Firewire record in Sage's future?

[drbenson]

A recent firmware upgrade of my Comcast Motorola 6200 STB has provided me with firewire output of HDTV material. I am assured it is a MPEG2 transport stream, which my HiPix card should be able to play. The firmware even provides a Timer function on the STB to tune it to the proper channel at a particular time.

The missing link is software to record the transport stream onto the HD in my HTPC. Is this type of functionality something Sage is planning to add in the future? I noticed that the HiPix was recognized in the setup wizard.

A simple yes, never, or maybe from the 'powers that be' would be most helpful, along with a potential timeline if yes. I'm really hoping to be able to timeshift the HDTV Olympics coverage later this year.

[stanger89]

Not sure about Sage, but you might want to check this out in the mean time:
http://www.vividlogic.com/products/default.html (Click on DTVR) I'm kind of curious to hear how it works.

It should be doable (would be very cool), although I'm not sure how capturing via FW compares to capturing with a 250. The other complication is the legal/political ramifications of 5C copy protection. Hopefully "in the clear" recording will be possible.

[drbenson]

Thanks for the link- I have been following Firebus via AVSForum, but their beta is currently closed and their actual product is not yet available. The advantage to capturing via firewire, at least in my case, is that I can (potentially) timeshift HDTV from cable. And the advantage of doing it in Sage rather than via yet another app is the unified interface.

Currently, according to reports on AVSForum, the Moto 6200 firewire output is 'in the clear' and recordable for people with D-VHS decks or Apple computers (they evidently include some stream recording software). This is supposed to be part of some sort of cable agreement that's coming into force in April.

I don't know much about the copy protection aspect, but it seems to me that the STB should ensure that I'm only getting the streams for which I've already paid the cable company.

[AJ Bertelson]

The only problem is the 5c copy protection on firewire and currently no firewire cards have that and from what I understood never will if the MPAA has it way. That is what most likely will be turned on in april though as someone in one of those threads talked to moto and moto said the studios wanted copy protection up and runing. Even though you and I pay for the content the MPAA wants to stop people like us from timeshifting and skipping over commercials because it cuts into their profits, it has nothing to do with file sharing(See HDTivo). Our money instead goes to buying faster processors, more memory and larger hard drives.

Its pretty crazy for the HDTV recording people at the moment, there is the 169time mod, the apple DVHS deck emulation, and theturning off the DISH 5000's HDTV capabilities. In the linux forum of the HTPCs area they have there is a thread dealing with emulating a D-vhs deck in linux and why we haven't seen a emulation program yet for windows(windows can't do it basically). There is also that crazy Japaneese driver hack but a couple of people have tested it out with the 6200 and have not had good results.

Yes I have been following this for quite sometime.

[drbenson]

Frustrating, isn't it? Someone in the forums turned me on to a program called TSReader, and I'm going to give it a try tonight. Hope springs eternal!

Never have understood why anyone thinks preventing people from timeshifting is going to increase profits....