Having trouble converting WMC to CableCard

[TechSavvy]

Greetings, TGB Community:

I have been running Windows Media Center for 8 or 9 years and have had a lot of success running in on Windows 7 with 3x Hauppauge HVR-1250s to record my local networks over clear QAM. I finally decided to upgrade to Digital Cable, so I added a CableCard and Tuning Adapter to my HTPC yesterday, along with a Hauppauge DCR-2650 that I had lying around. While the hardware appears to be provisioned with my cable provider (Cox) -- I see authentication, validation, and ready messages for both the CableCard and the TuningAdapter -- I seem to be running into DRM trouble.

I have read dozens of posts -- probably the same ones over and over again -- about:
- Disabling and re-enabling WMC (or all Media Features) in Control Panel > Programs and Features > Enable/Disable Windows Features
- Deleting the DRM key in the registry -- FWIW, the sub-key would delete, but the key "folder" never went away
- Deleting *.hds files, Cache folders, PlayReady and ehome in C:/ProgramData/
- Stopping and starting the Windows WMC Receiver Service (from Services or the command line using 'net stop/start ehrecvr') after the PlayReady update fails
- Manually installing PlayReady 1.3 after downloading the MSI from Microsoft's website
- Installing and running the Digital Cable Adviser
- Rebooting in between certain steps

After uninstalling, reinstalling, uninstalling WMC again, delete the registry key and deleting the files/folders in the prescribed order, the only thing that really seemed to help (after running Digital Cable Adviser) was stopping the receiver service right after the PlayReady update fails in WMC.

The problem I'm having is that this seems to be a temporary solution for me. I'll be able to view channels for a little while -- I've only tried this over about 5 - 10 minutes -- but eventually I'll switch to a different channel that immediately asks me to make a PlayReady update, which fails, because the receiver service isn't stopping automatically (even though the current station turns off). After that, even cable channels that I just was able to view go black. At best, a channel will play for about 2 seconds before the message appears that my video driver or whatever doesn't have the right to view the content.

Is there a silver bullet for this particular case? Am I best off just reinstalling all of Windows 7 from scratch? My current plan is to follow this list (again?) -- http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=3760 -- and, absent that, reinstall Windows 7 this weekend. (I might upgrade to Windows 10 first just to grab the free license before reinstalling 7 to downgrade back.)

Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

BTW, the specific message I'm receiving is:

Display driver error

The video playback device does not support playback of protected content.

I take it this is a PlayReady issue, rather than a real display driver issue, but I could be mistaken. (I'm using the embedded Radeon on my AMD A6-3500 CPU with Gigabyte mobo.)

[Space]

I don't know if this will work for you, but I would periodically get that message (Display driver error...) when I tried to watch any channel live (but if you minimized WMC and maximized it again, it would start working).

You can read about my ordeal here: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9766

What eventually fixed it after pulling almost all my hair out was simply replacing the HDMI cable (I had also completely uninstalled my AMD drivers and re-installed, which may have contributed to fixing my initial issue).

[TechSavvy]

I don't know if this will work for you, but I would periodically get that message (Display driver error...) when I tried to watch any channel live (but if you minimized WMC and maximized it again, it would start working).

You can read about my ordeal here: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9766

What eventually fixed it after pulling almost all my hair out was simply replacing the HDMI cable (I had also completely uninstalled my AMD drivers and re-installed, which may have contributed to fixing my initial issue).

Space, thanks so much for the reply. I'll give that a shot.

Since posting, I came upon this thread -- http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 1b3?page=3 -- and one of the posters mentioned that s/he encountered the same error with live TV by clicking a channel in the Guide, but when s/he recorded the program and viewed it from Recorded TV, it worked just fine. I checked this out and this worked for me, too. This probably isn't a long-term solution that will make my wife happy, but it's good enough for me for now. Regardless, that's another data point for my problem.

Edit: I have two HDMI cables going into my TV -- one from the HTPC, the other from my soundbar passing through from my BD player -- and a quick switch (w/o restarting) didn't do it, although I lost sound. I'll have to look more closely at that shortly.

I saw a comment in your thread about the monitor driver and mine is Generic PnP Monitor provided by Microsoft, date 2006-06-21 version 6.1.7600.16385. So, I don't think that's the culprit.

Your AMD driver issues reminded me of some I had recently: I tried updating the AMD Catalyst driver either on my HTPC (Llano A6-3500) or laptop (Radeon 7750M) and it gave me all sorts of issues. I ended up reverting to what I had been running.

[Space]

I shutdown both my HTPC and my TV before swapping cables, so that may be required (and I also read that hot-swapping HDMI cables is not a good idea).

When I looked in the Device Manager at the "Generic PnP Monitor" it had a yellow "caution" icon next to it, so that is why I tried to fix it (by deleting the old hidden devices as described in the link in that thread) but that caused an even bigger problem. Now that I have done a clean uninstall and re-install of the drivers, it has the main "Generic PnP Monitor" but also one hidden one. Before, it had about 6 or 7 hidden ones which may have been causing the issue (I'm not sure).

Also, make sure you only have one device listed under "Display Adapters" and it is your graphics card. If you have any other device and it is not HDCP compliant, you can get that error. I had a secondary device listed for VNC which was a virtual device, so I uninstalled VNC to get rid of it.

When I uninstalled my AMD driver, it still had an older AMD driver installed (perhaps the initial one provided by windows update), so I got this:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... ility.aspx
and it completely uninstalled the AMD drivers (make sure to reboot afterwards). I then was able to do a clean install of the AMD driver.

As for recording a show, yes, for any non-copy protected channel, I could record it and watch it without a problem, however watching a channel live (even non-copy protected) would not work.

[TechSavvy]

I shutdown both my HTPC and my TV before swapping cables, so that may be required (and I also read that hot-swapping HDMI cables is not a good idea).

When I looked in the Device Manager at the "Generic PnP Monitor" it had a yellow "caution" icon next to it, so that is why I tried to fix it (by deleting the old hidden devices as described in the link in that thread) but that caused an even bigger problem. Now that I have done a clean uninstall and re-install of the drivers, it has the main "Generic PnP Monitor" but also one hidden one. Before, it had about 6 or 7 hidden ones which may have been causing the issue (I'm not sure).

Also, make sure you only have one device listed under "Display Adapters" and it is your graphics card. If you have any other device and it is not HDCP compliant, you can get that error. I had a secondary device listed for VNC which was a virtual device, so I uninstalled VNC to get rid of it.

When I uninstalled my AMD driver, it still had an older AMD driver installed (perhaps the initial one provided by windows update), so I got this:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... ility.aspx
and it completely uninstalled the AMD drivers (make sure to reboot afterwards). I then was able to do a clean install of the AMD driver.

As for recording a show, yes, for any non-copy protected channel, I could record it and watch it without a problem, however watching a channel live (even non-copy protected) would not work.

So, I tried swapping the HDMI cable and that didn't help. I also followed your directions about removing extra hidden Generic PnP (and non-PnP) Monitors, of which there were about 5 or 6. I checked under Display Adapters, but only saw the single Radeon.

I have since realized, after my wife complained that certain channels wouldn't record, that I am not able to watch live or recorded channels that are Protected-Copy Once (even if Subscribed), just unrestricted channels (which is fortunately most of them). So, the workaround (to record from the Guide before watching) isn't viable for those channels. What's interesting is that these stations give me the message to update PlayReady, rather than the driver error. I update PlayReady, it fails, I stop the ehrecvr service from the command line, retry, it works, I have no tuners available, I exit and restart MC, but then I still receive a black screen on Protected channels and my recordings are unviewable.

I haven't tried using the clean uninstall utility to reinstall my display driver, but I may try that tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I'm leaning toward reinstalling Windows.

[Space]

If you are OK with being unable to play your already recorded copy-protected shows, you can try to fix PlayReady using the solutions in this post:

https://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10360

Although it looks like you may have tried some of them already...

I would try using the AMD clean tool to completely remove the graphics drivers and then reboot and reinstall the drivers. If you still have PlayReady issues, follow the processes in the above link to see if you can get PlayReady working again.

[Space]

I've just had another instance of "Display driver error" on my system (after thinking a new HDMI cable fixed it), I posted about it in that other thread.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9766

[chrisgnv]

I'm a Cox subscriber and recently activated a CableCard. I have Cox's FlexWatch package which is basically local broadcast stations, plus HBO, Encore, and Starz. My HTPC is an Intel NUC with their HD Graphics 6000 GPU.

I'm getting the same black screens or incompatible video messages. I basically gave up and accepted that SD was all I was going to get on the premium channels. Those were pretty much gravy for me, anyway, since I expected to have only OTA content when I went down the path of HDHRs and WMC. Having just moved to a new apt I was pleasantly surprised that internet +HBO/Starz/Encore was cheaper than the internet (alone) I had before I moved.

Research elsewhere suggested the problem was the Intel GPU not supporting H.264. But your having the same problem with an AMD GPU suggests otherwise. I'll try some of the remedies described here and report results. However, the NUC has a special mini-HDMI connector and I have only one cable. Maybe I'll get an adapter and connect that to a standard cable. Also, resetting PlayReady is not high on my list of things I want to do. I've already tried a lot, and gave up.

[DaveInPa]

What firmware are you using for the 2650? You might need to upgrade to the latest version.

[TechSavvy]

If you are OK with being unable to play your already recorded copy-protected shows, you can try to fix PlayReady using the solutions in this post:

https://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10360

Although it looks like you may have tried some of them already...

I would try using the AMD clean tool to completely remove the graphics drivers and then reboot and reinstall the drivers. If you still have PlayReady issues, follow the processes in the above link to see if you can get PlayReady working again.

...

I've just had another instance of "Display driver error" on my system (after thinking a new HDMI cable fixed it), I posted about it in that other thread.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9766

Yeah, I visited that forum thread multiple times. I tried again last night, starting with Digital Cable Advisor then PlayReady update. No dice. I then happened upon this thread -- https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... itpromedia -- and someone mentioned changing the receiver service to run as a local system account instead of a network service. I went ahead and made that change, along with changing the scheduler service, and re-ran the PlayReady update. I was expecting it to work without manually stopping the service, but it didn't. It did not appear to work immediately, but I noticed after I got home today that I was able to watch cable channels directly from the guide. I then confirmed that I could watch and record Protected stations. Barring some ghost in the machine, it looks like things are working for the time being.

Now I just need to look into the issue of no guide past March 18.

[TechSavvy]

I'm a Cox subscriber and recently activated a CableCard. I have Cox's FlexWatch package which is basically local broadcast stations, plus HBO, Encore, and Starz. My HTPC is an Intel NUC with their HD Graphics 6000 GPU.

I'm getting the same black screens or incompatible video messages. I basically gave up and accepted that SD was all I was going to get on the premium channels. Those were pretty much gravy for me, anyway, since I expected to have only OTA content when I went down the path of HDHRs and WMC. Having just moved to a new apt I was pleasantly surprised that internet +HBO/Starz/Encore was cheaper than the internet (alone) I had before I moved.

Research elsewhere suggested the problem was the Intel GPU not supporting H.264. But your having the same problem with an AMD GPU suggests otherwise. I'll try some of the remedies described here and report results. However, the NUC has a special mini-HDMI connector and I have only one cable. Maybe I'll get an adapter and connect that to a standard cable. Also, resetting PlayReady is not high on my list of things I want to do. I've already tried a lot, and gave up.

Not supporting H.264 would imply a codec problem, but, if you're able to watch the HD version of your local stations, then that wouldn't be it. If your premium cable channels are coming in black, then that's probably the same issue I had with PlayReady not fully configured. It seemed like it was configured well enough to let me record DRM-free stations using the CableCard, but not Protected ones. Take a look at my latest post for a few more things to try.

Probably the best order to follow (if you're going to try everything all over again) is:
- DRM Reset tool
- Set WMC receiver (and scheduler) service(s) to run as local system account
- Re-run Digital Cable Advisor (which might require reinstall?)
- Re-run PlayReady update
- If it fails (which it probably will), stop receiver service
- Re-run PlayReady update (which should work)
- Exit Media Center (and maybe restart the computer)
- Check being able to view live, unprotected cable stations (hopefully works)
- Check being able to record live cable stations (almost certainly works)
- If you were able to view live cable stations, you probably can view DRM-protected cable stations (live or recorded)

For me, it seemed like the configuration needed to marinate -- technical term -- before it started working

What firmware are you using for the 2650? You might need to upgrade to the latest version.

Thanks for chiming in, Dave. I updated it to the latest firmware (20150615_33226). Fortunately, I have things working now.