How to preserve HDMI films/vignettes?

If your dvr has component video outputs (not composite), you can record that on a dvd/blueray recorder, not player, device. There may be some gadgets that pipe component video to a usb input on a pc, if you want to record & edit stuff on the computer. No way you get to record from hdmi unless you want to break the encryption! It's been done, but IMO, not worth the bother for the degree of "extra" HD you get. My eyes can't tell the difference...

thank you for your reply. will look I know there are quite a few output spigots available. I thought the HDMI output goes to a 'standard' Monitor and thus would not be encrypted, as such.

it depends, HDMI is just DVI with an optional layer of encryption

on HD stuff is generally encrypted, and only approved device can display it

though I'm sure you can get a gizmo that doesn't care about HDCP and just removes the encryption

-Lasse

Alas, mostly the only digital outputs available are HDMI (and thus completely incompatible with recording equipment, because the HDMI scheme is not licensable for a consumer recorder).

Two paths are available: TiVO type recorders support moving whole programs around a multi-TiVO household (but you can't save a favorite joke or commercial, there's no editing). And, there's the analog hole: if your DVR can playback Svideo or composite and has stereo line-out, you can use a variety of analog-TV capture tools and edit/save the video on your computer, then print to VCD or DVD. One could also live-tape to VHS, if such old-school equipment is deemed trustworthy.

I've never liked the standalone DVD recorders. Too much setup and planning, too little timely feedback and status info.

You might be able to disassemble the DVR, remove the internal hard drive, connect it as an additional/external hard drive to a PC, and copy the movie files from the DVR drive to your PC's drive. For around $25, you can buy an adapter from USB to either IDE (PATA) or SATA, so you can plug the DVR's hard drive into a USB port on your PC. Expect the movies on the DVR's hard drive to have weird file naming conventions and strange codecs. When you are done copying, put the DVR hard drive back in the DVR, and use the normal DVR functions to delete the recorded films. You might Google for "DirecTV" and the model number of your DVR for more information.

You may need strange screwdriver bits for this, and it will break the "warranty" seal on the DirecTV box, which may cause issues when it comes time to return or upgrade the box.

It may also be possible to replace the existing hard drive in the DirecTV box with a larger one. This sort of moves the problem down the road a little, but if the box is old and has a small hard disk, it can be a useful upgrade. Again, Google for something like "upgrade hard drive on DirecTV model 1234 DVR".

As others have posted, if the DirecTV box has a non-HDMI output, connect that output to something that can record it, play the movies from the DirecTV box, and record them on the other device.

Finally, TVs that could do 1080p were manufactured with DVI interfaces for about a week before the HDMI spec was ready. To serve this market, boxes exist that claim to remove the encryption from an HDMI output, turning it back into plain old DVI. This is *cough* only to be used to support those old HDTVs, and not to copy movies with, because that would be illegal *cough*. The box is called an "HDCP stripper". Expect to send cash to a PO Box in an obscure country to obtain one. You would also need a recording device that can accept DVI input.

Matt Roberds

THere are lots of HDMI recorders availble.

You need to research which one will do the job. But the Haupauge recorders seem to be affordable.

Cheers

om

but I think you'll find that none of the officially available recorders, wi ll record stuff that is encrypted (HDCP)

-Lasse

Very unlikely to work. All of the DirecTV DVRs built within the past ten years (at least) store the program on the disk in encrypted form.

As others have noted, HDMI signals are almost always encrypted (using HDCP - the High Definition Copy-control Protocol). And, the data rate on HDMI is so high that you'd burn up a huge amount of disk storage trying to save even a single program.

Unfortunately, the companies which originate the media (the studios) have required encryption and copy-control technologies of the companies that do the distribution, in part to make it difficult to do what the original poster wants to do.

Apparently you can get a HDMI splitter that over comes that limitation.

Cheers

One can DL and use a rip tool like MakeMKV to rip Bluray, HD-DVD and DVD, so I think they likely got ripping from this dvr down.

I can even watch my Bluray on my PC now, WITHOUT some lame SPAMYOU CONSTANTLY bundled with the reader software app. Just install the makeMKV tools and the VLC player... oh... And Linux... BRL!!

I didn't dig but the threads are old, so I doubt it should pose a problem, based on that alone. They was a flurry. Very likely solved.

Why pump it out and then try to grab it again, only to re-encode it (very poorly) on the way back onto your PC?

Why not simply get at the hard drive itself and decrypt and decode the files themselves at their FOOL resolution?

I will just bet that the cracker folks broke DirectTV DVRs years ago.

I didn't dig tho...