On Wednesday 09 February 2005 16:10, Ian Forde wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 15:57 -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 February 2005 15:29, Ian Forde wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 13:10 -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> > > > The cable companies are not required to provide HD resolution on
the
> > > > Firewire output. Most likely any HD content will be transcoded
> > > > inside
> > > > the cable box to, say, 480p before it's output over Firewire.
As
> > > > for
> > > > viewing, that's totally independent of your cable box/Firewire
> > > > setup.
> > > > Since the recording are probably not going to be HD anyway, it
> > > > really
> > > > doesn't matter that you're going to be viewing them on a
standard
> > > > TV.
> > >
> > > Except that the recording that I'm getting IS HD. People over on
> > > avsforum have been capturing HD, unencrypted, over firewire since
at
> > > least October of 2003. And it's not just 480p. I've been getting
> > > 1080i
> > > and 720p.
> > >
> > > I'm wondering why you think my experience is not the norm...
> >
> > Right now you're getting some HD resolutions, but AFAIK the cable
co. is
> > not *required* to give you anything higher than HD, as long as the
> > content is viewable. It's entirely possible that the cable company
> > could even change this behavior on your current STB with a stealth
> > firmware upgrade. Unencrypted broadcast televsion cannot be
> > down-sized; not sure if that applies to broadcast channels carried
by a
> > cable provider.
>
> AFAIK, since the regulation is meant for cable companies, it would
seem
> that unencrypted broadcast television that they can't downsize it.
>
> Now, it may be a different story for ESPN, HBO, etc., but aren't the
> broadcast television channels (which can't be downsized by them)
> generally a subset of OTA HD anyway?
The question is, what do they mean by "unencrypted broadcast
television". Took me a while, but I finally found the relevant
paragraph:
(s) Unencrypted broadcast television means any service, program, or
schedule or group of programs, that is a further transmission of a
broadcast transmission (i.e., an over-the-air transmission for
reception by the general public using radio frequencies allocated for
that purpose) that substantially simultaneously is made by a
terrestrial television broadcast station located within the country or
territory in which the entity further transmitting such broadcast
transmission also is located, where such broadcast transmission is not
subject to a commercially-adopted access control method (e.g., is
broadcast in the clear to members of the public receiving such
broadcasts), regardless of whether such entity subjects such further
transmission to an access control method.
So basically, they can't "encode" any channels that you could receive
OTA in the clear, *in the same locality*. "Encode" here means:
(j) Encode shall mean, in the transmission of commercial
audiovisual content, to pass, attach, embed, or otherwise apply to,
associate with, or allow to persist in or remain associated with such
content, data or information which when read or responded to in a
covered device has the effect of preventing, pausing, or limiting
copying, or constraining the resolution of a program when output from
the covered device.
So, for all intents & purposes, this would seem to mean that they can't
encrypt or 'constrain the resolution' of any channel that you could
otherwise get OTA in the clear. Any other content (i.e., most cable
networks) is fair game for both encryption and 'resolution constraint'.
-JAC
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