Hi all, I apologize if this is a stupid question but I am a total noob to this stuff.

I have a Scientific Atlanta DVR (Explorer 8300 HDC) from Time Warner Cable. Basically what I want to be able to do is after recording something, get that onto my computer upstairs. How do I do this? Is there a wireless card I can get, can I hook up a usb hard drive? I called Time warner and they said I couldn't do it but I can't imagine why there would be a usb port and 2 firewire ports if you can't that are useless, so I was wondering what I need to buy or do in order to do this.

Thanks in advance,
any help would be greatly appreciated.

Joe

You can't.

No content provider allows customers to copy unencrypted digital files off a DVR. If they did, they would lose access to that content. Content providers don't like recordings of their content distributed over the Internet, which is exactly what would happen if they allowed customers to copy recordings to their PC without DRM.

Networking and USB are not supported. With older firmwares, you could output local channels in realtime through Firewire as you watched them, but that is no longer possible with most 8300 boxes.

Ok, thanks for the quick reply. Here is what I want to do. I am a college football nut and I want to record games and have them on my computer. If I can't hook anything up to it to move it off, how can I get it up there? Any ideas?

You can connect the DVR to a DVD recorder via S-video or composite video and dub the material to a DVD. Then put the DVD in your computer and rip the MPEG-2 files off the DVD.

Or you can connect the DVR to a PC video capture card, again via S-video or composite.

Or you can use an external analog-to-digital video converter: S-video or composite from the DVR to the converter, and Firewire or USB2 from the converter to your PC (provided you have software that can capture the digitized video stream). Many digital camcorders can be used as converters in "passthrough mode".

All of these convert HD to SD, of course.