Recording from Digital out
 

Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say it's
a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots of the
back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS socket(?). How
could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is there such a thing
as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Recording from Digital out
 

"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say
it's a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots of
the back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS socket(?).
How could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is there such a
thing as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com


Media companies have frowned upon digital copying, making it difficult for
manufacturers to include digital links on their recorders. HDMI is the new
digital link as is designed to stop links working if connected to digital
recorders rather than display devices. So like the rest of us, you are stuck
with redigitising an analogue output.

Recording from Digital out
 

Morse wrote:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They
say it's a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the
shots of the back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS
socket(?). How could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD?
Is there such a thing as a digital out to USB converter?

The RS232 connector is usually only for firmware updates - it would be
far too slow for anything else.

Look into Dreambox DM7025 or the Topfield TF5xxx models.

Dreambox DM7025 has twin tuners (detachable, any combination is
possible: you can get T+T, C+C, S+S, T+S, S+C or C+T), and an Ethernet
connector. It can record to the internal HDD or directly over your home
network to NFS or Windows network shares. You can transfer files back
and forth over the home network. Real-time streaming is also possible.
Moreover, Dreambox can also be expanded via unofficial firmware images
and hobbyist-written plugins. There's even a DVD kit for the Dreambox:

http://www.dream-multimedia-tv.de/en...ucts_dm7025_te
chnical.php

http://www.hm-sat-shop.de/receiver-d...eambox/dreambo
x-dm-7025-t-inkl-9-monate-in.html/

http://www.satbln.de/satbln/dreambox7000/menue/menue09.html

http://www.telesat-info.de/sat/001/dreambox7020/7020_01.html

http://www.satellitemagazine.com/?action=tests&id=55

http://arhiva.elitesecurity.org/t118992-Novi-skins-Dreambox.html

http://www.satbln.de/satbln/dreambox...face/webinterf
ace.html

http://img219.exs.cx/img219/4962/webinterface4vh.jpg

http://www.makikoitoh.com/images/enigma-1.html

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/DigiTV/dbox-howto.htm

Topfield has an USB 2.0 connector. The Topfield firmware is more closed
and proprietary in its nature, but supports hobbyist-written plugins as
well. The USB connector is a bit inconvenient when compared to an
Ethernet connector (unless you watch tv right next to your computer).
The tuners also aren't detachable or replaceable. Still, otherwise it's
quite nice:

http://www.toppy.org.uk/

There are also cheaper brands out there with twin-tuner PVRs and USB
connectors, but I don't know much about them. The products from other
manufacturers generally aren't user-expandable the same way as Dreambox
and Topfield models are.

--
znark

Recording from Digital out
 

"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say it's
a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots of the
back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS socket(?). How
could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is there such a thing
as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.

I doubt that an RS232 would be fast enough. Transferring TV recordings by USB is
tedious enough!

It you get a Topfield TF5800 you can transfer files to your PC either directly
via USB or via a networked NSLU2.

You have to manipulate the file before you can cut a normal video format DVD.
The instructions for doing this are on www.toppy.org.uk

The Philips PVR that BT are using in their Vision packages does have an Ethernet
port which would be much faster. Whether they have included software to let you
pull files onto your PC I don't know.

If you have BT Broadband at 2mb+ and can receive the Freeview signal, the Vision
package looks to be a cheap way of getting a PVR.


--

Michael Chare








--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Recording from Digital out
 

John Russell wrote:
"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say
it's a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots of
the back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS socket(?).
How could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is there such a
thing as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com


Media companies have frowned upon digital copying, making it difficult for
manufacturers to include digital links on their recorders. HDMI is the new
digital link as is designed to stop links working if connected to digital
recorders rather than display devices. So like the rest of us, you are stuck
with redigitising an analogue output.

'Frowning' has no basis in law and will certainly not stop any company
making a freeview recorder that can record digitally or with a digital
output. You can buy DVD recorder that can digitally record pictures and
transfer / copy them, and most PC freeview receiever can do this. It
would be illegal to copy and distribute any recordings though.

There was some law proposed about making it illegal to sell any product
that broken an encryption (ie de-macrovisioners) that would apply to
products that recorded say a encrypted TV channel to a unencrypted DVD.
I don't know if this applies yet or maybe was a US thing.

The standard to do this was going to be firewire but it didn't really
catch on, I think maybe because there were no standards for compressed
transfer (except DV), there maybe some niche market products out there
that you can hook up a PC, but as yet probably no DVD recorders that can
use the signal, so its probably cheaper to record using the PC.

HDMI is a display connection interface and works with uncompressed
video, so you would need an expensive MPEG2 encoder in the recorder
assuming the broadcaster allowed you to record the signal (as freeview
generally does).

--
Tony

Recording from Digital out
 

"Tony" wrote in message
...
John Russell wrote:
"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say
it's a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots
of the back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS
socket(?). How could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is
there such a thing as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com


Media companies have frowned upon digital copying, making it difficult
for manufacturers to include digital links on their recorders. HDMI is
the new digital link as is designed to stop links working if connected to
digital recorders rather than display devices. So like the rest of us,
you are stuck with redigitising an analogue output.

'Frowning' has no basis in law and will certainly not stop any company
making a freeview recorder that can record digitally or with a digital
output.

You'd be surprised what "frowning" can do, on Capitol Hill in particuler,
and Brussels is not that far behind. Both lean towards "protecting
copyright" rather than "fair use".

Recording from Digital out
 

On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:27:09 +0000, Tony wrote:

There was some law proposed about making it illegal to sell any product
that broken an encryption (ie de-macrovisioners) that would apply to
products that recorded say a encrypted TV channel to a unencrypted DVD.
I don't know if this applies yet or maybe was a US thing.

I think there is a law that prevents the sale of anything *for the
specific purpose* of subverting anti-copying systems, but there is no
law against the sale of equipment for another purpose if it happens to
have the property of subverting something like Macrovision as a
side-effect. Nor could there be such a law, when you consider what
Macrovision does.

Since many anti-copying systems, such as Macrovision, work by making
the signal non-standard (no doubt in the hope that it will be
sufficiently non-standard to confuse a recording machine but not a
display device), any piece of equipment designed with the perfectly
legitimate purpose of cleaning up the sync signals and re-blanking the
field interval will have the effect of making the signal standard and
therefore recordable.

Rod.

Recording from Digital out
 

John Russell wrote:
"Tony" wrote in message
...
John Russell wrote:
"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say
it's a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots
of the back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS
socket(?). How could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is
there such a thing as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Media companies have frowned upon digital copying, making it difficult
for manufacturers to include digital links on their recorders. HDMI is
the new digital link as is designed to stop links working if connected to
digital recorders rather than display devices. So like the rest of us,
you are stuck with redigitising an analogue output.
'Frowning' has no basis in law and will certainly not stop any company
making a freeview recorder that can record digitally or with a digital
output.

You'd be surprised what "frowning" can do, on Capitol Hill in particuler,
and Brussels is not that far behind. Both lean towards "protecting
copyright" rather than "fair use".



I realise the meaning behind and its probably reasonable from another
point of view. I used to work in the VCR manufacturing industry and
always felt it was us against the broadcaster. We provided what the
consumer wanted and broadcasters provided what they want the consumer to
have. Examples where PDC that had an over complicated structure and wa
never accurately implements (so has become useless), and STB
specification for cable/sat companies (eg SKY/NTL) are massively
expensive and have no clue what the consumer wants.

Broadcasters 'frowned' on VCRs but we won in the end. PVRs too are now
standing their own ground.

But I agree 'fair use' seems to be loosing its footing against
'protecting copyright'. Certainly in the audio market too much DRM
means I can't move my recording between devices, and may become
unplayable at some point. But people keep buying this stuff and
supporting the DRM case. I'd be much more infavour of watermarking and
tracing unfair copying rather than preventing it by DRM.

It is the court cases that decide these thing in the end, hence my comment.

--
Tony

Recording from Digital out
 

Thanks everyone, most helpful.

Having looked at the Toppy & Dreambox devices, think I'll go the Freeview
card / PC route, as it's the most flexible option.

Morse.

"Michael Chare" wrote in message
...
"Morse" wrote in message
.. .
Hi, sensing this is a stupid question but:

Maplin are selling a 160Gb twin tuner Freeview PVR at the mo. They say
it's
a Digihome, but it's marked Vestel in the pictures. From the shots of the
back, there's a digital out RS232, two SCARTs and a CVBS socket(?). How
could I dump recorded programs from the PVR onto DVD? Is there such a
thing
as a digital out to USB converter?

Cheers.

I doubt that an RS232 would be fast enough. Transferring TV recordings by
USB is
tedious enough!

It you get a Topfield TF5800 you can transfer files to your PC either
directly
via USB or via a networked NSLU2.

You have to manipulate the file before you can cut a normal video format
DVD.
The instructions for doing this are on www.toppy.org.uk

The Philips PVR that BT are using in their Vision packages does have an
Ethernet
port which would be much faster. Whether they have included software to
let you
pull files onto your PC I don't know.

If you have BT Broadband at 2mb+ and can receive the Freeview signal, the
Vision
package looks to be a cheap way of getting a PVR.


--

Michael Chare








--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com






--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Recording from Digital out
 

Morse wrote:

Having looked at the Toppy & Dreambox devices, think I'll go the
Freeview card / PC route, as it's the most flexible option.

In that case, you might want to look into VDR...

http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/
http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/software.htm
http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/people.htm
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/08/29/howardwen.html
http://linvdr.org/projects/linvdr/index.en.php
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Video_Disk_Recorder_(VDR)

....or MythTV:

http://www.mythtv.org/
http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythTV

--
znark