DVR to Computer, easist way possible

[hardy]

I have a ton of movies on my DVR recorder, and it's right next to my computer so I can easily run a USB cord. Do I need a certain software on my computer to read the DVR box? I have never bothered trying and would like to know.

[Baldrick]

Maybe but we need more information...or is it a noname DVR Recorder or? .

[hardy]

Explorer 8300, it's a standard non HD DVR.

By Scientific Atlanta

"Time Warner Cable DVDR"

[True Colors]

A basic video capture device would be the easiest. Here is the one I use.

http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

This item allows you to pick the recording quality you want. The highest setting is called "DVD." It's not really DVD quality, but they call it that.

Anyway, in order to use that highest level recording and have it come out reasonably well you will need a fairly new computer(dual core processor or better and a decent video card). If you have less computing power than that then you can still do it but the less power you have the lower the quality will be.

Even with a really good computer I would expect some quality loss. But to answer your original question, that would be the easiest, quickest way to do what you are asking.

TC

[hech54]

To me it's fairly obvious to me that Ally68 is hoping that transferring the movies in the box to her computer will be as easy and simple as plugging some sort of cable (USB) from the box to her computer. Sorry Ally68, it is rarely that simple due to copyright laws and restrictions.
Any usb-style port you may be looking at on the back of the box are for added hard drive space - IE "input only".

[jagabo]

If the Explorer 8300's firewire port is active you might be able to capture via that.

http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=593271

[usually_quiet]

The USB port won't be useful for copying recordings. Firewire probably won't be enabled, and based on the posts I have seen, few report complete success capturing from their DVR using it.

Also, while your DVR may support adding an external SATA drive, the recordings it makes are encrypted, and can only be played back using the very same unit that created them. If you wanted to add more storage space for recordings at some point, you could look at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=516559&page=1&pp=30 for a list of drives and enclosures that worked for others.

It is probable that the only way to export your recordings is to is to play them and record them again using something else. One way to get them on a computer is to use the DVR's s-video out with a capture card that has S-video input. If you have a computer that can't handle the load for software encoding, a number of the better TV cards with an S-Video port support hardware encoding, which reduces the burden on the CPU. For example, products with the ATI Theater 650 chip would encode to MPEG-2 using hardware. As another example, the Hauppauge HD-PVR also does hardware encoding, but to H.264.

If you have a DVD recorder, that could work too, if there was no CGMS-A copy protection on the movies. Copying the recorded DVDs to your computer is pretty easy.

[hardy]

What about using something like AVS Capture Wizard? I saw that posted on another forum. Not sure if it was via USB or Firewire.

[usually_quiet]

What about using something like AVS Capture Wizard? I saw that posted on another forum. Not sure if it was via USB or Firewire.

USB is there for attaching a keyboard. There were plans at one point to use DVRs interactively or to access the Internet. They might also be used when the DVR is serviced. They don't output video.

Firewire may output video that could be captured, but the ports are most often disabled. If you are able to use firewire to capture your movies, consider yourself lucky. CapDVHS is the program I've seen mentioned most often for capturing via firewire.

[Edit] I forgot to mention that even if the firewire port is enabled, you won't be able to capture anything with 5C copy protection using firewire. Firewire output will be blocked by the DVR.

[True Colors]

Firewire may output video that could be captured, but the ports are most often disabled.

Do not quote me on this, but....... I have heard that it would be illegal for the cable companies to disable the firewire ports.

Even so, it is NOT a simple matter of hooking the computer to the cable box via firewire. I tried that myself but could not make it work.

"CAPDVHS" is a program which supposedly serves this purpose. Here is a link in case you want to look at it.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/CapDVHS

If you want to pursue that then you will need the CapDVHS software and also the driver for your specific cable box.

I downloaded the driver for my cable box onto my PC and I installed it. However, when I connected my PC to the cable box with a firewire it did not work. The cable box and my PC could not successfully execute the handshake. Perhaps if I upgrade from XP to Vista or W7 then this will work for me..... or maybe not. Who knows.

Anyway...... long story short......

the easiest way to go cable box direct to PC is to use a capture card like the one that I linked above.

TC

[jagabo]

On my Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8240HDC I can't capture live TV from the firewire port. Data is coming through the wire but but it appears to be encrypted. Nothing can make any sense of it. I can capture playback of recorded shows though. I found CapDVHS to be rather unreliable so I use a GraphEdit graph and simply dump the firewire data to a file. The result is an MPEG2 transport stream.

As I understand it, the FCC rules only require local broadcast stations be transmitted via firewere -- and only at standard definition. And from what I've seen, most cable companies seem to ignore this requirement.