Comments on: Record Shows from your Comcast HD DVR onto your Mac

By: RG

RG — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:33:40 +0000

This is great information; thank you so much for the tutorial (and the accumulated experience of all the people responding). Now, I have another related question: I’ve been recording some shows witht he DVR function of the Motorola Comcast, and I haven’t find the way to export that (to my Mac Book Pro, or to an external hardrive). Is there any way to do so, or the only way is to record it to my Mac with the method explained above?
Thank you!
R.

By: justin

justin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:00:21 +0000

ok, i have a comcast dvr with a full hard drive, ive gotten usb canles, ethernet cables titanium toast 10 for $100, every person i talk to has a different method. is there a way to hook the mac to the dvr and select all, copy, and paste???????????????

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:17:45 +0000

Ok may have found one issue.

I had two hard drives daisy chained between the cable box and the computer. When I connected the cable box directly to the computer I was able to record shows from the DVR with audio. (Had one time that it still didn’t work but seems to be fine now.)

Still not able to record live shows from the cable box. (Though I’m going to try again and see if I can get it to work.)

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:06:24 +0000

I’m getting video from the DVR but no audio? I’m not getting anything from the boxes live channels.

- Comcast DVR (Motorola)
- MacMini (just got January 2010)
- San Francisco, CA

I used to do this a few years back with the same cable box and a Mac G5 tower. With that setup I never got HD to record.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:48:13 +0000

I also have a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5.8 and am using a Cox motorola DVR. I have tried the front USB port and the rear USB port, but the device is not recognized in AVCvideo.cap. Any suggestions? I’m using a USB 2.0 A to A cable from the DVR to the MAcBook as usb are the only compatable ports I have.
Thanks.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:08:58 +0000

Hey I have a Motorola DCX3400 and a Mac running Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and I am trying to pull it up in Final Cut Pro. Has any one been able to make that happen? When I open Final Cut it says that it cant find the device.

Any help would be great. Thank you

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:48:31 +0000

I’ve tried to record from the Motorola 6412 using AVCVideoCap, but some channels, even though coded “copy freely” turn our to be full white screens. Are these encrypted anyway? I don’t have problem with some other HD channels. BTW, I get really good results with recording HD, converting using MPEG Streamclip, then importing to Final Cut Pro, then burning blueray disks using Toast 10 Platinum. Beautiful.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:11:55 +0000

This is awesome.. just did it with snow leopard and fire wire sdk 26 worked perfectly

By: matt

matt — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:18:43 +0000

Kelly Feb 19th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

I have a PowerBook G4 runnint 10.4.1 with FIreWire SDK 26 and am trying to pull from a Comcast Motorola DHC3416. I think I’m having issues with AVCVideoCap. I can see the device and it originally shows as open. After I save the file I don’t get the properties box that I see referenced in all online docs. When I click the capture button I get an error message that says “Cannot open device”.

Would greatly appreciate insight.

USE SDK 20 on Mac OS 10.4 – SDK 26 won’t work for me either!

By: Bob White

Bob White — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:43:28 +0000

I don’t even have the dvr, just a set box with 2 firewires and i’m able to record every channel i’ve tried so far (espn hd, kteh, abchd, and so on)

just wondering, how big would a 1 hour file be? around 3 gigs i’m estimating?

because sometimes i want to be able to record nba games when i’m not at home, but anyway, this method works perfectly! thanks!

Macbook (white) 2.4, 2 GB, 160 GB
Snow Leopard 10.6.1

By: Dan Sz

Dan Sz — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:14:26 +0000

I could transfer a recorded copy of the History Channel and TNT to my Macbook. When you hit the capture button on the Mac, it is best to pause and unpause the recording (starting in a place before you actually want to transfer) so make sure the audio gets through.

Note: When I was transferring this time, the picture on the TV was stuttering like heck, but the video on the Mac was perfect.

I don’t have any movie channels to test this with, but I’m going to record Star Wars on Spike and see if I can transfer that.

By: Dan Sz

Dan Sz — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:42:44 +0000

I just captured recorded 720p from a Motorola DCX3425 (labeled DCX3400, but it has a 250GB HD so that might make the 25 at the end).

It was recorded the night before and played through the DVR out the FW cable to my MacBook Pro running Leopard and FW SDK26.

I started the capture and then unpaused the DVR. No probs. I couldn’t play the file in Quicktime 7 Pro (don’t think I have the MPEG2 plug-in), but it played in VLC.

I have read that local channels can be recorded, but not the encrypted higher channels or movie channels. I’m going to try that next.

By: sergio

sergio — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:41:56 +0000

Hello, is there a way to export video from a mac to comcast dct3400 via firewire?

Thanks

By: marina

marina — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:48:58 +0000

I have a comcast dvr.. i want to record the movies saved on my comcast dvr to a dvd.. is that possible?

By: Kelly

Kelly — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:53:40 +0000

Would greatly appreciate insight.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:49:40 +0000

@CHAD, dont you just start playing the recorded content and then record on the Mac? I thought it recorded whatever was being viewed, maybe thats not how it works.

By: chad

chad — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:38:45 +0000

On MB Pro, Leopard 10.5.6, got this up and running in about 15 minutes no problem. Very nice tutorial, thanks. Now I just need to figure out how to get the _existing_ recordings off the DVR. BTW, my DVR service is through Cox, not Comcast.

By: R. Rudge

R. Rudge — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:51:05 +0000

Hi everyone,

First off, thank you for the information. I have been wondering how to do this for some time. Thanks for the instructions.

I would like to add that the instruction/owners manual for the Comcast HD-DVR gives you instructions on how to copy stuff from the DVR to a VCR (naturally HD programming wouldn’t work this way). Although there is protection on some cable programming, it’s nice to know, that for personal use, Comcast doesn’t seem to be too concerned about this.

Thanks again.

By: anthony

anthony — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:25:35 +0000

i was wondering if this will work with verizon????

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:26:31 +0000

What about taking that content off tne Comcast DVR and onto a PC netowrk not MAC. I have firewire on my pc’s. I have great content that I don’t have time to watch but if I could stream it to another room where I indoor bike I could. Not looking to pirate stuff just watch what is stored on one DVR on another or a PC etc….

Puzzles why this is a big deal.

Thanks.