What is blocking Vista users from recording NBC shows?
Update at 7:10 a.m. Wed., May 14: A correction was made to this story. See details below.
Some users of Windows Vista Media Center say they were blocked from recording the NBC Universal TV shows American Gladiator and Medium on Monday night.
"Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator prohibit recording of this program," the error message read.
At Thegreenbutton.com a message board popular with DVR enthusiasts, those affected tried to figure out what was causing the block. When this kind of thing happens, people immediately question whether TV and cable networks are trying to thwart time-shifting technologies and force people to watch commercials again. Even though it's rarely done, content providers do have the ability to communicate with some time-shifting hardware to block the recording of shows or broadcasts.
"This is indicative of why the current DRM schemes are flawed," said Marcel Good, an IT director in Northern California and one of the people prevented from recording the NBC shows. "It affects people who intend to legally consume content. They have no intention of stealing the content. The people who want to steal already have ways around DRM."
On Tuesday, the cause for the block of the NBC Universal shows was still unclear. Representatives from both the network and Microsoft said they would need time to look into the matter.
Until they do, here are the few available clues. Most of those who posted at Thegreenbutton were Vista users recording digital cable with ATI cablecard tuners.
A TiVo spokeswoman said the DVR company received no customer complaints about being blocked from recording.
This isn't the first time a Vista Media Center user has complained about being barred from recording. A person identified as Alex from Canada wrote 14 months ago at Thegreenbutton: "Often a small number of my shows fail to record, and in the Windows event log I see errors about 'copy protection set by the broadcaster.'"
The shows Alex tried to record came from the Toronto-based W Network. Alex was running Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit and when attempting to record the show Friends: Trial by Jury received this message in Media Center's event logs: "Friends was not recorded. Recording of this content is prohibited by the content provider."
Jessica Zahn, a program manager in Microsoft's Media Center TV group, who according to Thegreenbutton has volunteered to answer questions at the site, apparently responded to Alex (a Microsoft spokeswoman said she could not confirm the message came from Zahn). The person who responded under the username JessZahn said the problem had either one of two causes.
"The broadcaster is setting the 'Copy Never' flag and Media Center's behavior is expected or Media Center is misinterpreting data it receives," and someone at Microsoft would need to study the stream of the show to know for sure.
What remains unclear, however, is whether those who posted complaints at Thegreenbutton shared the same cable provider.
I'll update this story as soon as I get more information.
Correction: This story erred in stating when Alex in Canada posted to Thegreenbutton.com. The post was from March 2007.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET.
I looked deep inside each system that was acting up and found the issue on the hard drive.
It turns out they were all loaded with Windows!!!
No they don't. They are FORCED to use DRM or the broadcaster wont allow them to provide the shows for people.
Using Unbuntu will not help you in a situation where the rights owner requires the content is DRM. In fact you will be worse off, because the content will just be unavailable to you.
It has been an issue with Media Center for a long time. No one else seems to honor that 'do not record' (I use GB-PVR on Vista, and it ignores it)
Copy editing note: You're mixing singular and plural. It should be "A person identifying himself as Alex from Canada ... "
My aunt Alex would hate me if I called her a "him".
I have two tuners - ATI HDTV Wonder and Hauppauge HVR-950...
No cable, no digital cable tuners, nothing like that...
Could it be that ATi has made yet another crappy driver causing problems? The driver would be specific to the operating system it was made for, in this case Vista.
The problem appears to be something other than ATI tuners, I have 2 Hauppauge tuners pulling off Dish and had the same problem on gladiators.
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by jtodd_98
May 14, 2008 7:39 AM PDT
- As someone else has mentioned, this is not happening only with Vista. I have been having this problem somewhat regularly for over a year with a XP media center pc using an analog pci tuner card by Hauppauge. I have posted some of my problems in that same thread as well as a few others on The Green Button. Microsoft representatives have come and gone, some saying a fix was on the way, only to be told a month or two later by a new MS rep. that they are not sure if or when they will fix it. This is an operating system made and advertised as a computer dvr, that actually can't work as a dvr. It goes so far sometimes as to not even let the user watch a show live if the flag is is set in such a way.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (46 Comments)This is one of the longest running problems and threads on the site, yet MS hasn't even officially recognized it with a yea or nay as to what will be done. This is why DRM is viewed as a 4 letter word. I have no use for it, all of these shows are widely available for download all over the internet for free, and in a much higher quality than what media center can record. It just doesn't make much sense.