Recording encrypted channel w/o descrambling

Marco Dalli

Hi, I'm considering setting up tvheadend on my NAS (a synology ds1511+). I still need to buy appropriate hardware, but first I'd like to know if it's possible to record an encrypted channel without descrambling it. I don't mind watching it live, just need to record (raw dump?) it for a later descrambling with an offline descrambler. I'm asking this because my card will be staying in its own stb all day long and I'll probably use it only to descramble recordings. So Oscam is not a viable solution for live descrambling...

So, is this possible, maybe from webif?

Thank you in advance!

Adam Sutton

Unfortunately not, I believe you're not the first to ask. Unfortunately its not going to be high enough priority for any of the devs to look at.

But if you have a go yourself at hacking the code, you can always ask in #hts for some advice.

Adam

Marco Dalli

Thank you for your reply, but ouch, that's bad news! :(

Do you know of any alternative that could solve the problem, before I try hacking the code (which would take very long, I fear)?

Thanks!
Marco

Eric Valette

Marco Dalli wrote:
> Thank you for your reply, but ouch, that's bad news! :(
> Do you know of any alternative that could solve the problem, before I try hacking the code (which would take very long, I fear)?
>
> Thanks!

> Marco

As far as I understood technical discussion on the subject, the information needed to descramble a live scream may have a time limited validity (at least for some encryption scheme) so it might not even be possible.

Adam Sutton

Eric is right that this can be true for certain encryption systems (and the decryption mechanism used). Though I do know people that do this, so its not a completely unreasonable question (though there are some slight issues with why one might want to do things this way).

However in the short term its not possible within TVH, simply because its not designed to work in this manner and although probably not a major change to overcome this, its not something I think the devs are likely to have time to look into.

Adam