What is Digg?104 Comments
- UGM2099, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22I thought that the firewire port on many (most?) cable boxes was deactivated by default. I use almost the exact same model as the author (loaned to me by Time Warner NYC) so we shall see.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18you mean 1080i, no one broadcasts in 1080p yet.
- kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Comcast are enabled(the one good thing they do), got MythTV running it, its a freaking party up in there, being able to record HBO and such since they aren't protected FTW.
- supershawn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15It is now against the law for cable companies to disable the firewire port. You can have it reactivated (if it is off) by simply calling the cable company. This was a pretty big victory last year.
- robspinella, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Actually, In my research I was unable to find a reasonably complete set of instructions that described how to get this working end-to-end on a PC. Obviously, the problematic part is the Firewire-video capture. If you have a link to such a tutorial, or know where I can find one, please forward it to me and I'll include it in the tutorial.
- 3dom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14dude, it's just a bunch of diggers. get over it
- ExSlashdotter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14$1500-$3000 mac? What is this, 1998?
Seriously, a mini will do this for $500. Even an old G4 mini. - holiday, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13according to a study that I just made up for this post...
- dohidied, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@DogmaticAtheism
He did it on his Mac, so that's what he can explain to other people. At the end he posted a link to a similar article for Windows PCs. - zaren, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Headline is misleading, as the requirements are "cable tv settop box", and not simply "cable". Makes the whole thing kind of useless if you don't have a cable box (like me).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11While it's true that many cable boxes come with firewire disabled, the FCC requires cable companies to provide boxes with working ports upon request.
- mikeneilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9As is mentioned in the linked article, someone took all of the somewhat tedious (though not as tedious as it would be on PC) steps and made them into one quick and easy application, iRecord.
Check it out here. Don't waste you time with all of the other steps:
http://www.ammesset.com/software/irecord/ - bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Except for the fact that not everyone can use the TivoHD DVR with their cable provider. Nor can the TivoHD do all the other things that the Mac can do; e.g. FrontRow
- scametah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Hmmm... I pay an extra $5 a month for my dual tuner HD-DVR from Cox. Lets assume that I can get all the hardware to do this for $500, and that it can actually do the same things that my DVR can, that's 8 years to break even with a system that isn't nearly as straightforward to use. When cox upgrades their DVR offerings, I just turn my old one in, and get a new one. When the drive dies, again, back to the cable company for a replacement...
While it's neat and all to do stuff like this, claiming it's somehow more cost effective than leasing equipment is rarely the case. Unless you have the hardware gathering dust, and don't mind using a less than ideal interface, you're better off spending the 60-120 bucks a month your cable company will charge you to lease the equipment.
Now if you're talking about using a system like this to archive recorded content either on a massive permanent storage array or to be burnt to HD media, that's another story... But for just DVR use, it just doesn't make a lot of sense - gravis86, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9...And USB sucks compared to FireWire for this kind of usage.
REF: http://www.podcastpedant.com/2006/05/10/firewire-vs-usb/ - guzman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Not only can a Mac Mini be had for under $1000, both the iMac and Macbook are available for less than your price.
I think it is you who are the fanboy. - thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8http://www.duggmirror.com
- TheIguana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7USB would be utterly useless for transferring the data. Because it is not very consistent in its throughput rates you would end up finding that you got a great deal of dropped frames when streaming it off. It is the exact same reason why DV camera's use Firewire exclusively.
- pipdip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This has been on the Digg front page a couple times under different names.
Yes, on Comcast you can get HD via Firewire. It's actually required (for locals at least) for them to provide this. Most of the really good channels are 5Ced (blocked). Like HBO etc. - Gryffydd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7My Comcast-furnished Motorola is open.
- kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Because USB isn't required by the FCC.
- joncarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"unencrypted content" being the operative phrase in this article. Which for my Time Warner connection means NBC and PBS only (TWC does not carry the CBS HD feed, and in my area FOX, ABC & CW are not even available OTA in HD). All other cable HD networks are encrypted.
- j128, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5But this is if you already have a mac
- schlongmeister, on 10/12/2007, -1/+580% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Nobody "decided" that a Mac was necessary for this. THIS article describes doing it on a Mac. That does NOT mean to say that it isn't possible on Windows, and does not imply in any that only a Mac can do this, unless you are living in some kind of warped world...
- rawheadrex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4>>You are just fishing for diggs by adding "apple".
And you're just asking to be dug down by implying that there was some foul play here, either Apple fanboyism or "digg fishing", when in fact the situation is as simple as "the guy new how to do it with a Mac and that's what he wrote and that's what got posted." Go read the original article and the digg post and tell us where exactly anybody is implying that this is something you can only do on a Mac??
Apple(fanboy) haters are just as bad as those who they hate. - AggieTales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4My Mitsubishi TV does this by itself, no need for a cable box. It has 2 4-pin FW ports for this very purpose
- hyperfocal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Last time I checked, the Series 3 Tivo was $799 + a monthly fee.
A Mac Mini is as little as $599 and this doesn't need a separate tuner, just a firewire cable to the cable box. - twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Isn't Tivo series 3 the only HD tivo that handles cable TV? Where are you getting those at $299?
- inkhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3All DVRs are REQUIRED by law (FCC) to have a way to get content off of them. It's the only reason the ports exist, obviously the law didn't require the cable companies to provide software or help you.
But I've been using my new comcast DVR to get content off to my Mac for a long, long time, including HD content. - sweetlew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As the article mentions in the end, iRecord does everything you need, you don't need to download the FireWire SDK. I've got a Scientific Atlanta 4200HD box with Cablevision, and iRecord's allowed for changing channels on the box and turning the box on prior to the scheduled recording.
Any PowerPC G4 Mac can record, but playback sucks. You might want to see if you can find a 1.83GHz core duo mac mini on ebay or used from Apple's online store if you want to do recording and playback on the same box. Or wait until Apple finally upgrades the minis to core 2 duo and buy the used core duo mini then.
Oh, and if you want to edit the stream (i.e. removing commercials), go with MPEG StreamClip with the QuicktimeMPEG2 library installed. - dancpsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you already have firewire-out, then all you need is a DVHS recorder for $600 and some video tape.
http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-6187654-6164633?asin=B0002J6LA2&AFID=Froogle&LNM=B0002J6LA2|JVC_Silver_DVHS_Digital_HDTV_Recorder__HMDH5U&nAID=14110944&ref=tgt_adv_XSG10001 - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quit quarreling already. The real deal:
It is available for OS Independent machines (Apple Macintosh running OS X on Intel) and other (Dell, HP, etc.) machines.
;) - PasteEater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You know, some of us use Digg as a tool, ie. I use Digg like a giant bookmarking site. I'll digg stuff that I know I can use, and then if I need to reference that information again, I can just look back through my profile for the articles that hold said information. Which is exactly why I dugg this article.
And yes, the more it gets dugg up, the more exposure it gets. Which is good if you have a Mac, a firewire cable, and an HD cable box. Like me. So, because I found this information useful, I figured others might find it useful as well. You didn't? Fine. Why come into the comments and bitch about it?
Also, is it really a surprise to anyone that an article that holds information specific to a Mac would be commented on by people who really like Macs? If anything, anyone who comes into these threads and starts spewing ***** like, "PCs can already do this BLAH BLAH BLAH" or "it's only dugg because it's Apple BLAH BLAH BLAH" are the real fanboys. - The_Ox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agreed. The article explains that you need to plug your firewire equipped cable box into your Mac.
- thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2do Tivos have FW output? are they required by the same FCC mandate?
- hockey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agreed. Until the content is un-encrypted or someone releases a product that decodes it I'm sticking to standard def. For me I don't see a reason to go HD. Format wars are still going on, legislation for it is still pending (at least in the US) and it seems like each new HD TV you buy is obsolete in 6 months because of some new fangled cable, connection protocol or format.
- milas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@izzybomb
Yeah, MythTV will add your Firewire box as a tuner device. The best thing to do is set up two TV channel lineups in your Zap2It subscription (1 for just analog cable, the other for full digital cable.) Split your cable three times. Once to the cable box, two to the tuner cards. Then connect the firewire to the PC and you can set it all up in MythTV. That way you can record 3 SD programs at once or 1HD + 2SD. It'll automagically figure out which device to use for which.
You can also modify the channel lineup to get rid of any that are 5C protected. - ACE1906, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This solution doesn't seem to integrate well with scheduling using a TV guide listing. If the Mac is only going to be used mainly as a PVR solution, would it be better to install Linux and MythTV on the Mac? (You can only install the MythTV frontend in OS X)
Installing MythTV on an Intel Mac Mini using Ubuntu
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_MythTV_on_an_Intel_Mac_Mini_using_Ubuntu - 04TL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1a mac isn't necessary, but it's easier and your last sentence proves that point -- we don't need to find some driver to connect to the motorola boxes...
i use the DVR to record what i want...then when i'm ready to transfer it to my computer, connect my powerbook to the cable box and record...really very easy and i don't have worry about encryption because once it's saved to my DVR, it's decrypted... - freesoul1971, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vista (Ultimate) supports end to end HDTV solution, including Cable Firewire support, inclusing uptodate Guide data, all over USA and Europe.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I saw this when it was posted, but didnt want to commment until i tried it out. Successful....I want to ***** your brains out!!! I've been looking for something to transfer my HD to my mac ever since I got an HDTV.
- keegan3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Got a chance to capture some HD content... ***** A.
- cbergeron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Uhm because this story doesn't require a "Spare WinXP machine with Firewire".
Why would you want to burn up an extra hundred Watts on your electric bill by running a "Spare XP" PC?
And why haven't you finished setting it up yet? - johnpaul191, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@morganm
not new in general.... but it varies when certain markets get the firewire enabled boxes. as far as i know my local cable peeps only offer Firewire on the HD boxes (at an extra cost of course). i don't have an HDTV, so i never tried it with my local company. - robo523, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I am having trouble doing this can anyone help? I have the avcvideo cap, it clearly recognizes my scientific american hd box, it records .m2t files that are big in size so I know they are recording something, lastly I open it up in my vlc player and nothing happens. The file won't open. Is it my VLC player, should I try an Mplayer? HELP!!!!! BTW i am using a ibook g4 with a gig of ram. hellllllllllpppp
- keegan3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The title seems to accurately describe the tutorial... He did use a mac.
- johnpaul191, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the point is to record it. the port is on the box so you can hook the box to the display via firewire cable, and it's kind of a fluke that a computer can just suck in the signal and record it.
- jeylux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1can't wait to try this tonight when i get home!
- cbmeeks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yet one more reason for me to upgrade my Mac. :-)
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