Questions about wanting to run Win7 WMC in VM under Win10

AFelectrngineer wrote in post #30:

Hardware:
- HAUPPAUGE WinTV-quadHD PCI Express TV Tuner Card 1609 - Native on Win 10 using WinTV 10, NextPVR and WMC
- AverMedia AverTV Hybrid Ultra USB (Win 7 driver: InstalDrv_M039R_Drv_1.3.64.83_W7_x64_100317) - Native on Win 10
- Ceton InfiniTV ETH6 currently used on a separate Windows 8.1 Pro with WMC machine (for DRM live and recorded TV)

HAUPPAUGE handles Clear QAM cable channels signal (on Win 10)
AverMedia handles OTA ATSC channels signal as well as FM radio in WMC (on Win 10)
I use EPG123 with a linked Schedules Direct account for WMC Guide, also Titan TV Guide (web based) is available

Ultimate goal is to get everything available on my new Win 10 machine to include fully live DRM cable TV content. As you can see from my picture (above) I have successfully implemented WMC on Win 10. Unfortunately it seems impossible to get CableCard DRM live TV on Win 10 with WMC. At this time, WMC on Win 10 seems limited to ATSC OTA and Clear QAM cable.

I had apparently missed the really important essence of your last sentence. All this recent discussion I thought you had actually been able to use your Ceton ETH to at least record copy-protected content inside of Win10-hack WMC. I thought your only problem was the ability to play "live" DRM content on a local monitor. I also assumed that you had extender(s) connected to your Win10 machine and were able to watch both live and recorded DRM content on the remote extender/HDTV pods using your Win10 machine.

But re-reading things, including your latest post, I now see I was mistaken. You're really using your Win8.1 WMC machine as "production", for live and recorded, and in particular to support the Ceton ETH for all content, both clear QAM and copy-protected channels. This machine feeds the rest of your house, as your "production DVR".

And actually your Win10 machine is only being used [experimentally, one might say) as a secondary WMC/NextPVR/WinTV10 machine, but only for the Hauppauge card and then only for clear QAM cable channels.

So you're NOT actually using the Ceton ETH in Win10-hack WMC to play either live or recorded content as I had mistakenly thought, either for copy-freely or copy-protected content. I had mistakenly thought you were using it to at least make recordings for later viewing through extenders attached to your Win10-hack WMC setup. Apparently not true, I now realize.

And hence your interest in my own Win7-VM approach, which actually DOES use the Ceton ETH in its fully enabled cablecard/DTA/SDV potential, for both clear QAM as well as copy-protected channels. Unfortunately, my approach is also not entirely problem-free, due to the inability to play any copy-protected content (either live or recorded) to a local monitor due to the fact that the graphics in Win7-VM is virtual and not HDCP-compliant as is required by DRM. My own compromise here is to accept that all my copy-protected content (either live or recorded) will be watched "remotely" on an extender/HDTV pod... which IS 100% USABLE.

Furthermore, my Win7-VM approach includes support for the Hauppauge QuadHD OTA/ATSC tuner (which I use for broadcast channels from my roof antenna, whose quality I prefer to the same channels available via carriage as clear QAM on cable channels by Spectrum), but not within WMC (as it is in real Win7). Since the Hauppauge hardware and drivers are not available to Win7-VM through VMWare, I had to use NextPVR (native Win10) for the Hauppauge card, and then make its recordings usable as "videos" to WMC within Win7-VM, and thus at extenders. Net result is that all content is 100% available through extender/HDTV pods.

I never pursued FM radio, as I don't use it even on my real Win7 HTPC.

Now onto your latest post, describing your attempt to synchronize your Win10 Registry with your Win8.1 Registry, regarding Playready and DRM. In your discussion you mention MSPR.HDS, which is in fact a very important component of Playready located in \ProgramData. Turns out this file contains the decryption code information regarding copy-protected recorded content required in order to play DRM content, even on the same machine it was recorded on.

Back last year during the same June 2019 period I was working on my Win7-VM experiments, I was also looking more closely into MSPR.HDS in terms of whether it could be backed up, copied, restored, etc., and if so what were its contents and what did it then allow or not. I started a separate discussion on TGB Forum named "Adventures with \Playready\MSPR.HDS and DRM". The findings and discoveries of this separate research actually turned out to be VERY EXCITING (and will provide you with some additional interesting reading), although I don't really think it's involved with any ability of your Win10-hack WMC to be able to play live or recorded DRM content.

Yes, MSPR.HDS plays a large role in the ability to playback recorded DRM content after it's been recorded (even on the same machine), but I don't believe copying it from one machine to another can then actually allow the second machine to play a DRM recording made on the first machine. But, I'm going to redo that experiment using my own two real Win7 machines, just for grins.

Now what was interesting as part of my Win7-VM research last year was a finding when I created a "clone" of my primary Win7-VM, like having a sandbox to play in and try things without having to risk breaking my "production" Win7-VM. I was wondering if a second "duplicate" Win7-VM appeared to be the identical machine as the original Win7-VM from which it was cloned, as far as DRM and MSPR.HDS were concerned. Could I play a copy-protected content from the first machine (corresponding to MSPR.HDS on the first Win7-VM machine which had done the recording) on a second Win7-VM machine, by copying MSPR.HDS from the first machine to the second machine??

And the answer was that it DID work! I took this to imply that whetever "is this the same Windows/machine?" questions and variables get imputed into the decryption key used by Playready to successfully play copy-protected content, the two Win7-VM machines obviously appear to be one and the same. In my experience (as I currently recall I might have experimented in the past) this was not the case. It was simply impossible to play a copy-protected WTV file recorded on one WMC with a second WMC on a second machine, even if I copied MSPR.HDS from the first machine to the second machine.

But now, based on your results with your Win8.1 copy-protected recordings being able to be played on your Win10-hack WMC, I'm once again questioning. I'm going to have to re-confirm that your results should be impossible... or not, if only I copy MSPR.HDS successfully.

I will do some more experimenting (with my two real Win7 HTPCs) and report back.

@ DSperber...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on MSPR.HDS and cloning results.
Just for clarification...
- I am essentially using Win 8.1 with WMC that has full CableCard DRM recording capability as a Media Server.
- It would be the same as if I were using a NAS as the recorder storage media location and playback source.
- I absolutely confirm it is possible to play any recorded DRM content from Win 8.1 "server" on Win10 WMC
- The HAUPPAUGE WinTV PCI Express TV Tuner & AverMedia AverTV Hybrid Ultra USB are on physical Win10

Unknown at this time if REGISTRY changes on Win 10 machine are enabling factor for DRM CopyOnce TV from Win8.1 being displayed on the Win 10 WMC local monitor, LG 3899UC-W connected via DisplayPort.

As far as using NAS or other network mapped drives for WMC "recorder" storage, my own experience is that new recordings must be done in one \Recorded TV folder on just one LOCAL drive (of your choosing, of course). You can't create a "pool of multiple recording folders" (as you could, for example, using BeyondTV many years ago, even spread across multiple drives). Nor can you locate that recorder storage on a network mapped drive location. I haven't actually worked with NAS, so maybe that is a special exception and does allow use for recording storage.

Now the \Recorded TV "library" CAN be configured with any number of folders on any number of local/network drives. So once recorded you can move that WTV file to any other folder which is part of the \Recorded TV library and you will then be able to see it and select it for playback using WMC under "Recorded TV". So there's essentially infinite local/network capacity for existing recordings. But new recordings must go to a LOCAL drive.

At least that is what I believe to be true.

When I was configuring WMC in Win7-VM that was one of the issues I had to deal with, namely how and where to place a folder that would then have large multi-TB capacity if I were really going to use this for my new Win7-VM WMC DVR in the Win10 host world. The resolution to that challenge came only when I tried and failed to assign my WMC recorder storage to what I initially thought would be usable, namely the F-drive in Win7-VM which I'd given the F drive-letter to by "map network drive" and pointing to the real F physical drive in the Win10 host machine. In other words I wanted to "record to F:\Recorded TV" same as I do on my real Win7 HTPCs, on a large partition I always create lettered F.

So although I could create drive letter F in Win7-VM on a mapped network location (which was actually mapped to the true F of the Win10 host), WMC wouldn't allow that as a recording location for new recordings because it was a network location and not a local drive location.

That's when I had to learn how to allocate additional "local drives" in VMWare (aside from C, which you always get), placing them wherever you want. I ultimately learned how to allocate my second local drive for Win7-VM through VMWare. I still allocated the space for it on physical Win10 F which I'd originally intended to use for this purpose, but I gave it a drive letter of Z in Win7-VM because I also still wanted to really be able to get at Win10 host F as "F" (mapped network drive F) inside of Win7-VM.

In VMWare, you can access the shared Win10 host drives inside the Win7-VM by "map network drive" since the Win10 host appears as a network PC in "Network" for Windows Explorer to see in Win7-VM, along with all of its shared drives. So you can get to any Win10 host drive that is "shared" in Win7-VM by using "map network drive" method. And I've done that, allowing programs running Win7-VM to see exactly the same D-M drive letters as are assigned in physical Win10 host. This avoids much mental confusion. And I map Win10 C to Win7-VM O (for "other OS", my own conventional drive letter assignment method), to complete the ability to see every Win10 drive while inside Win7-VM.

WMC in Win7-VM accepted Z:\Recorded TV as the target location for new recordings, because it was "local" (like C).

At the same time I'd designated F:\Recorded TV on Win10 F to be my target for NextPVR (running in native Win10) recordings to go, for the Hauppauge QuadHD OTA/ATSC recordings. And I added that folder (on mapped F inside Win7-VM) to the "Videos" library which WMC had playback access to in addition to the primary recording location of Z:\Recorded TV in the "Recorded TV" library.

So now I had it all constructed in an acceptable fashion. WMC in Win7-VM would write its new recordings to Z:\Recorded TV, with the "virtual local drive Z" created by VMWare as a folder placed on Win10 host F. I defined it in VMWare as a 2TB drive, and Win10 host F is large enough to support that potential max capacity. At the same time I had another "real" Win10 host F:\Recorded TV folder located on the same Win10 host F drive (although in reality I could have defined NextPVR's recording output folder anywhere and named it anything). And I added this folder to "Videos" library in Win7-VM, identified as [mapped-]F:\Recorded TV, again desiring to avoid brain confusion.

This allows me to use Win7-VM WMC to (a) play its own Ceton ETH recordings (WTV) made by Win7-VM WMC from Spectrum cable channels to Z:\Recorded TV, which is on a virtual second "local" drive supported by VMWare and actually located on Win10 host F, and (b) play NextPVR Hauppauge QuadHD OTA/ATSC recordings (TS, handled as "videos") made in Win10 host, through extender/HDTV around the house.

DSperber said...

This allows me to use Win7-VM WMC to (a) play its own Ceton ETH recordings (WTV) made by Win7-VM WMC from Spectrum cable channels to Z:\Recorded TV, which is on a virtual second "local" drive supported by VMWare and actually located on Win10 host F, and (b) play NextPVR Hauppauge QuadHD OTA/ATSC recordings (TS, handled as "videos") made in Win10 host, through extender/HDTV around the house.

So you can play W7 VM WMC recorded DRM CopyOnce TV just to EXTENDER(s) or can you also play on VM Host Win 10 machine and its attached local monitor?

AFelectrngineer said:

So you can play W7 VM WMC recorded DRM CopyOnce TV just to EXTENDER(s) or can you also play on VM Host Win 10 machine and its attached local monitor?

Functionality of WMC running in Win7-VM using Ceton ETH tuner (and also in my case, even for SDV channels via DTA) regarding copy-protected DRM content regarding use of local monitor is that it will NOT work (at least under VMWare), for either live or recorded copy-protected content. The driver error about HDCP is what comes out.

As far as unprotected copy-freely content, you can use Win7-VM WMC to play both live and recorded content to the local monitor (even DP, since it's not copy-protected content). However it doesn't appear that the audio/video drivers from VMWare for the virtual graphics/sound are fast enough to really keep up properly. So there is a slight lip-sync issue, even though there definitely is audio/video output to the local monitor. But it's unacceptable.

In contrast, using an extender connected to this Win7-VM WMC performs 100% the way it would perform under real physical Win7 WMC (and I assume as it works with Win8.1 WMC). You can watch anything from the Ceton ETH, both copy-protected and copy-freely channels (e.g. local broadcast networks) no matter whether SDV or not. You can watch live or recorded through the extender/HDTV. There is no lip-sync problem. Everything functions exactly as it does under physical Win7 WMC, including all functionality of the extender itself... which is not surprising since it's being managed by actual Win7 WMC just running inside Win7-VM.

As I've previously explained, the only non-standard complication deals with wanting to also use the Hauppauge QuadHD PCIe tuner card for OTA/ATSC broadcast channels from my roof antenna (I do not want to use Ceton ETH and Spectrum for these channels, even though they are available and even clear-QAM unprotected, because the bitrate from re-compressed Spectrum is inferior to OTA broadcast quality). If I were willing to accept Spectrum's version of the broadcast network channels I wouldn't have to use the Hauppauge at all, and everything would come from Ceton ETH and everything would appear in "Recorded TV" folder.

But since I wanted to use the separate 4-tuners of the Hauppauge QuadHD and receive OTA quality for the broadcast networks, I implemented NextPVR in native Win10 along with the Hauppauge WinTV 8.5 driver-only (I don't use their WinTV app, since I prefer NextPVR). And NextPVR fully supports the QuadHD card. My NextPVR configuration records to [Z170] Win10 host F:\WinTV (ignore what I said yesterday about F:\Recorded TV, that was incorrect). And in Win7-VM WMC I've configured the "videos" Media Library to specify "\\Z170\F\WinTV" (both for local Windows Media Center running in Win7-VM, as well as on the extender which is actually a separate RDP user with its own unique MCXn C:\Users name).

Any OTA recordings by NextPVR (scheduled through its own Guide data populated nightly through my SD subscription) go into F:\WinTV, with each unique program name creating a folder with that program name, and then within that folder are stored the one or more TS files for the individual program recordings of the same name, suitably suffixed with date/time/SxxExx as appropriate. These are accessed by WMC (both locally in Win7-VM as well as through the extender) by browsing through the Pictures + Videos -> Video Library. From there it's just like Explorer, so the initial presentation shows "WinTV". Pressing OK on that shows all of the sub-folders (i.e. all of the program titles, in alphabetical order). Selecting any one of the sub-folders and pressing OK reveals all of the [TS] recordings for that program title. Selecting any one of those recordings shows the date/time and duration. And pressing OK begins the play.

So this is not quite as user-friendly or informative as "Recorded TV" WTV recordings made through the Ceton ETH which shows all the EPG123 Guide data, allows you to present things in different sequences, etc. But at least it is a way to play OTA/ATSC recordings made by NextPVR in native Win10, using WMC. These are not copy-protected TS files, so they actually can be played on the local monitor by WMC. However the audio level is lower than normal for some reason. In contrast, playing them on an extender has normal audio level. I don't know if this is a VMWare issue or what, but it's not important to me since I would use the extender to play ALL content problem-free no matter whether it came from Ceton ETH or from Hauppauge QuadHD.

@ DSperber...
Thank you for the detailed and informative explanation of VM Win 7 with WMC playback of recorded DRM CopyOnce TV.
In short summary:
- Playback of DRM CopyOnce TV recordings by Ceton InfiniTV ETH6 on local VM Host Win10 monitor = NO
- Playback of OTA ATSC recorded TV by HAUPPAUGE WinTV-quadHD TV Tuner on local Win 10 monitor = YES

AFelectrngineer said:

In short summary:
- Playback of DRM CopyOnce TV recordings by Ceton InfiniTV ETH6 on local VM Host Win10 monitor = NO

Correct.

Furthermore, although play of live or recorded unprotected copy-freely content via Ceton ETH is possible via WMC inside of Win7-VM window, there is a lip-sync problem that really makes this unusable.

Bottom line: problem-free play of all Ceton ETH content, either copy-protected or copy-freely, either live or recorded, is only reliably produced via extender.

Playback of OTA ATSC recorded TV by HAUPPAUGE WinTV-quadHD TV Tuner on local Win 10 monitor = YES

If you use NextPVR to play live/recorded OTA/ATSC content, this is 100% normal and supported on local Win10 monitor. This is the way it should be done.

In addition recorded OTA/ATSC content (TS files) from NextPVR can be played by Win7-VM WMC inside the Win7-VM window on the local Win10 monitor, but audio volume is low. No audio problem if these recordings played via WMC extender, browsing "Video Library" (where the NextPVR recording folder has been added to the WMC Media Library for "videos").

But for display on local Win10 monitor, NextPVR really should be used for both live and recorded content from the Hauppauge QuadHD. You should only use WMC in Win7-VM when wanting to play these recordings at an extender/HDTV.

Just wanted to provide an update on the Ceton InfiniTV ETH6 network CableCard tuner on Win10 v2004 for anyone following along...

Windows 10 continues to make changes that I did not initiate. Previously Ceton was found as a "Software Device" and initial Ceton install had to use Ceton Diagnostic Tool, Refresh button to reveal Ceton in Device Manager. Then last week, Ceton was appearing full time in Device Manager. Today (Sep 9, 2020) Ceton is no longer viewable in Device Manager in any fashion, whether using Ceton Diagnostic, Refresh, or not. Ceton has just vanished. Below is a screen shot of Device Manager and Ceton Diagnostic Tool. The mystery deepens...