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Transferring DVR video to PC...

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dunyduke16

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Joined
Aug 7, 2006
Messages
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I live in Northern Jersey with Cablevision as my provider. I'm thinking about getting their DVR, which I think is the 8300 version. According to Cablevision, the only way to take footage from my DVR box and send it to my PC is to send it from my DVR box to a tape in my VCR, then to my PC. I would assume that doesn't help the quality of the final product.

Is there some way to get a hookup so that I can directly send recorded footage from my DVR to my PC so that it can be burned on a DVD?

Thanks in advance.
 
You can bypass the vcr by installing a tuner card in your computer.
Hook your cable box up to your pc's new tuner card (the 8300 supports multiple simultanious outputs) and play your recorded show for your pc to record.

Of course if you aren't concerned with warrenties and possible legal issues you could try opening up the 8300 and connecting it's hard drive to your pc. (Note: no garuntee that it will work)
 
Great, thanks a lot.

Seems that it requires a special version of Windows XP. Is that right?
 
Slightly better card for $50 here. Better place to buy HTPC stuff from than the egg also.
 
My uncle has that Explorer 8300HD DVR.. He's got his hooked up with the firewire through MCE. It will record, change channels, etc. You just need the drivers for it, which are REALLY hard to find. Here they are. ;) You can also read up in that thread, it will help out alot with other problems you might encounter. (be aware that your cable company might have the firewire disabled, it should have 2 firewire ports)
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/44138.aspx
^--works for 8300 and 8300HD

Since the 8300HD also has a sata port, you can hook up an external sata drive to it so you have extra recording space if you just want to use the DVR itself not hooked up to MCE. You need THIS specific cable to get it to work for some reason.. don't ask why. (as far as I know from what others say. But, if you have another e-sata to sata cable, try it before buying this) Its made just for the 8300 series DVR's. http://www.satasupply.com/ (its the eSATA to SATA cable.. $16.95.... notice that e-SATA has no notch on the plug, where the SATA has the little angled L-notch.)

That satasupply website I linked you to above will also tell you how to hook it up and troubleshoot the drive. I hear people have the best luck with using Seagate and Maxtor drives. Any SATA equipped enclosure will work. The biggest drive I saw someone use is the Seagate SATA2 500gb drive with a Penguin Gear PG380 sata enclosure.

NOW, from there, once you get your shows recording on the eSATA drive, you MIGHT be able to find a way to decrypt the video files it stores on your external hard drive for easy viewing/transferring to your pc. I guess when people do this and hook it back up to their windows machine, it looks like the hard drive is empty. You could get lucky and find a hack for it.

But, if you have ports disabled and other features disabled, you need updated firmware. Your cable provider is supposed to come and update your firmware if you need it. I don't see any links on Scientific Atlanta's website so you can update the firmware yourself. I know other people have called their cable company in the past, and they did it for them. I know with my company (Wide Open West), they updated the firmware on my HD Explorer cable box because I was unable to output coax audio.
 
oh.. you might ask what the advantages to using Firewire vs the capture card. The firewire will support ALL your channels, including up in the 120-900's which a tuner will not. You can record all the encrypted channels in full digital quality, even HD. =)

Here's the updated thread with a working link to the firewire drivers if the other one doesn't work for you.
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/1/98686/ShowThread.aspx
 
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