Copy Control Information (CCI) is a two byte flag included in

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

streams that allows content owners and cable operators to specify how content can be duplicated. Originally defined as part of the 5C copy protection specification devised by DTCP working group back in 1998, it was later defined as part of the FCCs Plug and Play agreement in 2003. The two most used flags used are Copy Freely and Copy Once. Copy Freely is essentially no flag at all, while Copy Once means that a DVR can make one copy, but no more copies can be made. DVR platforms such as

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

and

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate e ...

are responsible for reading the flag, decrypting the stream if necessary and storing the content in a way that enforces the flag set. A show that is marked Copy Once cannot be transferred to another TiVo via the Multi-Room Viewing feature and can not be transferred to the computer via TiVoToGo. In regard to Windows Media Center, shows marked Copy Once can only be played on the same PC in which they were recorded and the directly connected Extenders for Media Center like the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

—ATI Digital Cable Tuner must be running firmware 1.19.12 or Copy Freely is treated like Copy Once. The following flags exist: *0x00 - Copy freely - Content is not copy protected. *0x01 - Copy No More - A copy of the content has already occurred and no more copies are permitted.† *0x02 - Copy Once - One recording can be made, but it cannot be copied to another device.† *0x03 - Copy Never - the content can be recorded and viewed for 90 minutes after transmission, and is not transferable.† *0x04 - Content is Copy Once for digital output, but would have Macrovision 7 Day Unlimited restriction applied on the analog outputs. This affects content viewed either on an HDTV with component cabling or on a standard definition TV. It also affects content saved to VCR or DVD when the recorder is connected to an analog output on the DVR.† *0x07 - Content is Copy Never for digital content (deleted after 90 minutes) and Macrovision 7 day/24 hour for content recorded from analog channels. Content cannot be transferred via TiVoToGo transfers or MRV, and cannot be saved to VCR or DVD.† † - Any live stream with a CCI flag set higher than 0x00 is to be encrypted or protected in a way that only trusted platforms that will obey the flag (Such as Microsoft's

PlayReady PlayReady is a media file copy prevention technology from Microsoft that includes encryption, output prevention and digital rights management (DRM). It was announced in February 2007. Technological Differences The main differences relative to ...

system used in Windows Media center) can access it. The application of the CCI flag was specified on page 30 of the FCC Plug and Play agreement. In the order, it is specified that over-the-air broadcast

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

channels must be set to be Copy Freely and that non-premium subscription programming can be set to either Copy Once or Copy Freely. This is determined by the

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

provider and can vary from one market to the next (even if both markets are served by the same company). Some operators tend to set all programs as Copy Once, preventing further distribution after a single PVR recording, and others tend to set all programs as Copy Freely.

References

Digital television {{tv-tech-stub

See also

References