We have Charter/Spectrum cable service and lease their DVR/receiver. They go bad from time to time, we just had to replace another.

When the box is replaced, we lose all our saved recordings. Some is irreplaceable. There appears to be a way to pull those recordings off but pretty expensive and can be a tech mess.

The box has an eSATA port for an external hard drive that formats to the specific Charter box, can't be hooked up to another identical model without reformatting.

Charter's website says recordings should go to the HD with the most space. That should be the new external drive 2TB vs. Charter's DVR with 500GB. Not the case it turns out. The external drive will only be used when the Charter DVR is full.

I looked into Tivo but it's the same thing. Accepts an external drive, not used until the Tivo is full.

Any idea how to get some control over my recordings? This is all probably my first steps to cutting the cord but not ready to go there yet. I don't want to stream and use WiFi yet, looking for a hard line solution. I see cable card receiver units with no DVR are out there, is there a gold-standard going this way?

There are open source DVR software distributions that will keep your recordings in a transferable format. These (usually) run on Linux, and basically just require a regular PC with a TV capture card installed. The TV card has to be able to decode your cable format to work with your cable provider.

Development of thse appears to have slowed considerably, perhaps due to cable providers "protecting" their content, perhaps to the proliferation of non-commercial ways to get content (e.g. Pirate Bay).

I put a MythTV together some years ago, probably 10, I'm not exactly current on this. It wasn't hard to do. It worked fine for over-the-air TV at NTSC SD resolutions, but I had just a basic TV card, and never tried to hook it directly to cable or do HD. I did have it on the TV side of the cable box for a while, but then you lose the ability to change channels if you want to record something scheduled for when you are away (there's probably a fix for that too, e.g. with an IR emitter to spoof the cable remote).

If you go this route, make sure you get a big disk array, video uses a ton of storage.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
There are open source DVR software distributions that will keep your recordings in a transferable format...

Yikes, as I'm finding out, what seems like a simple problem is not easily solved.

I'd think wanting to save HD recordings and having some control over them would be pretty common. Talking to the cable provider Charter, the DVR/receiver maker Motorola/Arris and the external hard drive provider, no one has a solution really. The whole "protecting their content" looks like the fly in the oatmeal.

Buying movies, tv series and the like is not cost prohibitive if you want them bad enough. One time deals, irreplaceable content gets caught up in that and customer is screwed. I can't believe content providers are that protective of stuff that is otherwise readily available.

In a recent Comcast thread, someone pointed out what a big seat cable companies have inside the beltway, the customer has no say.

Let me try to simplify my question.
With Tivo, can I move stuff stored on its internal storage to an external hard drive hard wired via the eSATA connection?

If you run Plex Media Server (subscription version) you can add a Silicon Dust tuner box and enable the DVR function. Works very well.

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
If you run Plex Media Server (subscription version) you can add a Silicon Dust tuner box and enable the DVR function. Works very well.

Thanks, I'll have to figure out what that means but it's sure looking more and more like what should be easy isn't.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
what should be easy isn't.

Exactly.

Video entertainment is in the crosshairs of copyright protection. Much of what should be trivial is made impossible/difficult/expensive/illegal (pick at least two) on purpose, by folks with a lot of technology and money and lawyers and legislators behind them.

Absent the above, you'd be able to make digital copies from DVDs, or from content snagged over the air, or from websites and save them like any other file. I can see the concern, from the standpoint of people who expect to get paid per view and/or per copy.

In the real world, it's not going to be simple.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
Let me try to simplify my question.
With Tivo, can I move stuff stored on its internal storage to an external hard drive hard wired via the eSATA connection?

I do not know the answer to your question, but a good source of information might be https://www.weaknees.com. They seem to be the leading third party resource for TiVo and TiVo-compatible stuff. They have helped me more than once.

There is a "contact" link on their web page, toward the bottom of the sidebar on the left.

They sell TiVo compatible hard drives, so they should be able to tell you about the transfer capacity that you are looking for.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
..a good source of information might be...

Thanks, V-Tail, I'll dig into it when I've got some time. I registered at a busy Tivo forum with the same questions, looks your link will address issues they've raised.

I just want a little control over my chosen recordings, I am not an animal!

Pretty sure the XBOX is capable of being a DVR for both OTA and Cable Boxes.

I have not fooled with it personally but have started reading some about it as I am looking for a OTA DVR setup with no subscription fee.

Plex discussion on DVR with a cablecard compatible HDHomerun

This is a discussion of using an HDHomerun Prime device paired with the DVR service available in Plex. Page three of the thread is recent and seems applicable to your situation.

I've been using the Plex DVR feature for a while now. I'm only recording OTA but it works well for me. The automatic commercial removal is also a nice option that I'm enjoying.

quote:

Originally posted by 1gkek:
Plex discussion on DVR with a cablecard compatible HDHomerun

This is a discussion of using an HDHomerun Prime device paired with the DVR service available in Plex. Page three of the thread is recent and seems applicable to your situation.

Well, reading through, it doesn't seem there yet for cable. The sticking point looks to be Digital Rights Management - DRM - and how its applied and who is doing so.

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
If you run Plex Media Server (subscription version) you can add a Silicon Dust tuner box and enable the DVR function. Works very well.

Is the DVR in this setup part of the Silicon Dust tuner box, or is it in a dedicated PC media server?

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

Is the DVR in this setup part of the Silicon Dust tuner box, or is it in a dedicated PC media server?

The DVR is part of the media server. Originally they built it to work with silicon dust tuners. I think that people are using/testing other tuners, but I’ve only used the hdhomerun tuner from silicon dust.

FWIW, after digging out from a mountain of info, I've taken my first tentative step -- upgrading my rickety old router.

It's looking like trying to save vids on my terms is necessarily leading to fully cutting the cord. I'd like to wait a little with that whole scene being a bit of a mess. With so many now doing it, I think a year from now the whole process will be smoothed over, straightforward and standardized.

quote:

With so many now doing it, I think a year from now the whole process will be smoothed over, straightforward and standardized.

Sadly it will not be. That is the downfall of Plex and all the open source developers. It is always changining a evolving. It has never been a set and forget kind of thing.
I gave up on it years back when I had kids as I no longer had time to keep up.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
I think a year from now the whole process will be smoothed over, straightforward and standardized.

"They" have been saying that for a couple of decades now...

If you look at it another way, hindering producers from "protecting content" means that there will be less easy money in producing it, and the quantity and/or quality of recorded entertainment will inevitably decline. Some might argue that this has already happened. I am not one of these, I think there is more and better than there has ever been, although there is also a lot more of stuff that I don't care for, and wading through the crap to get to the tasty nuggets is also more of a burden than ever.

Well ok then, guys, I forge ahead not worrying that my money would go farther in the near future.

Here's how I used to do it, but it is a bit time consuming.

Have a computer with a video capture card. These vary in quality. I used one from Avermedia. You will need capture software. The software that came with my card sucked, so I used Pinnacle, I think.

Have a DVR hooked up to the video capture card. Record from your cable box to the DVR. Play something recorded on the DVR while recording it on the computer.

You can stick the output file on a hard drive connected to your Roku or similar device to watch it, or you can edit it and create a DVD or Blu-Ray disc. For this you will also need editing software. I used TMPEGenc Authoring Works, and it worked great.

Like I said, this is time consuming, and probably isnt worth it for stuff you could find cheaper on Netflix or Amazon. But things that won't be aired again, like sporting events, it works fine.

quote:

Originally posted by AUTiger89:
...But things that won't be aired again, like sporting events, it works fine.

Yes, the one off stuff is what I regret losing when the cable company's DVR/recvr. goes bad.
As you point out saving vids isn't a one button/device procedure.

My provider, Charter/Spectrum is just now offering streaming packages with some a la carte options. Much less expensive than cable bundles plus I'd keep their tech support which has always been pretty good. It makes sense for them to do this and I'm hoping they'll do things right.