I’ve installed Windows 7 Professional (RTM) on all of my computers now–two laptops and two desktops. Overall, it’s an excellent operating system. Memory management appears to have improved significantly, UAC prompts are sparse, and of course the UI has some nice tweaks. Oh, and most system updates don’t require a reboot.
I need to vent about one thing, though, and it may seem small but my goodness it is frustrating. Kind of like getting poked in the eye, or slammed in the funny bone, or like both happening at once. That one thing is the so-called broadcast flag, where broadcasters can flip a digital switch and prevent end users from recording content.
I have a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 TV tuner with one analog tuner and one ATSC tuner. It worked flawlessly under Windows Vista. We never once had a problem with the broadcast flag.
Now, though, when Emily tries to record an episode of “What Not To Wear” or “More to Love” (I mean, these are seriously popular shows and you can see how broadcasters would want to be REALLY careful about not letting people–oh, the horror–record their precious TV shows and possibly watch them at a later time)–it’s these shows that will record for 5 minutes then we get a little notice in the taskbar: “A recording has been cancelled” and then in Media Center, this now-dreaded popup: “Restrictions set by the broadcaster, yadda-yadda-yadda”:
In some cases a re-run will record just fine later that night.
I think–I hope–this is a bug somewhere, since as I understand it Vista Media Center obeyed the broadcast flag and we never saw this issue. But, since Windows 7 is so new, and technically isn’t even publically available (my copies are perfectly legitimate), there isn’t much discussion going on and certainly not about this problem. So, I’m not sure if it’s a driver problem, a Media Center problem, or what.
So poke my eye out, media conglomerates, operating system, world at large. Cheap-shot my funny bone. I don’t care. Mostly.
P.S. “Food Lovers Fat Loss…” just happened to be on this morning when I needed a screenshot for the blog. I mean it. Seriously.
#1 by yodude on November 8th, 2009
I am experiencing this problem too!!! Same tuner too. What to do!??!
#2 by Spencer on November 9th, 2009
I wish I knew. The more I look into it, the problem seems to be with the incoming signal quality for us. These cancellations happen only on analog channels which come through a cable connection. Viewing these channels directly it’s evident the signal is terrible – it almost looks like viewing those encrypted paid channels trying to catch a glimpse of the content through the static. Not quite that bad, but that’s what it feels like.
Another strange characteristic is that the recordings get canceled only during commercials, which is a further indication that it’s messed up signal rather than broadcasters actually trying to prevent recordings. These same shows record fine on OTA channels where they’re available.
This makes me wonder if it’s a driver issue decoding an already-poor analog cable signal, which may not be very high priority given the huge push to digital recently.
Whatever the cause I’m very interested in a fix! This is the one area in which Windows 7 has been a disappointment for me.