials at regular speed, or go use the bathroom like in the old days.


If they do that, I'll have a lot more free time because that would cut my TV viewing down to at most 1 show a year (the Super Bowl, if that).


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## tluxon (Feb 28, 2002)

nrnoble said:


> What I am surprised about is that all channels are not copy-protected like premium channels (HBO, SHO, MAX, etc). Nearly every content provider wants to maximize their profits thus they don't want any free distributions of TV shows and movies, which can be done much easier by duplicating recordings that are not copy-protected.


I won't watch copy-protected shows either. If I can't watch them on my terms - like when I have time - I wouldn't be able to watch them at all. As it is, I typically spend no more than 30 minutes on a 3-1/2 hour football game and barely have *that *much time for it.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Mike J6 said:


> For the shows that we record, it seems I'm stuck. I'm just curious as to what others are seeing in terms of copy protection. Shows like Myth Busters, NCIS, Leverage, even fly fishing shows on obscure channels are copy protected.


you are already paying your provider for the channels /programs so why not just torrent them all to more easily share among your machines?


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