The main question asks about the BBC "protecting" their electronic programme guide (EPG) by the simple method of compressing it, but only disclosing the decompression method to manufacturers who agree to honour the content management information contained within.
Effectively the A/V content would be in the clear, but the EPG would be supposedly unavailable (I would reckon for about a week until the huffman tables are reverse engineered). You would obviously also be able to get the TV schedule from another source such as the radio times (which is exactly why my recording system does already).
It sounds like another manufacturer also raised the question of applying a more conventional protection method based on the DVB CSA, whereby the video/audio content itself is encrypted, and they were dutifully asking about it. Ofcom refused this; I would guess the BBC expected that.
So, for DRM, its about as light a touch as you can get since the actual content is in the clear, and the EPG protction is easily broken or circumvented. It is *still* DRM though, which is a huge change from the current entirely standards based open DVB-T transmission system.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-09-17 10:13 pm (UTC)Effectively the A/V content would be in the clear, but the EPG would be supposedly unavailable (I would reckon for about a week until the huffman tables are reverse engineered). You would obviously also be able to get the TV schedule from another source such as the radio times (which is exactly why my recording system does already).
It sounds like another manufacturer also raised the question of applying a more conventional protection method based on the DVB CSA, whereby the video/audio content itself is encrypted, and they were dutifully asking about it. Ofcom refused this; I would guess the BBC expected that.
So, for DRM, its about as light a touch as you can get since the actual content is in the clear, and the EPG protction is easily broken or circumvented. It is *still* DRM though, which is a huge change from the current entirely standards based open DVB-T transmission system.