Digital Video Recorder

oldcat1 wrote:
Thank you all for your replies. Lots of good info. Seems more complicated that I thought. I was looking for a unit I could hook-up to the coax out from my digital cable box (my television uses the HDMI out) and manually record. I do not need to record one show while watching another or two shows at the same time. HD would be nice but not necessary. We want to set a timer to record movies when we are not watching TV, using the cable box output, and play them back via HDMI while traveling. We have been using a VCR but it is so old it will not record a digital signal so we need to upgrade.

I did not know that the TiVo's could be programmed manually without a subscription fee. There are lots of them on Ebay so that might be the way to go. I need to do more research.

Simply put, not happening.

Cable box will disable any and all analog outputs when a HDMI device is connected.

Even IF the coax output worked it would only output SD (480i) quality.

The coax output also would be a RF analog output designed for TVs which do not have HDMI, component or composite video inputs.

So if you wanted to record this output you would need a recorder with a analog tuner which would have to be set to the cable box output channel.

Even if you managed to record the output of the cable box you will never get HD video so no real reason to worry about a device with HDMI connection.

For your usage a old VHS VCR, a standalone DVD recorder or a combo DVD/hard drive recorder would work as long as the device has a analog NTSC tuner on board. The quality will be garbage if you use an analog tuner to record from the cable box so a old VHS VCR will work fine (no advantage to using a DVD recorder).

Stand alone video recorders have pretty much gone the way of the Dinosaurs. A few years ago I bought a "media player" which has analog composite video inputs (no tuner), it plays SD video to full HD video along with many audio formats, it however only records SD video and is no longer available for sale.

Even worse is finding any CONSUMER video recording device which can record full HD video from HDMI. There are very few of these devices are being made and none are being sold with in the US due to Copyright protection.

There are tuner cards made for computers which can record HD video but only a couple have HDMI inputs and those ARE Copy protected and will refuse to record from commercial HD video. The computer recorders also protect the recordings and will be playable only on the PC that recorded them..