From a technical perspective, I imagine it’s a lot easier to allow the codecs to do their thing and just capture the output, instead of trying to convert yourself. This way, you can also capture a wider set of source material so long as you have the appropriate codec installed.

You guys alluded to the legal reason in the show – the DMCA makes it unlawful to circumvent copy protection. If you had to use something like DeCSS, then of course your product is illegal. I’m not sure how they are doing this from a technical perspective, but if you just record the unencrypted stream, you can make a pretty reasonable argument that you’re not really attacking the TPM.

But again, I’m not familiar with the specific product – I’m just imagine reasons why *I* would write software that works that way.