Many people want to know how to copy programs from their DVR to computer. This is understandable because it allows you to make your entertainment more portable. In this article, we will explore the various ways to do this.
My friend Bob, who has a DVR provided by his cable company, recently had a problem. You ran out of disk space on your DVR and you didn’t want to delete any of the shows you had stored on your DVR. He had recorded a lot of the latest top online movie rentals and he definitely didn’t want to miss out on them. However, in order to record new shows on your DVR, you would have to delete your current shows or find a better solution.
My friend Shelia was on a different boat. He travels incessantly for work and loves to watch his favorite TV shows on the go. His favorite TV show is Southpark. Shelia said to me, “Richard, I have all of these shows stored on my DVR. Is there a way that I can transfer these shows to my best-selling laptop and watch them while on the go?”
Shelia and Bob have different problems, but the solution they need is the same. Somehow they want to transfer programs from their DVR to their computer.
Today I will tell you how to do it.
There is an ideal solution for this problem, but in most cases it does not work. This is the ideal solution. Your DVR, like your computer, stores information on a hard drive. So it would be great if you could copy the programs stored on your DVR to your computer or laptop hard drive. Unfortunately, for various reasons, you cannot do this most of the time.
So you need a different solution.
To put programs from your DVR on your computer, you need to capture the video from the DVR on the computer. If your computer has a Firewire port (some come with it built in) and your DVR does, you’re good to go. You simply need to connect the DVR and the computer with a Firewire cable and use a program called CapDVHS to capture the video that is played on the DVR.
If you don’t have a Firewire port, you will need to purchase a video capture card with input ports that match the output ports on your DVR; most people use the component RCA ports, but you may be able to use HDMI, S-Video, or DVI as well. After getting this video capture card, you will connect your DVR to your computer through one of these ports. Finally, you can use the CapDVHS program to capture the DVR recordings or ideally use the program that was included with your video capture card, which should have all the necessary software to capture the program from your DVR and put it on your computer. .
In short, while it would be great to just copy programs directly from the DVR to your computer, this generally cannot be done. You need to “capture” the video that is playing on your DVR on the computer using a video capture device on your computer.
Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy enough to record entertainment from your DVR to your computer and will allow you to take your travel entertainment with you.
