saving WW shows from DVR

[Jay Yoder]

I know this may be a bit off topic, but i thought i read on here a while back how to transfer programs from the DVR to the computer. My 5 year seems to have figured out how to delete things off the DVR "so there is more room for Pooh & SuperWHy". Any help would be greatly appreciated!! I have a Motorola DVR...

[Greg Hines, MD]

I cannot speak to transferring from a DVR to a computer, but you can find DVD burners fairly economically these days. Most can tolerate multiple input types, such as optical or component video cabling, and you can convert it to DVD. That is how I save shows from my DVR. If you insist on having it on your computer, you could then use the DVD as source material

Doc

[Rick Gifford]

You need to lock the shows you want to keep on the DVR with the parental passcode.

[Fred Dortort]

[B]works GREAt and no monthly charge to boot

Direct links to ebay are a violation of the TOS.

[Don Abele]

Fred, you should probably edit your post to give the information for the Tivo DVD. The mods are going to delete that link, it violates the ToS.

Jay, I have a TV tuner card in my computer and have it connected to my cable. I can not only watch TV on the computer, but I can also record all of my saved shows from my satellite receiver to my computer. The one I have is from Hauppauge (WINPVR-150) and it works great. It comes with a remote and all the software you need (including a scheduling program).

You can make your computer act as a DVR. With satellite, you have to tune your receiver to the channel you want to watch so the computer and receiver have to be in the same room (it has an IR repeater, so the tuner card will change the channel on your dish).

I record all the NYW episodes I want to keep at 720x480 with MPEG2 compression. They come out to about 780 MB each! This is a DVD-type format so the resolution is excellent (not DVD quality though). You can record at much smaller resolution, which results in smaller files, but also a smaller image. Enlarging the smaller images really pixelates them and you lose any detail you may want to see.

Be well,

Doc

[Matt Meiser]

They come out to about 780 GB each!

So how many TB of disk space do you have? :eek:

[Chris Padilla]

Simply get a DVD burner. Shouldn't cost you more than $150 and most can be had for $100.

I've been burning DVDs for a while now off of my DVR and it is pretty straight-forward.

However, a colleague told me that the DVD burners we home-users buy aren't near the quality commerical folks use. He told me that DVDs we burn may only last 5 years! I guess we'll see but I hope he is wrong (he often is not!).

[Don Abele]

So how many TB of disk space do you have? :eek:

Matt, I have a network attached storage array made by Maxtor. It currently has four 1000 GB SATA hard drives in it. I have it configured for Raid 1 (spanned/mirrored), so I actually only have 2 terabytes of storage on it! :D I store all my photos and videos on it. I have another which has four 500 GB SATA hard drives (also Raid 1) in it that I use to store all my documents and programs (so that's another terabyte). They are both accessible (with a log-on) from any computer in my house, plus remotely over the net.

Some of the NYW videos are as small as 416 Mb, but the largest is 925 Mb. All totaled I have 54 episodes recorded totaling 37.1 GB. :eek:

Be well,

Doc

[Randal Stevenson]

I record all the NYW episodes I want to keep at 720x480 with MPEG2 compression. They come out to about 780 GB each! This is a DVD-type format so the resolution is excellent (not DVD quality though). You can record at much smaller resolution, which results in smaller files, but also a smaller image. Enlarging the smaller images really pixelates them and you lose any detail you may want to see.

Be well,

Doc


Matt, I have a network attached storage array made by Maxtor. It currently has four 1000 GB SATA hard drives in it. I have it configured for Raid 1 (spanned/mirrored), so I actually only have 2 terabytes of storage on it! :D I store all my photos and videos on it. I have another which has four 500 GB SATA hard drives (also Raid 1) in it that I use to store all my documents and programs (so that's another terabyte). They are both accessible (with a log-on) from any computer in my house, plus remotely over the net.

Some of the NYW videos are as small as 416 Mb, but the largest is 925 Mb. All totaled I have 54 episodes recorded totaling 37.1 GB. :eek:

Be well,

Doc

780 GB > 37.1 GB, unless your using some new quantum math we don't know about!?!:eek::confused:

If New math, could you use that please to invent a board stretcher?:p:D

[Don Abele]

780 GB > 37.1 GB, unless your using some new quantum math we don't know about!?!:eek::confused:

If New math, could you use that please to invent a board stretcher?:p:D

OOOPPPSSS...that's a major typo there. :o I corrected my post above. They are indeed, about 780 MB each...which totals up to 37.1 GB.

Sorry for any confusion (thanks for catching that Randal).

Be well,

Doc

[Randal Stevenson]

OOOPPPSSS...that's a major typo there. :o I corrected my post above. They are indeed, about 780 MB each...which totals up to 37.1 GB.

Sorry for any confusion (thanks for catching that Randal).

Be well,

Doc


(insert shaking head smiley)............. Too bad, you could have made a fortune, making us all happy with that board stretcher.:D

[Matt Meiser]

His boss must be teaching him math skills :rolleyes::D

[Eric Larsen]

I use my computer as a DVR. It does fun things automatically -- like strip out all the commercials, compress and burn to DVD.

I've got most of NYW and about half of Woodworks. I'm beginning to worry that DIY will NEVER air the 1989 "Workbench" episode. :mad:

[Peter Stahl]

I use my computer as a DVR. It does fun things automatically -- like strip out all the commercials, compress and burn to DVD.

I've got most of NYW and about half of Woodworks. I'm beginning to worry that DIY will NEVER air the 1989 "Workbench" episode. :mad:

Eric,

What's your PC setup and DVR board?

thanks, Pete

[Eric Larsen]

Dual-core system with an ATI theater-pro 550 and an NVidia 7800 (state of the art three years ago, sigh). I use Windows Media Center. MCE is just about the only program Microsoft makes that I truly enjoy.

The MCE remote control with IR blaster is a must. Otherwise the computer can't change channels.

One of MCE's real strengths is the free TV guide data provided by M$ (along with a 60-page TOS). It's great to be able to tell your computer to download every episode of a particular show. The program is smart enough to know when it's already captured an episode.

The computer only needs your attention when there's a scheduling conflict. (But you can prioritize that, too, if you want.)

Add to that all the Media Center helpers out there -- particularly DVRMSToolbox -- and you have a real multimedia powerhouse. This is where you can manage your Netflix account, strip out commercials, auto-copy DVDs (when legal), auto burn shows to DVD when your hard drive gets full, etc. I also use TMPGEnc MPEG editor for video manipulation. I've found it's the best thing out there that doesn't require an advanced degree in film editing.

There are other ways to capture video using shareware and freeware, but this is one place where the open source community isn't doing as good a job as the big developers IMHO. All of this comes free with Vista Premium and Ultimate, and the Vista MCE is better (IMO) than the XP version (which is a stand-alone program). I think if M$ wanted more people to migrate, they should tout MCE more. It's Vista's killer app, at least for me.

If you're going to turn your PC into a FreeVo, you can't have too much RAM (2 gig at least), or too much disk space (I've burned through a terrabyte -- 500 gigs just in woodworking shows. I "compress" down to 500mb per 20-minute episode. It has to look good on a flat-screen for me, otherwise why bother?)