“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
