[deeinc]

im getting a dvr box on wed. (i know, im late) through my local cable provider. My question is how do i record shows onto my mac and then burn them onto dvd? What setup and software are you guys using? thank you for all of your help so far [url]

[mduell]

If your cable box has a Firewire port you may be able to capture them through that. Otherwise you'd need a video input card for your Mac, and it would be one giant kludge.

[Big Mac]

The difficulty of transferring from DVR to a computer is what convinced me to forgo the DVR and get a DVD recorder instead. The monthly fee also deterred me.

[His Dudeness]

We have one DVR from Cox Cable. It's not all it's cracked up to be. The recording sucks sometimes, it skips and jumps, pixellates like hell, and sometimes loses audio. We started out with two, because we falsely thought they were the best thing sinced sliced bread, but we are down to one now. The failure rate on these pieces of crap is higher than anything I've ever seen. We had the one upstairs replaced about 4 or 5 times before we told Cox to just take it back. I'm not impressed at all.

But what I DO want is one of those things from elgato so I can record directly on my imac.

[webraider]

http://www.elgato.com

Preferably the EyeTV200 or 500

I have the Plextor ConvertX which uses the EyeTV software and a USB 2.0 port.. The above two products use FireWire and are powered from the FireWire ports which is more or less ideal. These will turn your macintosh into a DVR so you actually won't need your DVR box!

The ConvertX I got for like $180 new which is a VERY good buy.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by webraider

I have the Plextor ConvertX which uses the EyeTV software and a USB 2.0 port.. The above two products use FireWire and are powered from the FireWire ports which is more or less ideal. These will turn your macintosh into a DVR so you actually won't need your DVR box!

The ConvertX I got for like $180 new which is a VERY good buy.

How do you like the ConvertX? I've been thinking of getting one as a TV tuner for my laptop, but I have concerns about video quality (are you using MPEG2 or 4?) and audio/video sync.

[webraider]

Originally Posted by mduell

How do you like the ConvertX? I've been thinking of getting one as a TV tuner for my laptop, but I have concerns about video quality (are you using MPEG2 or 4?) and audio/video sync.

I'm very happy with mine. The only disadvantage is that the firewire EyeTV 200 get's powered from the computer so it's one less power brick AND... it comes with a remote.. However.. you can add the ATI Remote All in Wonder to this and Elgato even gives you a remote script for the All In Wonder. I didn't do that however as I really don't "Need" a remote.

I have used both and they are both very close in quality (VERY Good). I do most of my encoding as Mpeg 2 incase I decide to archive the movie to DVD.. it will take less time ( I guess) to encode to DVD than it will Mpeg 4 which I'm assuming is re-encoded to Mpeg 2 for DVD (I really haven't tried to do it with Mpeg 4 so I can't verify that). What I do is Export the Mpeg File that I want to Archive to DVD as Mpeg 2 and forgo the warning that I don't have QuckTime Mpeg 2 component installed (haven't needed it yet) I then use a freeware program called Sizzle to author the movie which is a straight forward program with NO Frills. Basic Menus and let's me set-up chapters, then it remuxes the Audio and saves it as a disk image. I can then burn the disk image with Disk Utility and create a DVD.

I could just as easily export the MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 to iMovie and then to IDVD. (you have to go to IMovie if you want to set up chapters.. Otherwise you can go straight to iDVD. You can do editing in the EyeTV software before you export. If you export to iMovie you can also edit there as well. If you have QuickTime Pro with Mpeg 2 Encoder.. you can edit there as well. It's very flexible. Still not the easiest way to create DVD's when compared to a dedicated DVD Recording device. Hopefully it will get easier.

This is a drawn out way of saying that I love my Plexter. It works just as good as an EyeTV from my observation. Buy it from a place that you can return it if you don't like it. That's my best advice.

[power142]

For SD (standard definition) programming, the DVD-RW equipped TiVo units can't be beat - if you can stomach the monthly subscription. The ease of use, features and reliability are outstanding.

As mduell says, if your provider gives you a box with a firewire port, there's a good chance you can connect to it and suck programs off it onto your Mac using tools provided in Apple's Firewire SDK. Then you could use Toast to burn your programs to DVD. If you want to edit out commercials, that's a different game. I haven't (yet) found anything on the Mac that works well - many report that MPEG Streamclip works for them, but my DVR outputs long GOP MPEG-2, which Apple's Quicktime component doesn't seem to like too much.

[webraider]

Originally Posted by power142

For SD (standard definition) programming, the DVD-RW equipped TiVo units can't be beat - if you can stomach the monthly subscription. The ease of use, features and reliability are outstanding.

As mduell says, if your provider gives you a box with a firewire port, there's a good chance you can connect to it and suck programs off it onto your Mac using tools provided in Apple's Firewire SDK. Then you could use Toast to burn your programs to DVD. If you want to edit out commercials, that's a different game. I haven't (yet) found anything on the Mac that works well - many report that MPEG Streamclip works for them, but my DVR outputs long GOP MPEG-2, which Apple's Quicktime component doesn't seem to like too much.

If you get the Plextor, or Elgato's name brand products.. the results are the same except that first you don't have to pay the monthly fee... You already have software that can edit the content that you need. The Tivo maybe a better choice in that it will plug into a regular TV set thus you can bypass the computer all together.. In my instance.. my computer is my TV. At any rate..keep in mind that the EyeTV's and ConvertX have built in Hardware compression so the processor isn't doing the compression.. it's only handling the writing of the files and you can Pause Live TV or Time shift with both of these products.

You can purchase the QuickTime Mpeg 2 component and you can also purchase QuickTime PRO to do the editing... That should work fine.. although I haven't tried it personally. I can export Mpeg 2 files recorded with EyeTV to iDVD, or iMovie although again.. I'm not exactly sure what is going on behind the scenes. Elgato promised me that it wasn't re-encoding the file. Any re-encoding was done at the end from Mpeg 4 to Mpeg 2 if the original file was Mpeg 4