I have Spectrum and just finished setting up my HDHomeRun Prime and am shocked to see that of the 200 channels I am paying for, Plex will only access 40 of them. Being that Live TV/DVR is a premium feature of Plex I am paying for, why can’t I access DRM content? If this isn’t being implemented DVR, should be free.
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Sadly, DRM contents isn’t avail for Live TV/DVR
Source: https://support.plex.tv/articles/226463767-frequently-asked-questions-dvr-live-tv/
It says currently. Does that mean it’s in the works? If Plex expects people to accept this as a premium feature, then it should support premium channels.
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Plex never ever release a roadmap, so no clue
It’s actually really complicated, and DRM is put in for a reason
My personal view on this, and note I said personal, is that it’s not going to happen, due to legal reasons
Disagree here…
Using DVR myself a little bit, and happy about it, but still
Plex has to make a living as well 
I get that it’s complicated but if other services can do it for free, so should Plex, especially if it’s a paid feature. I don’t understand exactly where the decryption happens, but from what I understand the HD HomeRun app is capable of viewing these streams. This to me suggests, if one client can do it, so can another. It’s just a matter of communicating with the tuner to get the decryption protocols.
My frustrations stem from the fact that I just went through the effort to set this up only to see 80% of my channels inaccessible.
HDHR has specific end to end encryption decoders in their software approved by networks. We can’t just make up our own way to bypass that encryption in there else were are breaking DRM which is illegal.
I’m not going to comment any more since i don’t want to get into a circular argument about legalities as I’m not a lawyer.
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I don’t think you fully understsnd the situation.
Can you actually view those streams without the app though? Say via VLC using the direct urls to the channels?
The answer is probably no!
And they are surely not doing it for “free and easily”, you probably need a card and their app, this is how you are able to see the channels, any attempt to access the content without such app and using the same auth mechanism (let’s say a card and lets assume there is some deal place between HD Homerrun and this service) would be piracy and so illegal.
In most cases like my country this is not even an option, ISPs have their own TV Box and that’s the only way to access all channels… A few months ago I could only access 20 digital channels, they were giving us around 60 free but on analog signal… Only recently they moved the full grid to digital, but even so it’s only about 60 and I pay my ISP for close to 200. However they clearly state that full access is via their own products, and TVs that don’t use then only get the open channels, because they are forced by the content owners to protect the others.
So yeah this is much much more complicated that what you think, it’s much more of a legal issue than technical.
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Thank you for providing that insight. So going off of that, what would Plex need to do to support DRM legally?
What are the steps involved to getting this certified by the networks? Is this doable? Is it too costly? Does it require a complete rewrite of the servers and clients? Is it worth implementing considering the clients it might attract if DRM was supported?
If the legal issue to start is accessing DRM remotely, that can be easily resolved by disallowing remote streams of protected channels and only allowing local Plex clients to play back the content. If the decryption is done on the client device, then I would imagine, that the Plex transcoder would need to decrypt the stream first, convert it, and then encrypt the conversion with the exact same keys so the end-to-end encryption is satisfied.
I started to use HDHomerun Prime Cable Cards years ago. I have followed the DRM conversation all that time and it is a very complicated and “costly” issue. Some advice for you if you want to hear it. PLEX will not be adding support for DRM anytime soon if ever. There are multiple conversations about this over at the HDHomerun forums. If important for you to understand I suggest you start there. SiliconDust can view DRM on only some clients. They have talked about adding support to their DVR for years and it has not happed yet. If they can not get it done then none of the third part clients are going to get it done.
Your only option if you want to do something on your own is to switch from Spectrum to FiOS if you have the option since FiOS does not put DRM on their channels (except premium like HBO). At least that I am aware of. I dropped my Frontier FiOS TV Account recently and at that time they did not put DRM on any of their channels. But that does not mean where you are they would not have DRM on their channels. Really difficult situation to deal with.
I current only use OTA channels with my HDHomerun and using streaming for everything else.
Good Luck.
I don’t get Fios. We only get Spectrum.
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