Mac Specs: White MB, Core 2 Duo, 2g RAM, 32 gig iPod touch
We have a TiVO and Toast Titanium and can do this easily. Not sure what specific DVRs this works with, but ours is a "real" TiVO, not from the cable or satellite company.
Mac Specs: 13" MBP 2.53 DC2, 09 Mini 2.0 DC2, 07 Mini 2.16 DC2, MB 2.0 DC2, iBook G3 900MHz, G4 Sawtooth 1.6Ghz
most cable boxes dont allow you to get the data off as the TIVO boxes do. if you have a cable provided box you will most likely have to play it back from the DVR and use a piece of hardware to record the playback as it goes back to the TV.
you can also take a look at the different EyeTV Products that allow you to run your TV through your Mac. i use the 250 Plus and am very happy with it.
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how would you record the playback? what's the best video capturing software?
The few times I've been compelled to do this I simply record the DVR played video to a DVD Recorder, then go from there. You could maybe use a VCR, but the quality would suffer...
Mac Specs: 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro 4 GB mem, 2.66 GHz Mac Pro 4 GB mem both 10.6.4
On some cable boxes there is an active firewire port which can be used to connect the box to a Macs firewire port. The output can then be captured. there are some problems that you may encounter:
1. Some providers have blocked this port via a firmware update (there may be an FCC rule in place that still prohibits them form doing this. I haven't checked recently).
2. Even with an active connection some programming will not transfer over properly with the result being either no picture/no sound. This seems to be a result of the copy protection flags on some content.
As far as software goes I have been using steventoth.net AVC Noodle a bit and also a program called AVC Video Cap which is part of the Firewire SDK available from the Apple site for free. There used to be a program called iRecord available but I don't think it is in active development anymore. If anyone knows otherwise please post.
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Contributing Editor
About This Particular Macintosh http://www.atpm.com
