DRM Support for Hdhomerun Primes

I know there have been discussions on this in the past, but I didn’t want to resurrect an old thread. With the recent loss of the Fox Sports/Bally access via TVE, I wonder if there has been any more thought given to supporting DRM on Prime cable card tuners. I know this was looked at years ago and at the time the costs of licensing made it not practical. I’m wondering if the growth of the Channels user base over the years has changed that calculation some? I know I would definitely be willing to pay an extra monthly cost to be able to access all of my channels. Losing access to the Bally networks is a big blow to me, I loved having everything in Channels, and now I’m stuck with their app which has no time-shifting capabilities at all. :confused:

I’m also concerned that over time, more and more TVE-capable channels will add DRM, so this will become more and more of an issue.

Considering that CableCARD support is no longer mandatory, and CableLabs certification is crazy expensive and takes forever, this is nice to wish for, but will never happen.

If you want to see what a timeline looks like, SiliconDust started implementing DRM recording 6+ years ago, and it still has never materialized.

I'm pretty sure ANY timeline from SiliconDust is 6+ years :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Not worth it Cable cards are dying. Comcast is no longer charging me for mine.

I've been sounding this alarm since ATSC 3.0 was finalized. DRM support no longer has any relationship to HDHR Prime. It will soon become necessary for OTA DVRs to be very useful at all. The Bally/FSGO thing can be looked at as a shot across the bow.

See: Does Next-Gen TV spell doom for over-the-air DVR?

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