What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

Title pretty much sums it up. I've been recording alot of football games and now my HDD is getting full on my DirecTV box. I have a Blu-ray burner on my PC and would like to archive the games onto it. The problem is getting it from the DirecTV box to my PC in as great of quality as possible.

Anybody know what capture card would work best or if there is some other ideal way?

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

There is no way to get high quality HD video from a DirecTV HD DVR to your computer for archiving. There are video capture cards available that have component inputs but HD output from the DVR through component would only be 480i, since it's analog, so you'd lose the original HD quality.

The only way to make extra space for recording would be to buy an external hard-drive for the HD DVR. You can buy external drive setups for that purpose up to 2TB.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

Component can do up to 1080p, so it might be possible to attempt a playback and record. (Composite is only 480i) Other than that it doesn't appear that you can just dump data from the DirecTV DVR to your pc.

What model DVR do you have? According to Directv the newer models let you simply plug in an external HDD via esata to expand your storage space. You could just get an enclosure and you might be able to swap HDDs around with recordings.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global...setId=P5980155

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

Sorry, what I meant to say is that any video capture cards with component inputs limit the signal to 480i. At least that's the way it was last time I looked for a similar solution. However, I looked around to see if there was anything new and found out that Hauppauge came out with a new unit some months back that can capture HD output (via component/up to 1080i) from cable and satellite boxes.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815116030

Here's a review of it. Apparently it works fairly well. The reviews on NewEgg are a bit mixed, though.

http://www.geektonic.com/2008/06/hau...d-bad-and.html

At least there's one alternative available now.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

If your directv box is a series 1 or 2 directivo, I can tell you exactly how you'd extract the video directly from the hard disk as the encryption is very easy to defeat (though it will still take some time to setup.) Don't know how to do it from the directv in house dvr's though.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

I'm using the HR-21 model. Is the content on the HDD in this model encrypted as well?

Thanks for the link Ancient. Seems like the quality of that product is in question though :(

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

Ya, a lot of the NewEggers are complaining about the build quality. It's a shame that they finally come out with a functional product and then make it cheap. Right now it's the only game in town though, unfortunately. For a while DirecTV was making a card for the PC that would have allowed us to integrate DirecTV into Media Center. For some reason they dropped those plans suddenly. Wasn't happy about that.

The content on the HR-21 is encrypted. afaik, nobody has figured out how to get past it and pull content yet.

I like my DirecTV but if they don't come up with something to compete with CableCARD tuners I'll be going back to cable once Centon comes out with their tuner.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

I can see the point to encrypting movies and special events, but they should leave other items unencrypted so that we can free our HDDs of precious space. :(

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

No luck either.

I have the HR21 and its a nice box but forget it not gonna happen.

You could download directv2PC but that only plays back recorded stuff through network and you have to have a HDCP lcd anyway so yea your ****ed shaw.

Get a comcast teir 3 box and firewire it to your pc and see how that goes.

Superfly does it so can you.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

In the future, you may want to get an HD TIVO or Tivo Series 3 and just pay for the service. The price warrants it considering it has "Tivotogo". This lets you transfer files to your PC. I am only checking up on it now, because the Verizon DVR sucks, and if I get a TIVO HD I can plug an external drive into it to increase capacity, and also transfer to PC to convert to any other format (DVD, Iphone, etc)...

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

The whole drm thing is killing this feture or opprotunity cuz of the bs we have to endure for ling in this country which loves copywrite laws.

Re: What's the ideal way to get HD video from my DirecTV box to my PC?
 

More draconian measures would needed to be introduced to allow us more freedom

Like a retina scan drm system