Capturing from DVR box

[kubrick74]

Hi all, Newbie here.....

I have a DVR box from Time Warner cable in NYC (Explorer 8300). It has audio/video out via RCA cables, however, there's no equivalent audio/video in into my Mac G4.

Do i need to buy some kind of TV/Video/capture card in order to utilize this and get a show into my hard drive ?

Or, without buying something like EyeTV, is there another way to do this for a Mac user?

thanks all.

[Frobozz]

What you need is an analog-to-digital converter. Most DV camcorders can perform this function. The Canopus and Miglia capture devices are also highly regarded. EyeTV is yet another choice. You also might consider a standalone DVD recorder.

What do you want the end result to be? Are you wanting to make DVDs from TV shows or are you just wanting to watch TV on your Mac?

[kubrick74]

Thanks Frobozz...

The end result is to take shows captured on DVR box and put on to DVD. Finally having a little bit of success at it.

I have a used DV camcorder before to output a show onto DV-mini tape.
Is this the method you are referring to with a DV camcorder ?
Outputting to tape works ok, but I am trying to learn other, faster and more direct ways.

Yes, EyeTV and DVD recorders can be an option for me, but I am trying to learn to use the tools at my disposal without spending hundreds of dollars.

I will check out these Canopus and Miglia cards. Any idea what they cost, or info ?

thanks for the quick and courteous response.

[Frobozz]

Does the Explorer 8300 have a Firewire port on the back? If so you probably can use it to transfer the MPEG 2 streams from the box to your Mac's hard drive. I can do this with my Motorola 6412/Comcast DVR. What you need at the Mac end is Apple's free FirewireSDK20 kit that includes AVC Browser and VirtualDVHS. These enable the Mac to capture in real time whatever is playing from your DVR, with one big exception. If TimeWarner is blocking export of some channels then you only can capture the unblocked channels. In my case, I can capture any of the analog channels as well as the Network HD channels. However, all the SD digital channels are blocked as well as any of the non-network HD channels. Bummer.

Back to the DV camcorder. Some cameras can do the analog to digital pass through to your Mac without first recording it to DV tape. In that mode they work very much like the Canopus ADVC. Some applications that can work with this capturing are iMovie, Vidi, DVHSCap (part of FirewireSDK20) and the Final Cut series.

I used a Canopus ADVC-55 for awhile and loved it. But I sold it after getting a Pioneer standalone DVD recorder with hard drive.

I recommend getting Toast 7 for encoding/authoring video DVDs on a Mac. iDVD has cool menus but doesn't encode AC-3 audio which is needed to get the best video bit rate for DVDs longer than 1 hour in length. Toast 7 is a better choice for most purposes in my opinion. It also can use the MPEGs captured via the Firewire link that I described without re-encoding the video.