I've been using my macbook(2ghz core duo, 2gb ram, stock 5400rpm hd) to hook up to my comcast dvr(a motorola DCT6416 phase III) via firewire to record videos I had on the dvr to free up space on its drive especially with stuff i want to keep around for awhile. I've been using Apples FireWire SDK 23 using one of its apps called AVCVideoCap.

I first put my macbook to sleep and turn off the DVR before connecting the firewire cable.
Then I turn on the DVR first and awaken my macbook next
Next I fire up AVCVideoCap.

This process had been working fine for about the past week or so and producing perfect mpeg2-ts video files.

All of a sudden yesterday when I attempted to do the same thing I got an end video result with tons of pixelation, chirps, blocks, random artifacts, etc. This happens every time since that time. It doesn't matter what I capture off the box live programing or prerecorded and regardless of the station its on. I always get the same bad results.

I thought it might be the firewire cable so I went out and replaced it with a known good high quality cable without any success.

Does anyone know what could have happened or might be causing it? I've read all the guides on recording off the dvr for the mac and don't see anything I might be doing wrong myself. Could it also be that my macbook has a bad firewire port?

In many service areas, Comcast now flags their cable channels with the "copy one generation" flag -- you can't record those channels with a Mac or PC. To record those channels, would would need an authored DTCP device, like a JVC D-VHS HDTV VCR or an upcoming HDTV Blu-ray recorder.

By FCC rule, Comcast cannot apply the same flag to the local channels. Do you have problems recording ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC?

yeah I have problems on any chanel at all.

Anyways I think I might have figured out the problem allready. Last night I tried something for the heck of it. Going against all the guides for my dvr I turned my macbok on first instead of after the cable box. It seemed to have worked this way as I've done it twice now successfully copying video last night and this morning of the box. Seems odd that having the DVR on first would cause a problem but my guess is maybe its some sort of a handshake issue over firewire or a recent software bug on the box itself.

wish me luck in having it work for me this way continually ;) I don't really want to have to trade dvr thats working fine otherwise for a firewire port issue lol.