Can I record to DVD?

[Fins]

I have the 522 reciever and am trying to find out if I can take movies/shows Ive recorded and record them to DVD using a PC. I have had one installer tell me he does it all the time but he has an older DVR reciever. But the only answer I have found is to use something like Dazzle.

Is there any way to do this without having to buy some additional video capture hardware?

 

[RedHat39]

Nope you will have to use a video capture device of some sort to get the shows from your 522 to your PC.

 

[Shadowtester]

You will need a video capture card with either a S-video input or composit input.

 

[clearcut]

Here is the convoluted process that I used - ugly but it worked.

Set up the 522 in dual mode.
Connected TV2 to a VCR with RF (coax).
Tuned the VCR to antenna channel 60.
Extended the UHF remote antenna with a bit of coax to improve reception.
Connected the VCR to a digital camcorder (Sony) with the component output.
Set the camcorder to Analog to Digital pass through.
Removed the tape from the camcorder (otherwise iMovie wanted to control the tape and record from that).
Hooked the camcorder with firewire to a Mac.
Fired up iMovie.
Used Remote 2 to control the DVR.
Captured several shows in iMovie.
Edited out the junk.
Sent several shows to iDVD.
Created menus and burned a DVD.

If I was not so cheap I could have bought a TV tuner / DVR software for the Mac (EyeTV for example) and saved several steps. This worked surprisingly well.

 

[Shadowtester]

Or just buy a stand alone DVD recorder I have a Philips DVR80 that takes the S-Video out of the 522 just fine I was able to get the DVR80 for about $300.00 a few months ago works great. After you burn it to a DVD+RW just put it into your computers DVD player and you can copy it to the hard drive and with the correct software you could edit out the commercials and such then re-burn it back to a DVD. Just another option again not the best but it works.

 

[Fins]

Can anyone tell me how much quality will be lost using a capture device?

Oh, and Clearcut, man, you need to get out some. lol

 

[Wishbone]

Can anyone tell me how much quality will be lost using a capture device?

It's not that bad... When using a bitrate of 8000 Kb/s (1 hour/DVD) for the compression rate on the mpeg file, it's not that much different than live TV. When I use 4000 Kb/s (2 hours/DVD) the quality is around VHS SP. I record at 3000 KB/s for my races (3 hours/DVD) so I can fit two races per DVD (sans commercials) and the resulting quality is around VHS SLP (EP).