recording netflix

[naf123]

Hello,

Is there a way to record netflix shows onto my humax t2 fox? I watch netflix via my amazon firestick on HDMI2 and the humax is on HDMI1

Thank you

 

[Black Hole]

Nope. There are many things we can make the HDR-FOX do by use of the custom firmware, but there is no way to make it do things that are not possible in hardware. Making the HDMI work in reverse is one of them. Using it to capture an Internet stream that the originators have gone to great lengths to ensure is DRM protected is another.

 

[naf123]

Is there a newer humax box that records netflix - I am not interested in streaming apps but I would like to record some netflix videos....

 

[Black Hole]

I can't think why you expect this to be possible. NetFlix (and all similar subscription streaming services) make sure you can't, and all commercially-available equipment that has negotiated player capability for NetFlix streams will respect that.

If you are intent on doing this, you need to look into the illegal torrent sites (where enthusiasts go to great lengths to capture streams and strip them of DRM, just for the challenge, then make them available for download).

 

[naf123]

Thank you!

Not intending to do this illegally. Just more for convenience stake.

I fear for the future where humax will be rendered useless in favour for streaming everything online!

Thanks again for your advice

 

[Black Hole]

Not intending to do this illegally. Just more for convenience stake sake.

Even recording an LP to tape for use in the car is (strictly) illegal, but nobody will come chasing you for it because the damages are minuscule and there is a general expectation of "fair use". Copyright holders are far more concerned about the sharing of their proprietary content that is made possible by the Internet, and therefore circumvents their means to make money (which ultimately bites everybody, because unless the content providers can generate revenue they can't create content in the first place).

Free-to-air broadcasters are less bothered, because the content is paid for by other means (universal licence fee or advertising). Hence the availability of recorders for personal use (convenience). The problem with digital transmission (either broadcast or Internet) is that there is no degradation in the signal path, so a recording is as good as the original - and it can be made available as if it were an original (one of the reasons the continuity announcements are made while the end credits are still rolling - to "degrade" a recording).

HiDef TV is a particular issue. The content providers regard standard definition TV as a lost battle (ever since analogue TV video recorders), but saw the advent of HiDef as new ground to be protected (including video from Blu-ray discs). The outcome is that any device able to supply HiDef video over HDMI (which could, in principle, be intercepted and copied) is required to cease HDMI output if the destination of the signal cannot be verified as incapable of recording. This is done by cryptographic handshake (but still doesn't prevent an eavesdropper on the line grabbing the data as it goes past).

The likes of Netflix, whose entire business model is based on serving content via the Internet and being paid for it, will be making absolutely certain it isn't easy to make a copy of the data between their server and your screen, and will have it cast iron in their contract with you (or a manufacturer of equipment able to access their services) that doing so is verboten. That doesn't stop people doing it of course - some people like a challenge.

I'm not a torrent user, but I gather the torrent sites are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid censorship. Also, individuals who are spotted accessing known illegal downloads can expect a cease and desist letter from their ISP.

We can use our HDR-FOXes + CF to capture BBC iPlayer and YouTube streams because of weaknesses in the HDR-FOX firmware and a lack of security in the buffering of the stream - and presumably Humax never expected anyone to try. YouTube is generally downloadable anyway, and the BBC content is free-to-air, so there is little damage done by our ability to save it. The HDR-FOX was supposed to be getting a Sky Player service though, and we found it in prototype, but it never made it to general issue possibly because Sky pulled the plug when Humax found themselves unable to guarantee data security (my hypothesis).

I fear for the future where humax will be rendered useless in favour for streaming everything online!

I postulated that the introduction of digital broadcasting would provide the means to turn broadcast TV into a subscription service, although that has yet to happen. Moving everything to Internet delivery would create a requirement for a huge increase in delivery capacity - frankly, the existing amount of video delivery via Internet is already slowing the Internet to a crawl, and if the video companies fund the infrastructure we can expect their content delivery to be given priority over other traffic (such as browsing this forum).

 

[prpr]

The problem with digital transmission (either broadcast or Internet) is that there is no degradation in the signal path, so a recording is as good as the original - and it can be made available as if it were an original

Really? So you are saying that the cr@p that comes out of the MPEG decoder on some channels is exactly the same as what goes in?
It isn't. Even the decoder output of the HD channels is nothing like what goes in to the coder, and it's a lot worse than it used to be when HD started, as they keep winding down the bit-rate to fit more channels in and hope nobody notices (they do of course, but complaints are systematically ignored).
SD is probably worse than VHS quality in a lot of cases now, albeit the annoyances manifest themselves in different ways.

 

[Black Hole]

Really? So you are saying that the cr@p that comes out of the MPEG decoder on some channels is exactly the same as what goes in?
It isn't.

I know that, but as long as the recording process intercepts the encoded data stream it doesn't incur any additional encoding-decoding steps and therefore does not suffer any further degradation. The worst case is intercepting the post-decode stream on the HDMI and then re-encoding it to a compressed form, in which case the level of further degradation is entirely dependent on the quality of the encoding at that stage.

 

[peterpi]

I've seen mention of HDMI spoofers and sniffers. Do these things really work?

 

[Black Hole]

No reason they shouldn't, it's like a wire tap. If you can build something that captures the data fast enough and stores it in a useful form, job done.