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Can I dump recordings from my DCT3416 box to another PVR?

2230 Views 4 Replies 2 Participants Last post by bigmutt, Jul 24, 2009

bigmutt

Discussion Starter · Jul 21, 2009

Because it's always full, I wonder if there's a way to dump some of the recordings to another PVR or DVD recorder.

Got this cable box/PVR from my cable company in January 2009 and so far it's worked perfectly. I record & erase lots of programs. I'm normally running 95% capacity on the PVR.

Is anyone doing this? What outputs on the Motorola 3416 would you use?

I've got an LG DVD/PVR unit with 160Gb HDD; I'd like to use that, or just record directly onto DVDs with that unit; is this possible?

Thank you.

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slowbiscuit

· #2 · Jul 23, 2009

The easy answer is to ditch your craptacular DVR and get a Tivo HD, with no loss of quality.

The hard answer is to get a Hauppauge HD-PVR (using component outputs), or use the firewire output, and play them back in realtime to transfer to the PC. Small loss of quality with the HD-PVR, none for firewire.

The crappy answer is to use the composite outputs to send them to your DVD recorder. Big loss of quality.

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bigmutt

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 23, 2009

Thanks, slowbiscuit:

yours was not merely the only answer, it was a pretty good answer.

At least I have better idea what I'm in for.

1. I can't ditch the Motorola 3416 because my cable company will not provision customers' own equipment; they do in fact offer a TiVo instead of the Motorola for the same price, but it's not the HD version. So i'm stuck.

2. transfer via firewire? okay, I wish to pursue that. I have laptop with firewire connection, a one-year-old Dell XPS 1330. Running the Vista O/S that it came with, but I suppose I could change to XP if I absolutely have to ........... do I ? What else would I need?

3. transfer in real time via composite? I guess you mean connect Motorola to my LG PVR via the one video input (yellow) of my PVR, plus the two audio cables. The PVR does not have the 3 composite-video input, only as output. Is the quality really that bad?

Last question: if I kept the cable-company's Motorola but bought a TiVo HD unit, could I somehow patch that in, and make the process easier and the quality better??

Thanks again. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

Rick

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slowbiscuit

· #4 · Jul 24, 2009

1. What's your cable company? All except the smallest cableCos provide Cablecards for use in the Tivo HD, and they work fine once they get them installed and configured correctly.

2. You need to check out the HTPC forum here for Vista firewire recordings, I don't know much about it. There's a big sticky thread there.

3. Yes, I meant hookup the single video (and red/white audio) outputs from the DVR to your LG recorder. You press play on the DVR and record on the LG at the same time after you set it to record from the video input. Yes, the quality will suck if you use an HD display. If you're still using an old SD TV, it's not so bad.

Both 2 and 3 are painful. I recommend 1 - check with your provider to see if Cablecards are available.

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bigmutt

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jul 24, 2009

thanks again, slowbiscuit;

I'm in Mexico City and my cable company is called Cablevision; it's all over the country and is the largest; there's lots of small local cable providers in the boondocks.

The only option here is cable, Sky (dish) and DishMexico (dish). the last one is kinda lame, offering only local channels plus movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc). The Sky dish option is okay: I had it for a couple of years, but they don't offer any HD programming.

So, if you want HD, the only choice is Cablevision. There's a couple hundred channels, very much like in the U.S. plus they offer highspeed internet. I'm very happy with their service and large range of channels they have, although there's still only about a dozen HD channels.

anyway, they know nothing about cards, although they DO offer a non-HD Tivo box in place of the Motorola 3416.

Rick

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