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JPFedUp
@184.148.21.x

JPFedUp

Anon

[TV] Rogers PVR policy Sucks

My NextBox 3.0 has hard drive faults and must be replaced. I have saved a number of shows that I intended to keep permanently, just as if is they were on DVD or other media. Rogers does not provide any way for me to save them on an external drive and tells me there is no way they can be saved or transferred to the new box. They say they can't copy them out to an external disk drive or transfer them in any way to the new PVR.

My 45 years in the high tech industry tells me that this is not a technical issue. There are surely technical solutions possible. It is simply that Rogers policy not to allow it!

I am so fed up with this "We're your cable provider and a monopoly so we don't have to care" attitude that I am ready to cancel cable completely and just get everything over the internet from now on.

Does anyone have a solution around Rogers' intransigence?

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

1 edit

HiVolt

Premium Member

Forgive me for being blunt, but if thats how you archive your shows its a really terrible idea. Hardware is bound to fail, especially the cheapass Rogers hardware, and it did...

The recordings are encrypted as a means of copy protection, and I doubt that Rogers has any access to get them off. And even if they did they would be faced with these questions every day when people have to swap boxes for any reason and would need an army of support people to make it feasible.

As for being able to do it, in the past with the older 8300HD series boxes you were able to clone the drive in desktop computer software like Acronis. Not sure how these newer Cisco boxes work.

If your PVR is still functional to play back these recorded shows, the only way to do it is if you play back and record them on an external device, either a dvd recorder or a computer capture device.
yyzlhr
join:2012-09-03
Scarborough, ON

yyzlhr to JPFedUp

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There is no way around it, and the same thing applies for all TV providers. It's going to be that way until we move to cloud based PVRs.
Sunfox
join:2003-12-14
Stouffville

Sunfox to JPFedUp

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Assuming you have a way of doing a bit-by-bit clone, you should be able to manually clone an existing drive... but as already pointed out, the drives are encrypted to keys stored in a specific box, so the clone would only work in that cable box and no other. So if something other than a hard drive fails, your data's gone anyways.

Really, there is no good way to archive cable television shows, particularly ones that don't show up on iTunes or eventually on DVD. Which is especially stupid, because there are plenty of *illegal* ways to do it.

OTA is a bit better since you can record on a normal computer, and if Cable Cards had taken off (or been available at all in Canada) you could've used a normal computer with those too.

Incorrect
@209.87.227.x

Incorrect to yyzlhr

Anon

to yyzlhr
said by yyzlhr:

and the same thing applies for all TV providers

Bell (satellite) lets you copy recordings to an external hard drive, and to hook that external drive up to another receiver of the same type (HD to HD, or HDPVR to HDPVR) on the same account.

From what I can tell both receivers need to be active on the account at the time for this to work, though you could transfer them from the EHD to the PVR's drive to get around that long-term I think.
cepnot4me
join:2013-10-29
L0C 1K0

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Keeping in mind, there are multiple ways to obtain a copy of any program legally and illegally. Example, if your family was in a news cast or on Jerry springer, you can write the shows producers and purchase the episode for your permanent collection.

I'd say it wasn't very good planning to save a show you want to keep indefinitely on a box you are renting temporarily.
That's like hiding your life's fortune in the walls of a house you're renting.
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

This is one of the many reasons why a PC based PVR is superior to using one provided by your BDU.

There are (formerly) legal ways of archiving as there are Component capture devices like the HD-PVR and Colossus cards from Hauppauge. You really can't tell the difference between these recordings and the original TV show despite the fact that they go through a A-D converstion to be recorded.

But note that archiving (but not time-shifting) TV shows became illegal in Canada when our new copyright law was passed in 2012. According to that law this is what you are allowed to do with a TV show "(d) the individual keeps the recording no longer than is reasonably necessary in order to listen to or view the program at a more convenient time;". So you can keep it to watch a few days or weeks later, but not forever.

cut_the_cord
@108.168.105.x

cut_the_cord to JPFedUp

Anon

to JPFedUp
said by JPFedUp :

Does anyone have a solution around Rogers' intransigence?

Stop doing business with Rogers. Cancel cable. Install cheap $20 OTA antenna.

Grab yourself a fast internet connection with a sane or no cap policy, and fire up a decent NAS appliance with 12 - 16TB of storage.

Use your favourite media device to watch stuff YOU want, WHEN you want.
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

But you can't get all of the content that you may want that way. PVRing cable/sat is still, by far, the best way to get live sports. OTA is great but, increasingly, sports are moving to pay channels. Why do you think Rogers and Bell bought MLSE?

The best solution, albeit not the cheapest or easiest, is a PC based PVR that can capture HD cable as well. But that is going away as BeyondTV and SageTV are both gone and Win MCE is fading away.
cepnot4me
join:2013-10-29
L0C 1K0

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OTA isn't always a solution.

I'll be testing it out soon, however I expect to receive about 4 channels when I do. OTA is largely dependant on geography which we all seem to forget when we promote it.

TwiztedZero
Nine Zero Burp Nine Six
Premium Member
join:2011-03-31
Toronto, ON

TwiztedZero to wayner92

Premium Member

to wayner92
said by wayner92:

BeyondTV and SageTV are both gone and Win MCE is fading away.

There are others out there now, MediaPortal is one, you just need a compatible capture card or usb capture device.

Makaveli998
join:2002-04-23
Toronto, ON

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said by JPFedUp :

My 45 years in the high tech industry tells me that this is not a technical issue. There are surely technical solutions possible. It is simply that Rogers policy not to allow it!

With so much experience you weren't able to do a simple google search to see that all the content on the box is encrypted because of HDCP???

Rogers does not own any own any of that content you are viewing so if there was a policy to block it, it would be coming from the content providers.

The solution is to build your own PVR with a computer.

eeeaddict
join:2010-02-14

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*cough* hdcp stripper *cough* boy I have a bad cold
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

said by eeeaddict:

*cough* hdcp stripper *cough*

But how does that help you since that just gives you an unencrypted, uncompressed HDMI signal. You then need to re-encode it to something that you can use.
Antonin
join:2007-09-23
Rockwood, ON

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If its any consolation, we're on Cogeco, and have the same issue with the whole home PVR box. You can attach another drive via USB, but it will be encrypted in the same way as the onboard hard drive. I agree that a PC-based solution is the best way to go.
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92 to Makaveli998

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to Makaveli998
said by Makaveli998:

Rogers does not own any own any of that content you are viewing so if there was a policy to block it, it would be coming from the content providers

That's not technically correct in all cases since Rogers is also a content provider since it owns several channels. So in some instances Rogers is both the provider of content and the distributor. Same with Bell and Shaw since they own many channels and also act as BDUs.
HeadSpinning
MNSi Internet
join:2005-05-29
Windsor, ON

HeadSpinning

Member

said by wayner92:

That's not technically correct in all cases since Rogers is also a content provider since it owns several channels.

They may own the channel, but they may not own the content. They may merely license the content for distribution in Canada on their channel.
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

But some of their content is their original content which isn't licensed from anyone except themselves, especially stuff like their newscasts, sports broadcasts, etc.

Makaveli998
join:2002-04-23
Toronto, ON

Makaveli998

Member

I think you all understand what I meant. Beside the local canadian content that none of us watch. Majority of your tv viewing is not canadian content. And even when it is most of the time its not content rogers owns. Yes there will be a few here and there if you want to nit pick but majority isn't owned by rogers.
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

Speak for yourself. A lot of the content that I watch is sports, especially Leafs and Raptors games. In some instances Rogers owns every piece of that action (50% of team, RSN channel and pipe into my house). And I have kids and a lot of the kids content on Treehouse is Canadian.

Cattus
@99.238.26.x

Cattus to Makaveli998

Anon

to Makaveli998
I had to laugh at your response - I was thinking the same thing (45 years in the high tech industry - yah right!). Using the googles will scare up thousands of similar questions and all with the same answers. For sure this is just Rogers being a pain - NOT!

I have a similar problem but not with shows I want to preserve but with shows I want to watch. I want to upgrade my PVR but cannot watch enough to get my saved files down below 50%. So what i will try to do is rent another pvr just to record while I work on watching stuff on the older one. Pain in the armpit but that's what I get for renting a PVR. :-(
cepnot4me
join:2013-10-29
L0C 1K0

cepnot4me

Member

Detail everyone forgets.
The pvr is designed and controlled by cisco.
Rogers doesn't make them and had very little say in how they work.

To undo the copyright software in the pvr would have to be done at the manufacturer level, a manufacturer who's biggest market is the USA.

So who really cares if it's Rogers owned content? Cisco owns the tech, makes the decisions and Cisco owns exactly 0% of the content you record, and the American providers buy these boxes by the millions with copyright protection in mind.

Spike5
Premium Member
join:2008-05-16
Toronto, ON

Spike5 to eeeaddict

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said by eeeaddict:

*cough* hdcp stripper *cough* boy I have a bad cold

Don't you mean a cheap eBay HDMI splitter? You kids know darn well they aren't legally allowed to sell them labelled as HDCP strippers. *COUGHS*
wayner92
join:2006-01-17
Toronto, ON

wayner92

Member

But how is an HDCP stripper going to help you? As I mention up above you still need something to actually capture that HDMI signal like a Hauppauge HD-PVR and some software. Just stripping the HDMI signal is a small part of the overall equation.

Ideally what you would want to see is the ability to connect to your PVR via ethernet, USB, eSata, etc and see it as an external hard drive connected to your LAN or PCs. But there is no way that Hollywood would allow that - which is why they created the DMCA.
wayner92

wayner92 to cepnot4me

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to cepnot4me
said by cepnot4me:

So who really cares if it's Rogers owned content? Cisco owns the tech, makes the decisions and Cisco owns exactly 0% of the content you record, and the American providers buy these boxes by the millions with copyright protection in mind.

Actually Canada is much worse in the protection of cable customers.

Some of this is now chaning for the worse but here are things that are or were required by the FCC in the US:
Cable companies have to offer cable boxes that have active firewire ports that can send the video signal to other devices like a TV, PC, or Digital video tape.
Cable companies must give a customer a CableCARD if they ask for one. A CableCARD decrypts the cable signal and allows you to use a third party device like a TiVo or PC digital cable tuner to tune digital TV channels.
Certain local OTA channels are not to be encrypted in the cable feed.
There were rules mandating what copy protection rules could be used on what channels for measures like CGMS-A or CCI.

None of the above is required and I have only heard of one Canadian cable company, since bought by Rogers, that offered Cable cards.

The one good thing in Canada, at least with Rogers, is that you can buy cable boxes - in the US you have to rent. I own about 10 cable boxes that have been purchased from Rogers through the years. I have saved a lot of money vs monthly rentals, although I do not have the current generation boxes.

Makaveli998
join:2002-04-23
Toronto, ON

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I was referring to everything but sports. But when I think about it for me the ratio doesn't change. I watch all those raptor and leaf games you watch also but most of the sports I watch is still all american. I have no children so no local kids programming for me. But this will vary per person so there isn't really a right or wrong.
VanDivX
join:2003-07-22
Toronto, ON

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I pulled HD out of the pvr box earlier this year (I don't remember but probably 8300 box) and couldn't get the drive recognized in Acronis or other formatting software at all, the very HD format is something proprietary perhaps?

Only way to get your shows out of the box is to hook up DVR box to its yellow cinch connector and the recording will only go at the speed you watch, that is one hour show will take one hour to record...