When the announcement came that ATI would be releasing a new firmware for its cable card devices which would properly support the Copy Freely protections of shows, I got excited. For the past 2 years, I have been a dedicated cable card user within my Vista Media Center to enjoy high definition recordings via Comcast, even though it meant ditching my favorite (and I do mean favorite) plugin, DVRMSToolbox, commonly referred to as DTB. Seeing people who have used the firmware already got me thinking happy thoughts...

You see, DTB is what gave me the magical power to analyze television recordings, find the commercials, and then skip instantly past them when I watched. And with ShowAnalyzer, I was even able to start this process while the recording was still going on! The original firmwares for the ATI tuners however had a copy protection flag on all recordings--whether the broadcaster flagged the show or not--which prevented the ShowAnalyzer from being able to scan the file. According to reports, with this new firmware anything NOT flagged as Copy Protected should be able to be scanned and thus allow me to use DTB and ShowAnalyzer once again!

Since it has been several years since I used the applications and much has changed, I decided to write up a little guide for those of you new to the scene (or maybe you just forgot as I did). With the news that cable card OEM restrictions will soon be dropped, I imagine there will be a lot more of you cable card users out there to take advantage. 

Now just as a preface, this new upcoming firmware does NOT mean that ALL of your television recordings will work with this. This will strictly work for recordings which were not flagged as "Copy Protected" by the broadcaster. How can you tell such a thing you may ask?  

See the screenshots below:

Show with NO COPY PROTECTION, WILL Work	Show WITH Copy Protection that won't work

Continue onward for the full guide. I separated it into a few sections to make it easier to follow and keep track of where you are. 

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