Well, I got tired of either missing part of a show or soccer/football/basketball/whatever game while I went to the bathroom, outside for a smoke, etc... I traded up my cable box for a DVR. It'll hold about 25 hours of non-HDTV quality video (60GB HDD, I think...)

I had originally been on the hunt for a DVD-Recorder, but this one came out to $10 a month added to my cable bill, as opposed to $200+ all at once.

The box itself has a bunch of connectors, namely a single USB 1.1 plug in the front, a pair of FireWire plugs in the back, and the usual yellow/red/white, orange/green/blue composite, and S-video in the back.

My question is basically this: am I thinking this all bass-ackwards, that I could run a FireWire cable to my PC, transfer the recorded shows/games/etc from the DVR HDD, and then burn them to a DVD-R?

The instructions say that I can record the shows from the DVR HDD to a VCR simply by selecting the recorded show and start playing it, while starting to record it on the VCR, as if it was a live TV show...

Should work, right?

Got brand / model info?

You would probably need a video card with Video In Video Out, or some other type of video capture device, so you could stream it to your PC and use your favorite conversion program to convert it to DVD format.

http://broadband.motorola.com/consum...ducts/dct6412/

Looking at the specs, it looks like they dropped a smaller HDD in there...

What I was hoping to do was find a really long FW cable and transfer the files... I could probably dig out my Dazzle box and use that, ya think?

Awesome link and info, thanks! +Rep to ya!

just in case ya didnt know , the hard drives in most them cable DVR boxs are good ol' IDE 5400 rpm drives , so if ya wanted to you could upgrade the box with a bigger drive

I was thinking about it, but I'd prefer to do it to one that I bought, after the warranty had expired... As it is, this one is a monthly rental ($10 a month...) Imagine a 150GB RaptorX in my DVR...

The other worry I would have is that there is some sort of OS on the HDD...
Basically, I'm setting the timer to record the WC matches that I may or may not be able to watch. Then, record the matches to DVD to save for later viewing, again and again and again...

Oh, and of course, so I can make DVDs of my daughter's little shows, so we can put Dora or Miguel or whatever on later in the day than when they come on...

Hmmm I always thought this sort of setup would be easier if you had a PC do this stuff. Get MCE '05 with dual (or single) tuners, and you could record and burn all your content to discs.

Check out the setup this guy has. It's simply amazing!
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10167_7...html?tag=smgif