for people with digital cable box with hdd and dvd recorder

[kenshin himura]

can you record something off your cable box hard drive with your dvd recorder?

[anubis13]

Are you referring to a digital cable box with DVR capabilities and a DVD Burner in your PC or DVD burner built into the cable box itself?

[Frobozz]

I record programs from my Comcast DVR to my Pioneer DVD recorder all the time. Is that what your mean?

[kenshin himura]

i have a toshiba xs32, and im thinking bout gettin a cablevision dvr. i want to record the shows from the dvr with my toshiba. from frobuzz's answer i guess it can be done. just wondering if its easy to do, or do i have to do it a certain way?

[anubis13]

http://www.extramovie.com/ultimate-electronics/2p/Toshiba-RD-XS32-DVD-Player.htm

This is an absolutely great DVD Recorder. Picture quality is very good. You can record programs onto the hard drive, edit out the commercials, create custom thumbnails and titles, even customize your menu screen, and with a 4x
DVD-R burn a DVD in 15 minutes.

I use S-Video from my DVR to a Canopus card. I imagine it would work quite well from your DVR to the toshiba

[kburton]

Frobozz,
When you record from your Comcast DVR to your DVD recorder do you just use the analog RCA jacks on both units or is there a way to do it digitally?

Also, my Comcast DVR box is a Motorola (I presume most are) that is just loaded with connection options i.e. USB, FireWire, HDMI. Do you know if all of these connections are "hot" or software-disabled and intended for future use?

[Frobozz]

You need to use the analog connections to copy from the DVR to your DVD recorder. I can record live what the DVR is tuned to or record whatever I'm playing back from the DVR. Make sure you don't press any of the DVR's menu buttons while you're copying to the DVD recorder because those will get recorded too (unless you're playing an HD channel or program).

The Firewire port is live. I have software on my Mac that will copy from the hard drive in real time the MPEGs recorded by the Comcast DVR. This is not worth the effort because only the analog channels are recorded in a video DVD spec. Re-encoding is necessary with any other channel recordings.

[kburton]

Thanks!

I'm in the market for a DVD recorder and I've been wrestling with the logistics of "should I pick up a capture card for my PC and hook up the DVR there or get a DVD recorder and keep the DVR where I actually watch TV?" After extensive reading of this awesome site, I think a set-top DVD recorder is the way to go.

[fingernailX]

Yes, you should be able to record for now. I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD box and record to my pc thru a Canopus ADVC box using the s-video conection. Depending on the cable box firmware and whatever the future brings it is possible in the future that a broadcast flag in the HDTV signal will turn on Macrovision analog copy protection in both the S-video and analog component outs of the box making recording with a settop dvd recorder challenging if it respects the Macrovision protection. To my knowledge no one is doing this now but Hollywood's paranoia over controlling the content has no boundaries and the cable/satellite companies are going to comply with their wishes.

BTW - Depending on your hd cable box, your cable provider and the firmware/software loaded on the box you may be able to hook your settop box to your firewire connection and record unencrypted channels directly to your harddrive as a copy of the full ATSC stream. The avsforum has a great deal of information on this but it unfortunately does not work on my settop box. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=2d20ce01d90f1ad49390e86d29a38657&threadid=403695

Additionally there is a SATA external port on my cablebox/dvr combo. People have gotten their own external drive and been successful in getting the DVR to record to it. However, when that drive is then connected to a PC it is unreadable as the format of the external harddrive is encrypted to a key only on the settop box.