“I found that any Firewire-equipped Mac can be made into an HD-PVR for unencrypted content at the expense of an appropriate firewire cable. Apple even provides the necessary capture software that you need, provided that you know where to look,” Rob blogs for “motivated.”
The Project
Building a super-low-cost, HD-PVR.
Materials
1. A cable box with Firewire output
2. A Mac (with an available Firewire port)
3. A Firewire cable for connecting the cable box to your computer (with appropriate connection interfaces)
4. Some spare hard drive space (HD required ~100MB/min)
5. Apple Firewire SDK
6. MPlayer (or, alternatively, VLC)
Rob explains, “In my case, I used a Scientific Atlanta 3250HD Cable Receiver, a 12 inch 1.33Ghz Aluminum Apple Powerbook, and a spare Belkin male-male firewire cable that I had laying around from a Mac-to-Mac data transfer I did at some point. The Apple Firewire SDK is downloadable (free registration required) from the Apple Development Kits Page. MPlayer and VLC are also free downloads. In theory, any combination of 1-3 should work. If your cable set-top box lacks Firewire connectivity, ask for it. The FCC mandates that all cable services provide firewire output (on request if necessary) as of April 1, 2004.”
Full article with instructions here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike H.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple updates QuickTime Broadcaster (and how to turn your Mac into a PVR) – March 16, 2006
Anyone know if the FCC has mandated firewire out for Satellite companies as well? My DirecTV DVR box does not appear to have a firewire output on it, only a USB one….
“If your cable set-top box lacks Firewire connectivity, ask for it. The FCC mandates that all cable services provide firewire output (on request if necessary) as of April 1, 2004.””
does this effect the uk?, sounds interesting
andy: Do the American FCC (Federal Communications Commission) rules apply in UK, i.e. a different country. Hold your breath and count to ten and THINK about that…
Stupid question, but what’s a PVR?
to Andy, the FCC has nodirect effect on the UK. It is possible that because the feature is required in the US, it is kept on some European models simply because it is cheaper to design and produce one model than two, but the European and American television systems are very different so its probable that the boxes are designed completely separately and share no features.
There are two questions that I don’t see answered very well anywhere. The author says the it requires some pretty decent hardware, but only mentions problems in playback. For those of us who have a newish main computer far from the TV and an old something or other lying around, what are the requirements to just record? It seems to me that simply recording it should be much less processor intensive. Can my iMac, which has a slower G4 and less ram than the test model used by the author, capture the stream?
Second question: How easy is it to compress the videos once you have them? 7GB/hour is a lot and if you’re the type of person who likes to keep TV shows for awhile, you’ll run out of space very quickly. Will a free video converter like ffmpegx be able to take these and make them a lot smaller. The pirate sites generally put up digital HD content at about 350mB/hour, and while it is not as good as true HD it’s one twentieth the size. My happy middle ground is somewhere in between. Can I get there?
I had the same question, “Steves”. Googling led to the following, among other links, about High Def Personal Video Recorders:
http://www.eff.org/IP/broadcastflag/hdtv-introHY.php
This is news only for those who were until now ignorant. I was fortunate to have found a similar article posted 30 months ago (August, 2004) on the MacTeens website. It can be found here:
http://macteens.com/features/fullstory/how_to_make_your_own_home_theatre_mac_htmac/
Been doing this for awhle now…. but you can’t record pay/scrambled channels like HBO.
When I started, there were a number of cable specific HD channels that DID work… but now, I can’t record any of them except for possibly PBS.
mdn word = new.. as in this is not new for some of us….
jay, thank you, United States of Generica, go fsck yaself you sad twat
actually, YOU are the sad twat for asking the stupidest fscking question I’ve probably ever seen on MDN.
Since when do our laws and rules EVER apply to you? When?
I just got a Mac Pro.
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I know what the destiny of my G4 Quicksilver will be….
andy: that’s a bit harsh, expecially considering your question.
If the FCC was to mandate Firewire output on cable set-top-boxes today rather than a few years ago it simply wouldn’t happen — the studios would prevent it. You only have to look at the plethora of TS files on usenet to see why. This is why there is no mandated Firewire output on satellite stb or HD DVD or Blu-ray players,
It should be noted that this is ONLY required on HD cable boxes; conventional NTSC boxes are not required to have it.
Darn.
Ray,
Man, those Quicksilvers were so reliable. I bought mine in 2001, upgraded it to a dual and sold it to a friend last year. He’s still using it. It’s really not much slower than the dual 1.8 G5 I’m using at work right now.
And, it would make a great DVR.
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“actually, YOU are the sad twat for asking the stupidest fscking question I’ve probably ever seen on MDN.
Since when do our laws and rules EVER apply to you? When?”
For starters, when you are present in a state, when you live in a state, by consent, when you appear in court in a state to defend an action, when you do business in a state (from, say the UK), when you do some act in a state, when you cause an effect in a state by an act or omission elsewhere (like say, the UK), when you own something in a state, any other relationship where it’s fair and reasonable to drag you into court in that state.
That’s probably enough for starters.
…and when the UK government — nice one Tony Blair — unilaterally signs an anti-terrorist extradition treaty with US government in the hope that congress will (one day) agree to ratify the same. Then US government uses said treaty to extradite any British citizen they see fit without a prima facie case.
One of the famous examples so far is the ‘NatWest Three’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three
Hey guys, did it ever come to your mind that sometimes different countries have the same law? Like “you are not allowed to kill someone because you like killing”. Oh and sometimes companies that build their products under one states law ship that stuff to other states. Since he asked whether there was any effect on the UK it might well have been that several countries took up measures to establish some sort of standards (e.g. cable boxes’ outputs). Or that a major company now has built-in firewire ports in all boxes shipped worldwide.
…and when the UK government — nice one Tony Blair — unilaterally signs an anti-terrorist extradition treaty
How do you unilaterally sign a treaty? Um, doesn’t there have to be at least two parties to make a treaty?
As I’ve posted here before, this business of layman politics and armchair dysfunction is going to get us all killed. While we argue, they plan.
As for FCC rules and firewire ports, sounds like typical US Fed mishmash. IOW if your box has FW, cool, and if it doesn’t, ask. The side effect is manufacturers can’t afford to make anything for just one region (think California auto emission rules), so if you’re lucky you’ll get a FW port without it being law.
BTW, stupid is heated discussion and personal insults over a fscking PORT. What next?
Andy – are you on crack? Your low-life outbursts are not welcome on this site. Why don’t you lurk on other forums where you’d feel more at home where gutter-speak is acceptable.
Getting back to the topic at hand…..
I too have used the PVR solution with a G4 1GHz tower connected to my cable box. Worked very well in most cases with unprotected video, like ABC, NBC etc. As pointed out above, most digital channels are encrypted so there will need to be a cable card solution.
Problem is, most networks and distributors are only interested in selling you content on their own terms. Even though the FCC mandated FW connectivity the cable and networks companies found a good loophole and encrypted anything that wasn’t broadcasted. So basically we’re screwed until someone comes up with a box that has a cable card and I would be surprised if that was allowed.
Even EyeTV can’t do encrypted stuff, so the only way to record video is by analog (post decryption) which kinda defeats the purpose of digital video.
MW “Congress” – seriously – as in “Congress better plug some holes in that bill”
The m2t files i download do not play on mplayer or videolan (VLC). Is there a trick to this?
This was one of the first things I tried last year when I got my Mac. Then I found out that while the boxes have the port, they are not always active.
This was done before HDMI so it wouldn’t surprise me if they are allowed to stop putting these on the boxes.
The funny thing was the guy at Best Buy told me there was no such thing as 6pin to 6pin Firewire cables….like the one I use for my EyeTV 200.
@sbmac64
“The m2t files i download do not play on mplayer or videolan (VLC). Is there a trick to this?”
go to http://www.squared5.com/ and download MPEG Streamclip
it’s a shareware software solution that converts files. Also, I purchased the MP2 playback component from apple at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
these two together were able to convert m2t files I got off my DVR box.
you might also try VirtualDVHS
Absolutely freaking hilarious mate, best example of sly british humor I’ve seen on the net. You are the master of the understatement. Way to reel the big american fish in there boy. I mean really, “does this effect the UK?, sounds interesting” … Absolutely brilliant. Only a neanderthal would think that anyone in their right mind would be so stupid as to type a post asking if the USA’s laws applied to us on this side of the pond.
MDN word is “think”, as in what Andy should have done before he posted. Both times.