Here is a crazy one! I've searched high and low, and found no info on how to do this. Everyone wants to do the opposite! Has anyone heard of a way to record dvds TO a sa8300hd? I will take anything: a set top dvd player method, pc via firewire, or eSata method? This would be pretty great to fire up my son's favorite dvds really quickly using the dvr, instead of waiting through 10+ minutes of load times and menus on a dvd.

No.

son-of-a.....
that was a pretty convincing no.

You can do this with an Xbox running XBMC or a HTPC. But you can't do it with a cable company DVR.

I think there is a way to get DVD material into an SA8300HD. If your DVD player has an RF Modulator for connection to old TV's that don't have composite/S-video/component video inputs , or if it doesn't but you have a VCR that does, that would work too (at least for non-macrovision DVD's).

With your SA8300HD, powered on, swap the cable feed going into the SA8300HD, with the RF output of your DVD player (or your VCR that has the DVD signal routed through it). Tune the SA-8300 to the RF channel of your new input (usually channel 2,3, or 4) and start a manual recording. I don't think your SA8300HD will notice that the RF signal it's tuned to is actually NOT coming from the cable company (as long as you made the swap with the SA8300HD powered on). Quality won't be "DVD" and aspect ratio is going to 4:3, but its something. --hourglass