Broadcast Flag rides again, courtesy of NBC & Microsoft?

by Richard Lawler, posted May 18th 2008 at 4:28PM

Just like efforts to close the analog hole, our old friend the broadcast flag (don't remember what that is and how it was defeated? Take a quick trip back to 2005 with us) has reared its ugly head again. Displaying the kind of tenacity rarely seen outside of horror movie villains and potential presidential candidates, some Vista Media Center users have apparently gotten the above popup while trying to record broadcast TV from NBC. Since the FCC regulation giving the broadcast flag its power to remotely disable your recording ability was overturned, not only should it not be enabled, there's no reason the system should respond if it were. The EFF's working with the makers of the HDHomeRun to find out why this happened at all (although it's not the first time); whether it's an honest mistake somewhere or if Microsoft slipped a bit of extra DRM into its latest OS.

[Via EFF]

Filed under: Regulatory, Media PCs, NBC, OTA

Tags: broadcast flag, BroadcastFlag, copy protection, CopyProtection, drm, eff, fcc, hdhomerun, media center, MediaCenter, microsoft, ota, vista

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Rask @ May 18th 2008 5:40PM

I've gotten the broadcast flag up here in Canada attempting to record shows on YTV through Rogers Cable for my daughter. Then that stopped and somehow now whenever I record and attempt to play back a YTV show, the CPU gets pegged at 100% and the quality of the recording suffers dramatically, rendering it unplayable.

No other channels have this that I've experienced and the Broadcast flag shouldn't even apply in Canada.

Neutral

Rask @ May 18th 2008 5:57PM

For additional reference, here's a thread from The Green Button about this issue that's quite a few pages long (49 to be exact..).

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/1/176207/ShowThread.aspx

Neutral

Ben @ May 18th 2008 5:57PM

It's not the broadcast flag cause it's only happening to those watching NBC via cable, not OTA.

Neutral

BarryBee @ May 18th 2008 7:25PM

Not true, I got this same message a few days ago while trying to record OTA in HD. I remember spending about 20 min trying to find a way around it with no success unfortunately.

Neutral

huntermaz @ May 18th 2008 8:54PM

I had it happen to me on my OTA tuner on Monday night.

Neutral

gamedude420 @ May 18th 2008 10:52PM

one way around it is to use a webtv and hook up a dvd recorder to it when recording, maybe a dvr will work the same a friend of mine got around digital cable recordings that way.. and yes he still uses webtv sometimes))

Neutral

jason @ May 19th 2008 9:00AM

Wow, please let this NOT be a sign of things to come.

Highly Ranked

cclaunch @ May 19th 2008 11:11AM

Trying to record American Gladiators was your first problem...

Neutral

Art @ May 19th 2008 11:42PM

Long live XP and third party apps. God bless bittorrent.

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