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Thursday, June 21, 2007
  Economics 001, or why I hate Economics

[edit!] It’s a lie!  See I read the question completely wrong!  CARP! Anyway, I’ll update this with what all happened but needless to say, I need to pay more attention to the questions next time :D

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Wednesday, June 6, 2007
  DISH Network New, and already busted, Copy Protection

As you may or may not know I work for a local retailer of satellite and high speed internet services here in Boise.  As such I get cool information on all the happenings with DISH Network, DIRECTV, etc.  Anyway, while reading through some of the latest material from DISH Network I stumbled across the fact that DISH Network is implementing HDCP on all their DVR products.  According to the FAQ about it from DISH:

Why did this happen?

As you may know, piracy has become a global issue in the movie industry.  In an effort to improve the security of movies on DISH Network, we have recently added some copy protection to HBO and Cinemax services.

The idea of the copy protection scheme is that you can only have 1 copy of any protected show.  That 1 copy can be “moved” to a HDCP compatible device, but not copied.  So you can “move” an HBO recording to your PocketDISH, but it will delete the show off your DVR.  Or if you have an HDCP compatible DVD burner, you should be able to “move” the show to DVD, but, again, it will be deleted off the DVR.  Seems to work, however there are 2 issues that I can see:

1) Content moved to the PocketDISH can not be moved back to the DVR.  So if you want to watch it on your pretty HDTV, better break out your PocketDISH’s AV cable, which is composite, and hook it up.  Quality goes down.  Yay!

2) Once it’s on the PocketDISH, you can connect those same AV cables to anything you want, including, *gasp* a DVD Recorder or, if you really want to go old school, VCR!

Oh-noes!

All of the sudden my 1 copy on the DVR has become however many copies I want it to be.  Or, even more unthinkable, connect it to a Composite-to-Stereo plug convertor for audio, and a TV Tuner card that accepts a line in, and record it that way.  Who cares!

Okay, any recordings like that will not be of the same quality as the original, but still watchable for most people.  Also, it just goes to show that the system is broken.  The PocketDISH is just one example of that.  Burn it to DVD and then rip the DVD.  There is no such thing as only 1 copy..

Enough of this MPAA and all you other peoples out there.  Stop making my life more difficult, as you aren’t stopping the pirates!  You’re just pissing me off!

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Location: Boise, Idaho, United States

My borg designation is 2 of 7. My parents raised me LDS, but I'm atheist. My wife loves me, my kids think about it. My dog thinks I abandoned her and sleeps on the couch.

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