New DRM in Cox OC land?

We (in Orange County) previously received a notice that "Effective on or after 12/3/2020, we're making it easier to watch the channels you love.  We are removing the duplicate HD channels on 1000-1950.  You can still enjoy the programming previously on these channels by tuning into the lower 2 or 3-digit corresponding channel number."

So while my tuner is detecting the new 2 and 3-digit channels (in addition to the 1000+ channels that still appear to be there), all of them, except for locals, are now DRM'd (where they weren't before).  Please on behalf of those of us who are attempting to keep our costs down by running third-party tuners, un-DRM them (at least the 'basic' cable channels). Thank you.

My 10xx channels haven’t been removed from my lineup yet, but I’m having the same issue with all non-local broadcast channels being marked with the CCI protection CopyOnce byte.

Now all of my channels have the same DRM tag in the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime channel line up after running a new scan. I  watched the DRM tag appear one by one as it scanned for channels... something appears to have changed at the headend in the Omaha market as well.

Allan, it looks like this problem has been verified by several Cox users, and now it appears that it has been resolved.

Is there any way that you could give us some actual verified-by-Cox information about what they did and why?  This kind of thing costs each of us users many, many hours of troubleshooting and talking to Cox representatives that, frankly, don't know much.  Even the level 2 and level 3 support people didn't have a clue what was going on.

Even if us customers are kept in the dark, it would be useful to educate your support staff.  Imagine how much time could have been saved if THEY actually had a clue as to what was going on.

Things are back to normal for me too.  welp tfjield, they did send out that email in December.  So you should have been preparing this whole time. 

Actually, I didn't receive that email.  I just checked again in case I missed it.  Where are you located?  I'm in Mission Viejo.  Maybe it's not for all of the OC?

Anyway, I had seen mention of it here and I checked.  I could see channel 1987 throughout this whole fiasco.

It's funny, this isn't the first time this happened.  Many years ago, maybe in 2011 or so, DRM was applied to all the channels, but then a few days later went back to the way it was.  This was in Irvine.  Never heard any explanation from Cox back then, either.

Yeah my HDHomeRun stopped too.  Does anyone know if this is becauseCox Switched to ATSC3.0?

siliconDust sells a new ATSC3.0 tuner for 199.00 if they did.

Also in Omaha and also using Plex and SD HDHRP. 

and for you guys who are not familiar with ATSC3.0, it will allow have 4k and 8k pictures, HDR, wide color gamut, and all of the high end audio formats.  Crosses fingers thats why the old legacy stuff is being decommissioned...

I would be shocked if Cox was implementing ATSC 3.0 this early.  I have two separate tuners (different brands), one that is DRM capable is still working fine, but the SD HDHomeRun Prime is not, so I'm 99% sure its due to the tagging of the channels as DRM.  Only question is whether a tech at Cox will know anything about it, or can do anything about it.

after some googling, you are right and probably not atsc3.  Other cable companies have done this to their customers.  I guess for now I can return the old junky hardware and save $5 a month and then just use the internet contour streaming app to watch tv on the computer.

Please share whether you have any success.  It looks like Cox changing more channels to DRM has been a thing in the past in other markets and it doesn't really sound like the customers ended up happy.  Hopefully there's more than the canned response "as part of our agreements with the content providers..."

I'm in the same boat. No one at Cox (4 different calls to techs  in 2 days) knew anything about what I was talking about. The last tech (very patient and helpful) told me I knew more than he and other techs did about cable cards.

So now I can only record locals and nothing else. I sure hope this isn't a  money grab so that Cox is hoping we'll get more services and extenders because I already have phone, internet, Contour TV and 2 cable cards and I'm not buying anything else.  In fact, I just may cut the chord completely and go to streaming. 
Finally, weeks ago I got an email discussing checking to see if my cable card devices support mpeg-4 (no longer have the email so I'm going on memory) but nothing was mentioned that I would lose recording capabilities.  C'mon Cox, make this right.  It's been working for many, many years and this is simply wrong!

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It was not related to the MPEG4 conversion. Omaha's market was into phase 3 of this when this occurred. 

Same. I fired up my old Windows Media Center computer and confirmed. The CopyOnce flags as set will only work with TiVo and WMC. This needs to be fixed and reverted back ASAP. You would think Cox would want to retain us as customers...