DVR Question... (screen, connect, program, jack)

[CT2MEwoodnutt]

Hello Group-


I have a Spectrum (Charter/Spectrum Cable) Motorola DVR Cable Box, w/500Gb of video storage.


Recently I had relocated to Maine from Connecticut, where I also had Spectrum/Charter.
HOWEVER- in CT. Spectrum's Cable/DVR Box, had a live [active] eSata Port on the back which I was able to plug a Western Digital 1 Tb external Hard Drive into, for MUCH MORE additional video storage.
Here in Maine, they are NOT active ports.


I am trying to figure out how to copy/transfer/SAVE many shows from the DVR to DVD or video tape (What !?) or save these somehow.


Is there anyway to just transfer these onto a 'Roku' or some other digital device??


Video Technology Deficient here...


HELP!!!


Thanks!


ME2CTwoodnutt

[harry chickpea]

The format used in DVRs is intentionally consumer unfriendly, to discourage doing what you want to do. The supposed intent is to prevent piracy, the real intent is to do an end run around the Sony ruling that made VCRs at home legal.

There are ways around some of it. IIRC, signals that were originally broadcast can be recorded off to a DVD recorder in real time. Cable programming may have anti-piracy features, to where the only way to even get a crude recording would be to set up a tv and a home video camera aimed at it.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Cable programming may have anti-piracy features, to where the only way to even get a crude recording would be to set up a tv and a home video camera aimed at it.

You can do it but probably not worth the time or expense for most people. If you don't mind the reduction in the resolution the RCA jacks do provide one method. The copy protection patented by Macroviision that prevents a VCR and other devices from recording is a video error that exploits the limitations of early VCR technology. Newer electronic devices like a DVR are required to use this in the output if the material is flagged as copyrighted and recording devices are required to recognize it.

A TBC is a device a lot of enthusiasts or professionals will have that do analog video capture. It retimes frames. If you have video that is out sync, wavy at the top of fuzzy this might fix it. It's not advertised but one of the side effects of this process is stripping out that copy protection. I have one myself but other than testing it never used it for that purpose. The only issue is a TBC is not cheap. There is other products called "enhancers" or whatever terminology they might be using but these are hit and miss, they attempt to notch out the copy protection but often take a legitimate part of the signal with it.

There are some capture card that will also ignore it, I know the early ones from Hauppage worked.



One thing to note, if the material is 16:9 you want to set the output on the playback device so it fills the whole screen of SD TV. You set the recording device as 16:9 or if that is not possible you can change 4:3 flag to 16:9 using a various video tools.

[harry chickpea]

Note that some cable modems no longer have composite output, which could mean a no go for time base correction.