From DVR to burned DVD

[Zardnok]

I have a number of football games recorded on my DVR that I would like to transfer to my computer and then burn onto DVDs for posterity sake. Bonus is I get my GF off my @$$ for taking up all her soap opera recording space!!

SO... What is the best way to get from a Scientific Atlantica 8300 DVR onto my hard drive and then onto a DVD? There is a USB port on front of the DVR, but I do not have a manual for it to see if I can use the USB to transfer the files. Anyone have experience with this?

Any file type issues I will need to be aware of? Any particular software better than others?

 

[Matthias99]

If it supports USB or FireWire you should be able to transfer out anything that is not protected (pay-per-view and most HD cable channels, maybe regular pay channels like HBO/Showtime as well). Some cable companies disable it, though. AVSForum has lots and lots of information on this sort of thing. If they support it you can also stream/capture straight to your PC through the cable box/DVR (although, again, only things that are not copy-protected).

Otherwise there isn't any real easy way to do it. You can rerecord them with a TV tuner card or a video card with VIVO, but you'll lose quality and it will take a long time. There's no real way to get HD content off at full quality unless you have expensive capture cards for HD-SDI and a component->SDI transcoder box.

Any file type issues I will need to be aware of? Any particular software better than others?

Normally you just get out MPEG2 files. They might be in 'transport stream' format (.ts), especially if they're HD, but you can convert them to regular .mpg video files (see AVSForum and/or doom9.org).

 

[Zardnok]

They are not HD and are football games recorded off Fox, NBC, and ESPN. I did find a book for this DVR in a drawer. The Explorer 8300 has a SATA HD hookup on the back, but that is merely to increase the storage size and says nothing of transferring from the internal drive to the external for use in another machine. Also according to the book, the USB input on the front is used for keyboard input, so I am doubting I can use it.

I will check out the AVSForum you recommended and see what I can learn from there. Thanks.