Foxtel Download Service (Round 5: One step forward, two steps back…)

It appears the Foxtel have modified their installer.

Now, when installing the DCService, you are prompted for a user id and password. Unfortunatly, this does not appear to be your Foxtel login, so the only conclusion I can draw is that it is either an arbitrary string hardcoded in the Foxtel Download Manager installer, or generated when you install, based on your machine certificate (which is also used for DRM key generation.)

I’ve been having a look into this this evening, but it appears that the server handling these requests is unwell (it seems to be throwing MSSQL errors.) As a result I haven’t yet had a chance to confirm my suspicions. I am hoping that it is the former, as if it is a string generated based on the client’s machine certificate it will be much harder to work around.

Edit: I was incorrect here. It seems that the installer only prompts for a user ID / password when running on certain systems and not others. For instance, if I start the installer under Windows XP, I don’t get this prompt. If I use Windows 7 x64 (build 7600) I do get prompted for this information.

I’ll keep you all posted

Foxtel Download Service (Round 4: Touchdown!)

We’ve got some progress!

Foxtel Download Manager is now working with Windows 7 64-bit,you have to do things a bit differently however. I’ve attached a video to this post which explains how to get this working. You’ll need the .zip package from here in order to get it working (I’ve already virus checked it, however, I recommend you do the same before running anything as the files are coming from a third-party upload site.)

The zip file contains a few HTML documents used to generate the GreaseMonkey scripts for you. I did it this way for two reasons, the first being that you are not sending your information over the Internet in order to generate the GreaseMonkey scripts, and that there is no web-presence required (except for Foxtel, of course.) Feel free to look over the code if you are paranoid about it doing something it shouldn’t.

I recommend clicking the HD option and watching this video full screen.

Foxtel Download Service (Round 3: Overtime)

The Foxtel Download Manager seems to have two parts, as we’ve discussed previously. Once again, the information below is mostly based on going over the software myself, so it may be completely and utterly incorrect

NOTE: ONCE AGAIN, USAGE OF THIS INFORMATION IN ORDER TO DOWNLOAD CONTENT TO WHICH YOU DO NOT HAVE  A LICENSE IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN.

• The first of these parts is the Silverlight application which you are presented with when you download content (or not as the case maybe.) This application is only that, a web application running on your desktop, this application appears to be relatively ”dumb”, all of the hard work is off loaded to the second part of the download manager.
• The second part is the Entriq Download Control Service application (DCService.exe), this appears to be a fairly stock copy of software which I’d only assume that Entriq sell as part of their online media delivery service.

This latter seems to have very little customization, and what appears to be possibly an example application was also distributed with the Foxtel Download Manager. This application doesn’t seem to do much, it just sits in the system tray and has a VERY basic GUI. Unfortunately, this tray application doesn’t seem to be able to control the main DCService and well, doesn’t appear to do very much on the surface, though I may be wrong. Either way, this application can be invoked by opening a command prompt and typing the following (assuming you have the Foxtel Download Manager installed):

cd "C:\Program Files\FOXTEL\Download Player\Download Control\DCBin"
DCTrayApp.exe /start /AccountID:Foxtel

An application will then appear in your system tray, if you click on the icon it’ll pop up a little Entriq branded interface. Pretty basic, eh?

The client / server model of the Foxtel Download Server application is the reason that you can download media from the Foxtel website without having the Download Manager open on your desktop, the DCService application starts on boot and binds to a TCP port (as discussed in the previous post) allowing it to run as along as your PC is turned on.

The point of all of this and the good news is, this application seems to run alright under 64-bit version of windows (again, unfortunately, no love for Linux and OS X users yet.) This means, with a Greasemonkey script we should be able to allow 64-bit users to download files before Foxtel release a client for 64-bit operating systems (if they ever do.)

I’ll get started on this and post my status when I feel I have something that works, or if I fail completely :)

Foxtel Download Service (Round 2: FIGHT!)

I am currently working on “Round 2″ of attempting to improve the compatibility of the Foxtel Download service.

NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS NOT INTENDED TO FACILITATE ANY FORM OF COPYRIGHT THEFT. PERIOD. USAGE OF THIS INFORMATION IN ORDER TO DOWNLOAD CONTENT TO WHICH YOU DO NOT HAVE  A LICENSE IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN.

Now that media can be downloaded, using the GreaseMonkey script linked to in my previous post, the media must be authorized (due to DRM.) The information below is currently what I have worked out so far. Based on this information, it should be rather trivial to write a quick script to perform all of the interactions below and generate an authorization key to playback downloaded content. However, there are still some issues which I need to iron out.

Currently, the Foxtel Download System is using the Entriq Media Authorization Network to authorize content and allow playback. Interestingly enough, Entriq is owned by Irdeto, the company previously employed for the Foxtel satellite encryption systems. There is a press release on the Irdeto website covering this Foxtel service agreement

PLEASE NOTE: The following is simply speculation as to how the system may work internally, based on the traffic flow between the Foxtel Download Service application servers and your PC.

Currently, when you click on a ‘Download’ link on the Foxtel Download Service website a HTTP GET is sent to a “payment processing” page (this page is the black kicker page observed when downloading content.) As these downloads are not billed (except for in the case of BoxOffice and Pay-Per View programming) this page appears to be just used as an authorization handler. I speculate that this page is used to check if the user has a current authentication session and whether the requested content is “free” or not. Most importantly this page is what seems to be generating the download tokens, which is required to authorize the downloaded content for playback.

Once the download has been ‘paid for’ the kicker page appears to then send a HTTP GET to localhost, which is picked up by a service which the Foxtel Download Manager installs on your PC. This service, DCService.exe, is installed along with the Foxtel Download Service application, which binds to localhost, TCP port 24735. This is the interaction which adds the selected download into the Foxtel Download Manager queue (within the Silverlight desktop application.) All information, including HTTP source, filename, rating, episode numbers and even advertising data is sent is sent to the client during this process. This interaction is performed using client-side javascript; the method which is used can be freely downloaded from Tagneto (the filename is DSR.js)

From here, the Foxtel Download Manager can now download the data, which is grabbed from Akamai using a simple HTTP transaction.

This is where the fun starts, the video must now be authorized for use, which is where DRM comes into play.

The Foxtel Download Manager now POSTs some data to the Foxtel Entriq web service. This request contains the ticket from the previous request, a session id, user id, and most importantly an XML file containing the user’s machine certificate and version information, which is required to generate the authorization to playback the file. Going on the format of the request it looks like Entriq/Irdeto/Foxtel are using Microsoft Windows Media Rights Manager (WMRM) in order to authorize the playback of files.

For now, this is where the journey ends. I will have to do some further research as WMRM most likely creates this information using a proprietary system, in which case, Foxtel are not to blame for the incompatibility of the download manager, the DRM system is. There may be alternatives to generate these “certificates” on other operating systems, however at this stage I am unsure.

I shall post an update once I have worked this out, until then goodbye

Foxtel Download Service

Let me start off by saying that the Foxtel Download Service is great. To me, it is another sign that the entertainment industry are opening their eyes and realizing that the Internet is a very viable, and profitable, distribution medium for their materials. People may say that “illegal downloading is hurting the industry” and this may be correct, however, I personally believe that the current piracy dilemmas to be caused, partly, by the entertainment industry themselves. The old methods of content delivery, such as VHS / DVD rental or purchase, are now things of the past. If more content were available for immediate download after payment, then the instances of these infringements would surely drop in numbers.

There will always be those who want everything for free, however, I dare say the majority of customers will have no qualms with paying a few dollars for something which will entertain them for a couple of hours.

Now, the Foxtel Download Service, to me, does have a few critical flaws.

1) The system forces customers to use a proprietary download system based on Microsoft’s Silverlight.

This may not be an issue for the majority of users, however, if you run a 64-Bit operating system, OS X or Linux, you’re out of luck and this is just plain wrong. I personally run a 64-bit operating system, as well as many different “flavors” of Linux. When I first downloaded the Foxtel Download Manager I was presented with a nice error which may have well have said “Too bad buddy, you can’t use this software, I don’t understand 64-bit systems.”

2) DRM

I’m not even going to bother going into this here. The pros and cons of DRM have been exhausted, if you need some examples, just click here

I’ve written a quick Greasemonkey script to help to alleviate the issues with the former. The DRM technology is something that will probably not go away any time soon, which is unfortunate from a compatibility standpoint, however we cannot do much about this right now. To use this script, you will need to install Greasemonkey, and if you haven’t already, Firefox

This script re-writes the download URLs on the Foxtel Download website. The small downward facing arrows, next to the content, rather than linking into a sign in page and then to the Silverlight application, now link directly to the WMV data on Akamai. This allows for easier downloading, the use of a download manager of your choosing, and of course, “liberation” from Silverlight

NOTE: THIS SCRIPT IS NOT INTENDED TO FACILITATE ANY FORM OF COPYRIGHT THEFT. PERIOD. THE USE OF THIS SCRIPT TO DOWNLOAD CONTENT TO WHICH YOU DO NOT HAVE  A LICENSE IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN.

You can download the script from UserScripts.Org by clicking here

To use, simply install, and then browse to http://www.foxtel.com.au/download/ and click on the orange download icon next to the program which you want to download.

Please Note: This will only generate the download URLs for the WMV files. Those files still use DRM to verify their authenticity, currently the license for the file is requested during the transaction from foxtel.man.entriq.net. I am currently working on a way of allowing certificate generation from outside of the Foxtel Download Manager, again this is only for Foxtel subscribers as it looks like the authentication to verify the authenticity of the end user is based on the Foxtel Download website login username.