At NAB someone asked one of the ATSC folks what would happen if the key is compromised and someone didn't connect a receiver to the Internet. The answer was "the receivers have many built in public keys. They should last the lifetime of the device."
Concerning because they could have a situation like with some 4K blu ray discs, your hardware becomes obsolete because DRM requires that cat and mouse game...
Also with some manufacturers believing the lifetime of a device should be less than 5 years and ideally less than 3 years, and are treating software/firmware support in those lifetimes, there's a lot of perverse incentives hidden behind anyone suggesting "for the lifetime of the device". As bad as some of the old cable monopolies were, they were at least sometimes held to Ma Bell's "the lifetime of a device is supposed to be 60 years" standards (which Ma Bell didn't always follow either, but that's another matter). I realize the ATSC exists primarily to sell new standards, but maybe we need ways to get back to longer planning horizons than 3-5 years.
But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free?
It would be a different story if the DRM were available ubiquitously, e.g. in the way that arguably Widevine is for online streaming (but certainly not broadcast TV). Are rightholders that afraid of unauthorized out-of-market rebroadcasts that they'd rather obliterate their reachable market with stunts like that?
> But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free?
This should be a big clue that the spying is the point, and all the DRMs of the world are justification for spying instead of the other way around. Total Information Awareness is the path to completing the Great Work.
Yeah, if I squint and think back to the reasoning from previous generations of tech like this it’s that they don’t want people to be able to make bit-perfect recordings to save and share. By putting DRM on the broadcast stream they’re trying to make sure that it’s only usable as a one-time broadcast.
>When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1.
Has this actually happened? Especially for "appliances" like set-top boxes or blu-ray players, as opposed to something like a tablet which are presumably easier to hack.
Yes, it happens all the time, especially as the devices age.
L1 devices remotely downgrade to become L3 devices. This has different effects depending on content provided from "totally unavailable" to "lower resolution".
I'm not sure if it's confirmed, but it's believed Level 1 video output contains a watermarking scheme that ties the key to the media, so if it's leaked they can disable the key that leaked the content.
You can search around and find tons of angry consumers shouting into the void about widevine errors on older consumer devices.
There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android.
There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine".
When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1.
I think people should just be aware of the state of play.