Question about the TIVO type devices

[Arkitech]

I've been thinking about getting one but I have'nt made up my mind yet about which one to get. The key for me is whether or not I can download data from the vid recorder to my PC. What I want to be able to do is record a bunch of Seinfeld and Simpsons episodes, edit out the commercials and then save it to my PC. Is this possible?

 

[Mrfrog840]

Yeah you can

 

[Mrfrog840]

Take out the TiVo hard drive and put it in your compuer and BAM you have it

 

[thereds]

Yes, you can and its not very hard.

 

[BigSmooth]

It's possible, but no device officially supports such an operation. I think the reason is that it could easily be used to make high-quality copies which could be illegally distributed.

 

[thereds]

Arkitech, what you are going to do is, instead of hooking up your Digital Data Recorder to your VCR for transferring data to a VHS tape you connect it to your PC. Then when you set your DDR to send in data to your 'VCR' to record the PC can now capture the incoming data and you can create your mpg.

Does that make sense?

 

[Arkitech]

ok so the tivo just uses an ordinairy hard drive. how much better is the tivo quality in comparison to a typical vcr? what kind of connections are on those devices? do they support scsi, firewire, usb, etc?

 

[RossMAN]

Check out this thread, do you have DirectTV? If so you may want to wait I think there's a new TiVo model coming out. There's also Microsoft's UltimateTV which is worth checking out.

 

[Arkitech]

<< Arkitech, what you are going to do is, instead of hooking up your Digital Data Recorder to your VCR for transferring data to a VHS tape you connect it to your PC. Then when you set your DDR to send in data to your 'VCR' to record the PC can now capture the incoming data and you can create your mpg.

Does that make sense? >>




wow is it that simple, if so thats pretty cool. So i guess that means I would need a capture card then

who makes the best units out there? I just recently saw a commercial for microsoft, they're trying to get into the picture too (pardon the pun)

 

[thereds]

TiVo has varying levels of recording settings. You can use the highest quality setting, which will give you the best picture (for sports) and use more space or the lowest (BASIC) quality that will give you the lowest quality pic (good for movies that are slow eg. Finding Forrester).
With regards to what kind of connections, I don't know what you are talking about? To the harddrive, the TV OUT? what?

 

[Arkitech]

<< Check out this thread, do you have DirectTV? If so you may want to wait I think there's a new TiVo model coming out. There's also Microsoft's UltimateTV which is worth checking out. >>



i don't have direct tv but i have digital cable

 

[Arkitech]

<< TiVo has varying levels of recording settings. You can use the highest quality setting, which will give you the best picture (for sports) and use more space or the lowest (BASIC) quality that will give you the lowest quality pic (good for movies that are slow eg. Finding Forrester).
With regards to what kind of connections, I don't know what you are talking about? To the harddrive, the TV OUT? what? >>



what kind of connections are on the tivo device? does it only support the coax or does it use other types of connections?

 

[RossMAN]

who makes the best units out there?

Find out the answer here

 

[thereds]

Mainly COAX and S-Video.

 

[Arkitech]

<< who makes the best units out there?

Find out the answer here >>




thanks rossman

 

[BigSmooth]

By the way, the process with ReplayTV is that you take out the HD, hook it up to your PC, and use an &quot;extraction&quot; program which can read the filesystem and create MPEG2 video files on your PC. No capture card is necessary.