can Tivo or Replay export the movie file to pc?

[dumpav]

are there any PVR can export video file to a pc?

[The village idiot]

I can't speak from experience, but I thought I read something about a new series of TIVO that will have ethernet connection for the purpose of sending the mpeg out to other devices. I think Replay also now has units that will allow you to do this. Google would be a good choice

[DVDDave]

you can output to a capture device. i use the dazzle dvc 80. it works pretty good.

[andkiich]

The ethernet/USb conection is to send the video to other TIVO devices.

You can "dump" the video files from a TIVO, BUT!

1) It requires hacking the TIVO, which if done wrong will cause problems with the TIVO server and they will cancel your services with prejudice.
2) The MPEG files the TIVO creates are not DVD or VCD compliant. You would have to re-encode them.

It's probably just better to capture them with a cap card or stand alone DVD recorder.

[furdog]

Replay can share with your PC.

dvArchive makes your PC appear as another Replay unit, and can share the files to/from (and watch to/from) either direction. Freeware. Good Program. I use it with 5040, but should work with the 4xxx and 5xxx series (they have a built in ethernet port & are configured for sharing). No Modification to the Replay unit is required.

Is a good PVR, good schedule (downside - must subscribe monthly or have lefetime subscription to use it even for manual recording). Other downside of the 5040 was the fan always runs and is louder than I would like. (mixed reports from users).

Good Quality recordings. But get Womble MPEG2VCR to edit the MPEG2 quickly and to fix the Audio PTS markers (otherwise will have sync issues with some software). Editing out the commercials is fast, and fixes the Audio PTS on save, or can use GOP fix feature to do it without the edit.

Highly recommended, I bought unit after reading about it here. I upgraded the hard drive (easy to do - instructions on net), but with DV Archive can automatically schedule downloads so you can build as large a library as you want.

Files are DVD ready MPEG2 (Medium quality, the high quality can exceed the bitrate specs for DVD).

SourceForge: DVArchive allows you to turn your PC into a "Virtual ReplayTV" that can download shows and serve them back up to your ReplayTVs as well as automated schedules and the like. This project is moving to a new home at http://www.dvarchive.org.

[disturbed1]

The Replay is the better choice if your wanting to rip the recordings to your PC.

All Tivos can be hacked. The older Tivos have a port for an ethernet card to interface with your network. The newer ones have USB ports that can use ethernet adapters, and even wireless. The newer Direct TiVo's don't have the USB ports activated.

You have to remove your hard drive and add software to the drive itself. It is easy to corrupt the drive though. If you hook it up to a machine running XP or 2000, you'll ruin the software installed. 2000 and XP attach a boot signature to every drive attached. This ruins the boot sector on the TiVo hard drive. Either fix the software or buy a new drive.

Since TiVo is run by Linux, you can attach the drive to a linux machine and mount the partitions to extract the mpegs that way. But if you're using an i386 distro you'll need to have MIPs support compiled into the kernel, and the drive may or may not be byte swapped, and the files could have a form of DRM.

So unless your feeling upto hacking, just use your capture card. But the TiVo stream from Direct TV is usually 480x480 with an ac3 audio stream.


Here's two great forums dealing with TiVo.
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/index.php
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/

[ipgpe13]

Replay TV networks easily through its ethernet port. I have my PC, my GF's Mac and our ReplayTV all networked. We both record and download shows daily.

For archiving, I record in highest quality mpg2 on the replay, download using DVArchive, then I convert the mpg2 on my pc to a more compatable mpg2 using a freeware program called rtvtools. I can then edit and work with the new mpg2 in TMPGEnc Plus and TMPGEnc DVD Author.