D-VHS Deck and Cable Box, Plus HDV

[braxus]

I have a Motorola DCX 3200 cable box and a JVC HM-DT100 D-VHS deck. Whenever I try to record off my cable box via firewire, the picture breaks up in both SD and HD channels. I tried different tapes to rule out a bad tape, plus made sure the heads were clean. It records fine on SD from analog inputs as well as SD video from mini dv. Yet for some reason I can't get decent video from the cable box, nor from my HDV mini dv tapes. Is D-VHS compatible with HDV? My camera is a Sony HC5. I have looked into getting an older Motorola DCT 6200 in case my current cable box has a flaky firewire output. I'd like to start using D-VHS for what is was meant for- archiving digital material, but can't seem to get it to work with half of what I have.

Also would a HM-DH40000 produce picture on par with my JVC HR-S9800 deck for VHS and S-VHS with the digipure technology? Or would I be better using the D-VHS deck to pass through video and connect my 9800 to the D-VHS deck to send to my computer? Also if capturing the Mpeg 2 signal off the D-VHS deck to computer, would I be able to use Adobe Premiere Elements 10 for this? Firewire would also be used to the computer.

[jagabo]

Hollywood goes to great extents to keep you from archiving digital HD material. And the cable company isn't particularly interested in help you out, they'd rather you rent an HD DVR from them. So it's likely the HD firewire output from the cable box isn't working correctly or the data is encrypted. Try recording your local PBS channel -- that's least likely to be encrypted. Also try recording from the component connection.