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General discussion

DVR to PC Question

Apr 27, 2004 11:44PM PDT

How do you connect a TV set top DVR box from a satillite company to a PC? This is my situation and idea:
I just recently got Satellite TV, and got a DVR box with it, a Dish Network DP Plus 522 system. I can only get 100 hours of recording time on this system, but I'd like to connect a PC to it to pull the reocorded shows off and burn to DVD or keep on my Hard Drive to view later. My TV does not have S-Video ports, but the DVR does... I was told plug an S-Video cable into my PC and into the DVR to pull the shows off, but I heard from someone else that the S-Video is only a display cable like a VGA cable for displaying only and would not work for data transfer.. My TV also does not have a Red White and Yellow Video/Audio ports, just 1 port for a Coaxil cable. The DVR has the R/W/Y Video/Audio ports.

Not sure what else I need to say other than that what I know.. But this is my Idea... put the PC in between the two, the TV and the DVR.. have the DVR connected to the PC to pull the shows off at any time and the PC linked into the TV to have the TV show what the Satellite brings in.. can't disconnect the DVR from the satellite cables cause the box is also a switch to receive from the satellite and send off to the TV's... any ideas?

-Richard

Discussion is locked

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Re:DVR to PC Question
Apr 28, 2004 1:08AM PDT

Yes, to put that stuff on the harddrive, you do need a capturing device but can your computer hardware/s (fast enough and plenty of spare space)? It may not be worth it.
Have you try recording it with a vcr or can it be done? I would think that's the simplest method.

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Re:Re:DVR to PC Question
Apr 28, 2004 2:32AM PDT

I do have a pretty fast system, an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 512MB of DDR RAM, and a 120GB HDD, 40GB HDD, and a 30GB HDD. I've heard of a TV Capture Card, but can that pull already saved items off the DVR's HDD?

I'd rather not record everything over to VHS, but I know if I got a Capture Card, I might be able to record saved shows to VHS, then rig the capture card up some how to pull the now taped show off and throw it on the Computer... however I'm sure there will be a Quality Loss issue I'd like to avoid if I can go in 1 step from DVR's HDD to my computer's storage instead.

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Re:Re:Re:DVR to PC Question
Apr 28, 2004 3:45AM PDT

It would be nice if you can dump everything from the DVR HDD to you computer but since the only output connections are s-video and composite video (Y/wht/red); it really doesn't leave you a lot of choices. I might also add; converting analog video to dvd is VERY time consumming.

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Composite & S-Video
Apr 29, 2004 2:10AM PDT

Is there a capture card that can capture from Composite or S-Video ports? The one I've seen so far looks like it takes a coaxil cable that'll plug into the back of your TV? Looks like my "easy to do" project just became "detailed and lengthy". If I can get this done to start with I should have plenty of time to do it over the summer break for this new very time consuming project.

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Re:Composite & S-Video
Apr 29, 2004 5:18PM PDT

Here, take a look at some of these capturing devices. http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Deptvideocapture.hmx?

I think you misunderstood me about "time consuming". What I meant by that is the time to convert the video from the DVR to DVD will take a long time (about 4-6 hours to one hour of video).

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and if I had to do it over...
Apr 29, 2004 7:06PM PDT
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DVR to PC
Jan 24, 2005 10:11PM PST

Did you ever find an easy way to make the transfer? I'd like to transfer some parts of shows to my PC.

Feel free to e-mail me at rdoveosu at yahoo dot com if you figured it out!

Thanks,
Ryan

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DVR to PC
Jan 26, 2005 8:00AM PST

A couple ways to do it, what I use is a TV capture card, I have a Hauppauge brand. I use the s-video output on the DVR system, hook it into the capture card for video. For sound I use an RCA to mini(headphone size)connector plugged into the linein on my motherboard. Then I just playback whatever program I want to record. You need a program to record the video though, Microsoft has a free one, Windows media encoder http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&DisplayLang=en
It's a fairly strightforward program to use. Lets you set many factors, such as video size and quality. I have an XP 2400 processor, and I can't do the maximum quality settings, 640X480 at max video and audio quality without losing frames, so I do 320X240 at high quality settings and don't lose any frames, if you have a faster CPU, you can get the best settings so it looks like TV quality. Only takes as long as the program takes to playback. You can get better quality without a faster CPU by capturing to to your harddrive first, then encoding when finished, but that takes up like 10 gigs for a 30 min program and takes a couple hours to encode.