WMC Dead? Moving to Atlanta and picking a new provider

[-MG-]

I've been a WMC user with a Ceton tuner, and now an HDhomerun. In Iowa I had Mediacom and that worked great as very few channels were copy once. Now I am with Time Warner and they mark everything as copy once so I cannot view any of the videos I want remotely, and can only view them inside my house.

I'm moving to Atlanta in September and looks like my cable options are mostly only Xfinity and I have no idea what their copy rules are.

My point being, if they are restricting content more and more, can WMC survive? I have 2 ceton echos which I haven't had any problems with, except for freezing occasionally if I leave them on for a few days straight. I use my HTPC to record movies, but again a lot of them are being copy once and I can't view them outside my home. I'm considering the X1 from Xfinity as I've heard good reviews on it and you can stream your content to any device (I think), which was one of the strongest points for WMC users in the first place using remotepotato or some other software.

I'm at a crossroads of what to do. I don't know the pricing of the X1, but it seems that they are only charging an upfront installation fee for new users and a huge STB fee, if that's true than there would be almost no reason not to go with them.

Any Atlanta people out there currently using a cablecard and HDHomerun or Ceton and have feedback they can give?

[RyC]

Comcast generally marks only the premium movie channels copy-once, and everything else is copy-free. So you should be good!

[DSperber]

I've been a WMC user with a Ceton tuner, and now an HDhomerun. In Iowa I had Mediacom and that worked great as very few channels were copy once. Now I am with Time Warner and they mark everything as copy once so I cannot view any of the videos I want remotely, and can only view them inside my house.

I would say that's always been the design intent of WMC using cablecard-enabled tuners, namely to record/view TV provided from your cable company to secure displays in your home. That includes a monitor connected to your HTPC using HDCP connection like HDMI/DVI/DP, or to a remote location in your home via an approved extender. I'm sure MS got agreements from Cablelabs that allowed the use of new cablecard-enabled tuners by agreeing to rather strict DRM rules.

The intent was precisely NOT to allow for general access to copy-protected content delivered unprotected and unencrypted across the Internet, and this DRM structure is what facilitated that. And thanks to this agreement we actually do have WMC, and actually can use cablecard-enabled tuners and outboard extenders to get usable access to record/view all copy-protected premium channels and copy-protected basic cable channels throughout our home... same as you'd pay lots of money monthly for from your cable company with a whole-home DVR system.

Consider copy-freely content in this modern time to be a stroke of good luck, but I wouldn't expect it. Here in TWC/LA virtually everything is marked copy-once and encrypted, even now local OTA network channels that are re-transmitted on TWC/LA. If you have a roof antenna and OTA/ATSC tuner card in your WMC HTPC, you can obviously get these channels freely and unencrypted, and can edit them or send them elsewhere as DRM does not apply. But if you get these channels via Ceton/HDHR tuners from TWC/LA, they're now digitally protected the same way premium and other cable channels are. That's just TWC's policy, and I'm as unhappy as anyone else. Thankfully I have a roof antenna and Hauppauge HVR-2250 tuner card in my WMC HTPC, along with a Ceton iTV4 PCIe card.

I would say that most people are quite satisfied with the capabilities of WMC to deliver content to extenders around their home, as the sole purpose of having an HTPC in their home. I would say probably very few honestly expect to even have the remote bandwidth (say on a phone or laptop, in some WiFi-available location) to maybe even possibly view HTPC-stored content from some remote location through a portable device, much less feel that not having that capability is a deal-breaker for deciding to continue using WMC in the home.

Just my opinion.

[-MG-]

That makes sense.

I guess what I originally got into the HTPC/WMC universe was the fact I could record a show and it didn't matter what device I used in my house that I could stream it anywhere. Nowadays it seems like every cable provider is starting to offer the same experience and to some extent more. One of the limitations we have with CablecCard is the inability to access on-demand and its becoming more and more popular and offering more and more content than ever before.

I think if I didn't own any hardware than the decision would be to use Xfinity X1 or some similar sort of home DVR system. But since I own the extenders and have a solid HTPC and storage. I'll continue doing what I'm doing.

[DSperber]

I guess what I originally got into the HTPC/WMC universe was the fact I could record a show and it didn't matter what device I used in my house that I could stream it anywhere.

This still is possible of course, but only for copy-freely content. Not for copy-protected (i.e. copy-once) content, which has never been available on other home PC's or TV's but was only available off of the HTPC through use of an approved extender. You were just maybe very lucky in your area to have a cable company which didn't mark most/all content as copy-once.

Here in TWC/LA land (which over time has had many prior cable companies in the area where I live) I, too, was very bothered by the progression of more and more copy-protected content over time. I used to make my own "clips" (using VideoRedo) of lots of programs, including not only from local network broadcast channels delivered via the cable but also from copy-freely programs on basic cable channels. Can't do this any longer in the past year or two, with the inevitable march to copy-once for seemingly everything.

Nowadays it seems like every cable provider is starting to offer the same experience and to some extent more.

Yes, same as the HTPC/extender notion... except using "server" boxes to do the recording and "client/satellite" boxes scattered around the house for independent display/control for that location. Delivered through the home coax infrastructure using MOCA to each satellite box, instead of with WMC through the home LAN's ethernet infrastructure using TCPIP to each extender.

One of the limitations we have with CablecCard is the inability to access on-demand and its becoming more and more popular and offering more and more content than ever before.

I agree. But a cablecard is a one-way device that is intended to provided decryption capability for the device in which it is used, so as to be able to record/view encrypted content using cablecard-enabled TV's and DVR's and tuner cards, where this digital encryption is the modern digital form of piracy protection now being used (instead of those old analog devices the cable guys used to use in boxes outside your home, and which were obviously very very ineffective in preventing channel piracy, especially in apartment buildings).

Cablecards were not designed to be two-way devices, which is what is required to support On-Demand (both free and paid). True On-Demand requires more intelligence, such as is programmed into STB/DVR devices (which also have cablecards in them, but are also supported by On-Demand software running two-way back to the head end of the cable company).

If On-Demand is critical and mandatory to your TV enjoyment habits, then WMC and cablecard-enabled tuners is not for you. This would definitely be a deal breaker if you were considering building a WMC/HTPC setup for your home. Sure, the absence of On-Demand for me with WMC is a definite loss, but I simply make sure I record everything I want to watch using Guide and series recordings. I don't really need On-Demand, just because I've modified my TV habits to live without it.

I think if I didn't own any hardware than the decision would be to use Xfinity X1 or some similar sort of home DVR system. But since I own the extenders and have a solid HTPC and storage. I'll continue doing what I'm doing.

It's always a choice, and that choice always involves a price differential... and what you're willing to pay for the services you want, and whether you've got any prior investment that you might benefit from or whether it just needs to be trashed in order to move forward with any new architecture to meet your new or evolving needs.

Personally, for me I never really miss On-Demand. I NEVER purchase a movie this way from the cable company, since I have Netflix and Amazon Prime and can get movies that way if I want something on the spur of the moment. Actually even before these streaming services I never used On-Demand for movies I might have missed in the theaters, because I resented the cable company pricing and potentially edited versions, etc.

So for me, WMC/HTPC and the five Linksys DMA2100 extenders I have around my house (at each HDTV location) is perfectly acceptable. My hardware dollar investment some years back has paid off well, now limited to the $2.50/month for one M-card from the cable company. Perfectly acceptable for my needs.