Can Anyone on the All-Knowing BBS Tell me how to Burn a HD DVD off of a DVR?

I'm constantly amazed at how much technical knowledge there is here on the bbs, so I'm hoping I can cash in on some of it. I just upgraded to a High Definition DVR with DirectTV and have been trying to figure out a reasonably priced way to burn the shows to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disk. I've googled till my googler hurts and can't find what I need or can't understand what they're saying. It looks like you can get a relatively inexpensive ($400) Internal Blu-Ray DVD burner for a computer but I can't find a source for a stand-alone unit. Since I don't have my HD-DVR yet I don't know if there's any way to link it to a computer so that you could burn it off of there.

Second question would be if I record in HD can I then burn a standard DVD on my DVD recorder or is the signal totally different?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom that you're willing to share! John

 

Bueller, Mongo, anybody?






(crickets)














Could this be the first time in history that the BBS has been stumped?

 

http://mmovp.net/forum/forumdisplay.php/general-movies-downloads-80.html

 

Thanks Morph, that's a link to another bbs. Is there an answer on there to my question that I couldn't find, or we're you thinking that I could join their fourm and ask the question? Thanks, John

 

is it possible to do yes....but at this point at time it is pretty hard/or pain in the butt to do. right now there are no bluray or HDdvd standalone recorders on the market. there are a couple of blu ray or hddvd drives for a computer can can burn hd but how you would get that info off you cable box I don't have a clue.

 

What he said.

DL it to your computer and burn it there for now. You can buy blank HD media at walmart.

 

How do I do that? How do I link the HD-DVR to my computer?

 

What DVR do you have?

It's possible to pull recordings off your DVR and put them on your computer using firewire.

I've never done Tivo, but I hear it's not too difficult.

I've done it on a Comcast DVR box, but it's way complicated, and I never got the audio to sync up with the video - always off by a half second or so.

 

I don't have it yet. They're coming to install it next Thursday. I've requested the newer HR21 as opposed to the HR20. Do you have any experience, or know how to transfering files from an HR21 to a computer?

 

I do it with my current DVR, but not in HD. I would imagine if you have the proper hardware and cabling, it's actually easy.

What I do for my setup is run Composite cable from my DVR to my DVD-R. Then run cable from my DVD-R to my reciever (or you can just run it direct to your TV).

This way, whatever shows on your TV is what your DVD-R will record. I then start the movie from my DVR (setting the volume to MAX on the DVR so the volume range is full) and hit record on DVD-R and just let it record until the movie is over. There's no chapters or anything in this setup but FFW is usually quick enough to not worry about it. Also, make sure you don't have anything on the screen like the DVR volume meter or info bar because this will transfer over to the DVD-R. I've done this with about 8 movies so far and for regular viewing they actually come out pretty nice.

This IS very similar to using a VCR back in the day. If you use Component or HDMI cable into your DVD-R, theoretically it should be fine but I'm not sure about signal loss. Also, I'm guessing you'll need a HDDVD/Blu-Ray DVD Burner along with the Media to support it. And naturally the movie shown must be in HD as well.

I'm guessing on all the HD stuff, but if you have the equipment it might not be tough to experiment and see how it comes out. Maybe record 15-20 minutes of a movie, burn it to DVD and watch it again to see how it comes out. You'll waste a DVD but at least you'll know.

 

Unless you're dead set on a black case, you should get the HR20-700. The drive is slightly smaller (300Gb vs 320GB), but it has dual OTA tuners, whereas the HR21 doesn't.

I've had the HR20-700 for a year now and there really is no easy way to 'rip' recorded shows off it, other than using a standalone burner as a glorified VCR.

John

 

I've been doing just what SalKhan said running the DVR through the DVD burner and into the TV. It works great and I've been able to make several recordings. I don't care about the color of the box, I've just read about a lot of issues with the HR20-600 (don't know about the -700) and my TV picks up the OTA stations already if my DirecTv was to go out. But now that I'm going to the HD-DVR I'm wondering about 3 things.

1. How do I find a standalone Blu-Ray burner like jdanhires mentions?
2. How do I transfer the recorded program over to the HD recorder?
3. If I continue to use my standard DVD Burner will I be able to get the High Definition signal to automatically sample down to work on my DVD burner?

Why I love this stuff so much, when I'm an absolute tech idiot, I'll never know.

 

I just hooked up my HR21. I need to look into the USB and ethernet ports and what they can be used for. I don't see the need for dual OTA tuners but a dual live buffer would be awesome. I am going to miss that feature that I had on my old DirecTV Tivo unit.

 

HD content

I take HD content directly from my cable box (Motorola) into my laptop (apple macbook pro) using the firewire output on the cable box, from there I guess you could come up with a way to burn it, if you had an HD Tivo (not the satellite version) you can transfer the HD content to your PC without jumping through many hoops, the Direct TV stuff has normally not played very nice with getting info off and onto a dvd without going through the analog stage at some point. read below about how to use an apple to pull direct HD programing from the cable box.

http://trialsoftheswitch.com/firewire-sdk-tivo-killer

DD