I know nothing in this arena. I might have to trade in my DVR soon when I move to another apt, and I've got some really great stuff on the DVR that I don't wanna lose. (for example, ex-gf on Elimidate).

I'm sure there are a few methods, but whats the easiest way to transfer a program from a DVR to a computer?

Someone help me please

7/18/2006 1:24:42 PM

you cant transfer the data directly from the DVR to your computer, unless you have an actual TIVO (I think there's a hack to do TIVO at least)

You'll need to buy a TV-tuner card of some sort and just hook up the DVR to the tuner card, and record it on your computer while playing it on the DVR. I dont know of any other reasonable way without risking destroying the DVR. Its not possible to get any useful data off the Scientific Atlanta DVR boxes from TWC, I've already thought of trying this.

This'll do it for you: http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr150.html, it can be had online for ~$80ish

7/18/2006 1:32:08 PM

son of a bitch

thanks brian!

7/18/2006 1:33:04 PM

You shouldn't need any hacks with Tivo if you've got a wireless network and can download the Tivo to Go software from their website.

7/18/2006 3:33:29 PM

he doesnt have TIVO though, i'd bet he's got a SA box from his local cable company

I assumed with the Tivo it was a 'hack', but I know it cant currently be done with the SA DVR boxes

[Edited on July 18, 2006 at 3:49 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2006 3:48:51 PM

I have a motorola HD PVR (sorry don't know model # off the top of my head) leased from Comcast and it has a firewire port that outputs whatever the cablebox is displaying. With the proper drivers (see google or avsforum.com) my computer recognizes my cable box as a digital video camera. Using some software (again sorry for being so generic, all this stuff is on my laptop and i'm using my desktop now) I can digitally record content from the DVR to my laptop hard drive. The only downside is that I can't just transfer the videos off the DVR, actually have to go into the menu and hit play and watch the whole show. The other downside is that an hour of HD content is about 4.2GB.

http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/

[Edited on July 18, 2006 at 6:20 PM. Reason : a link to get you started]

7/18/2006 6:17:11 PM

Couldn't you load a video editing program on your computer (premier?) and just use it to encode the cable box input? If it shows up as a camcorder and it appears to be in a VTC mode you should be able to dump it into that...would be a huge pain in the ass though.

7/18/2006 6:57:43 PM

I'm sure any program that can record video from a digital camcorder would work. I use CAPDVHS because it is free and does a good job capturing the HD video and dobly digital sound coming in over the firewire without bogging down the computer. VLC would work too but I wouldn't try to transcode the stream on the fly

7/18/2006 10:28:20 PM

Okay, I had a chance to look at the DVR box tonight. Its a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 and it has what I think is a USB port on the front. So I think this might work.

Oh, its not an HD box either.

7/18/2006 11:17:25 PM

unless your cable company's software on the SA 8000 box has the ports enabled, you're out of luck. I've got the same one and TWC's software on the box (I think its Passport) has all the ports disabled

7/19/2006 12:09:43 AM

Oh, son of a bitch.

Well the good news is that the cable company is letting us transfer our account to the new place (makes sense) so I don't have to turn the box in

7/19/2006 1:06:42 PM