Posted by bill_nielsen_99 on 11/01/05 01:12

Thanks for all who responded.

The problem happens with recording HBO/Cinemax from digital cable, but
not the other premium services (e.g., Starz, Showtime or standard cable
channels). HBO has a CGMS-A FAQ
(http://www.hbo.com/corpinfo/cgmsafaq.shtml/) that indicates that they
now encode their signals with CGMS-A copy protection. For linear
(scheduled) programming" they allow Copy Once. I used disks formatted
for DVD-RW VR, which is the only recording format that supposedly
supports Copy Once, but this didn't work. Unfortunately, my Sony is
treating HBO/Cinemax signals as Copy Never and I can't make the one
copy that I am entitled to make.

Neither Sony or Cox tech support had any suggestions that helped
recording directly to DVD. Cox suggested copying first to VHS (which
does work OK) then dubbing VHS to DVD. This wasn't the solution I was
looking for as I would see a noticable degradation in quality.

Bill

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