I'm sure that they're not the only thing out there the can beat them, but in a time of ever increasing DRM protections they're one of the simplest. I have a Maganvox MWR20V6 wired from my satellite box via an S-Video cable and the outputted via standard RCA cables. Took 5 minutes to hook up and has worked nearly flawlessly since... Then came the reports of the broadcast flag effecting Media Center PCs: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13992.cfm http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13980.cfm While the flag I received DID NOT shut down the recording process, it gave it a 5 second period of complete darkness then taping resumed. This shows the the flags are not just focused on MC Pcs, but on any "Unauthorized" device. But this also shows how to get a high quality backup of whatever you are watching without having to pay for a DVR and the service fees that come along.
Hi Tim The method of hookup you're using is what's referred to as taking advantage of the "analog hole" relative to its digitally encoded counterpart. Nearly any broadcast-based source of content will contain the broadcast flag, whereas a closed-source like commercial movie DVD won't. The reason this method of circumvention works is because the analog video signal simply doesn't contain any of the various digitized video packets, other than the video stream itself which ultimately gets converted from digital to analog, before being distributed to any of the equipment's analog video outputs. The only downside to using this hookup arrangement is simply not having the advantage of the superior digitized video stream (often being HD content) which is vastly more detailed and noise-free compared to its analog counterpart. Nonetheless, the analog version of the signal is usually quite decent and perfectly acceptable, particularly when your main goal is circumventing any viewing or recording prohibitions. In this regard, it's a small enough price to pay in exchange for getting past any prohibitions. As it's name implies, the broadcast flag was expressly designed and intended to protect broadcast programming content. It's actually a 2-bit flag having any one of these 4 possible meanings, depending on the bit combination: • copy always • copy never • copy once only (which MUST be recorded onto DVD+RW or DVD-RW media ONLY!) • (not yet assigned - for future use) While on the topic it's also important to note... "A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's controversial broadcast-flag mandate today, ruling unanimously that the FCC acted outside the scope of its authority when it adopted broadcast flag regulations. The ruling by the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came in a case brought by the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge." In a nutshell, legal clarification was made explaining the FCC's scope of enforcement relative to the broadcast-flag, is specifically confined and limited to protection of the signal only during the time of actual realtime broadcast. Once the signal's been transmitted, any time thereafter it's entirely up to recipient how they wish to use the received content. In this regard, the FCC grossly overstepped the bounds of their appointed authority, which specifically falls within the signal's realtime broadcast and not beyond.
