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I'm always looking to do something that seems impossible it seems...

I have a HD DVR at home, and I noticed that it has a Cat-5 connector on the back. Has anyone out there figured out a way to back up content off their dvr onto their computer? Every now and then, I see a good episode of Crossroads or Austin City Limits etc, and would love to be able to burn it to my i-Pod or my laptop. Problem is, how do you get it from the dvr to the computer? Anyone know of way to do that? The good folks at my tv service are very protective of the content and seem to suggest that it will never happen because people could burn the content onto dvd's and sell it. Understandable, but if we're allowed to record it for ourselves, why shouldn't we have the ability to play it back on more than just our televisions?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, let me share my secret life with you

http://vimeo.com/324090

This was last wednesday morning. My friend grabs these for me
whenever I'm on. I'll ask how he does it. I know the files are massive full
quality things and I have to convert them to smaller videos, but I'm sure
that has to do with the settings.

Sounds like he's grabbing the signal as it's happening, as opposed to taking it off the DVR hard drive. My IT guys thinks that I could pull the hard drive out and plug it in to my computer or an external hard drive socket, and simply read the drive. But of course I would have to open the unit to do that, and I'm reluctant to do that. The files are MPEG-4's on the DVR, which is what is used on an i-Pod so if I can easily get those onto the computer, I'm all set.

So you're a TV star now, eh?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Tivo brand DVRs let you do that, at least the non-HD Series 2 units do. It plugs into my network hub so I can store and watch programs on my PC, and burn them to DVD with Sonic DVD burning software. Pretty slick. I can edit out the commercials, too.

I'm not sure what the features are on the new Series 3 HD Tivo's.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

Mine's a DirecTV box, and it might actually have a USB port on it too. I know it has a cat-5 port for sure, but I don't think that it connects directly to the hard drive. Intel's new Viiv product looks like it will do this, but they charge you for every download, as opposed to being able to get things right from a broadcast via your cable box or dvr.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Is the USB port the square one or the flat one? If it is the square one it is made so you can plug your DVR into a computer. If it is a flat port, then it is a method of adding devices to your DVR.

As for the cat5 connector (LAN connector?), it is probably there to allow the DVR to receive programming information or software upgrades. It might have other uses but the data protocol can be anything and I doubt that they would publish the protocols. But, they might. They could have features such as the Series 2 Tivo and that would let you do many things.

You could just plug the cat5 connector into your router and try to telnet into the device. If you can connect, try typing ls or help to see if there is anything available. You might try connecting to its IP address with your browser. Something like http:\\123.45.67.89 might work. This would be similar to the way you configure your router but the address would be the IP address of our DVR. Once you plug the DVR into your router, you should be able to ask the router who's plugged in and what are their IP addresses.

I just also discovered an output on the back that is labeled "SATA" which makes me think it's a connection to the hard drive? There's also an HDMI conection, but I think that's an output to the tv if you have that kind of connection...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hey Don

Lets just call it something I fell into, lol.

[QUOTE=Don Williams] I just also discovered an output on the back that is labeled "SATA" which makes me think it's a connection to the hard drive? There's also an HDMI conection, but I think that's an output to the tv if you have that kind of connection...[/QUOTE]
I believe the sata port is for adding another external sata hard drive to you dvr to extend it recording capabilties. Not as an output.

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

Yes, that is correct. I've been reading where a number of folks are connecting really BIG SATA drives to it to extend the recording capability. Some folks are using 1TB drives! Seems a bit excessive, but why not? I'd like a lot more storage, but I'm also interested in getting the data from storage to my laptop and then to my iPod, or even just to the computer would be great so I can watch stuff on the fly away from home and work.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."