Record digital channels like a Tivo? (1 Viewer)

[Cameron_Peck]

Why can’t HTPC’s record digital channels like a Tivo? Can we use Girder to send an IR signal to the cable box and take the signal from there to the HTPC? Does anyone have any workarounds?

 

[Tekara]

okay - what? your confusing me. . .

I will try and answer what I think is the question, so please don't get upset if I'm in left field here

to my knowledge there is no digital decoder available for a pc. so you still need a digital cable box or a satellite box to decode the signal then you can feed that signal into the computer to record it.

now, some workarounds for control are:
1. there was once talk of the ability to hook your computer up to a satellite box via the serial port on the computer and on some boxs. I haven't heard much about it and haven't seen any programs that would allow for the interface so you might need to look into making your own program for this route.
2. you can look into doing a lot of programming and teach your computer how to send an IR signal which then you could have the computer control the box via IR as you suggested. But I've seen no such program around so you'd have to look into making it yourself.

the most common method however is to just manually change the channels and let the computer record the signal that way, as the other two methods require some good knowledge of computers and programming.

 

[Richard Travale]

Check this site out.

 

[James_A]

Content providers in the US don't want us to be able to do that... .

Jim

 

[Crissy_S]

There is a more recent article at: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...,692134,00.asp

 

[John_Bonner]

Great link Crissy. I've been also looking into doing this and the article gave some excellent tips.