Vista Media Center and Broadcast Flags

I recorded the 1976 version of "Carrie" on and the 1999 film "The Ninth Gate" from American Movie Classics on my Windows Vista Home Premium Media Center using a standard Hauppauge WinTV PVR150MCE card and analog cable from Cox Communications.

Here's the result I got from both:

RESTRICTED CONTENT. Restrictions set by the broadcaster or originator of this content prohibit playback of this program on this computer. The funny thing is that it still took up all the hard drive space it would normally take to record the program.

To be clear, I don't mind a little DRM. Two of my favorite shows, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, are flagged against copy protection. This means I cannot copy them off to DVDs. I can accept that. I still get to watch them whenever I want. That's the point of a PVR, after all. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

This is not only annoying, but could spell disaster for Windows Media Center (or any third-party or homebrew PVR owner) because cable companies could suddenly tag ALL their content with these Broadcast Flags so that the only PVRs permitted to watch them are the ones sold by the cable company.

This is plain old analog cable, too. Already, I know that I am doomed to never high-def CableCard 2.0 in my Media Center when those tuners finally come out. Why? CableLABS refuses to allow CableCARD 2.0 media centers to work without their approval, as reported by Engadget.

I really hope that subscription based, on-demand, time-shifted and place-shifted entertainment comes soon.