Grabbing video from a DVR box???

You can't just connect your DVR box to your computer via USB and do it like that. You need to get a video capture card to do it. I use a Hauppauge USB external capture box to do it (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ..._pvrusb2.html). The entire box can act like a DVR box because you are able to time shift and schedule program recording via that box but I have digital cable and I can't plug my cable into the box straight (it needs to be decoded via my cable company's DVR box first). It's a bit of a pain in the ass because if you want to record something off the DVR box I have to start playing it on the DVR box and capture it on my computer real-time and also I can't change channels on the TV. I usually record it at 12Mbit quality to an MPEG-2 file (about 5~6GB per hour) and then edit out the commercials and then burn it to DVD.

why not? its just a hard-drive with files on it...

There has to be some softwhere that will let you 'look at it'

???

ive always been curious about those SATA ports on the back of my hd-dvr box, wonder if anything would happen hooking it up to a computer?

You can't really look at them for two reason:

1) Just because your DVD has a hard drive in it doesn't mean that it is formatted with a file system that you could mount on a Windows box. I use Time Warner's Digital Cable service here in New York and they gave me a Scientific Atlanta Exlorer 8000 cable box (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/con...oxes/8000.htm). If I recall correctly it runs on an embedded Linux variant thus its hard drive is formatted with something that is standard with Linux (ext3, ReiserFS, etc...) or perhaps is something that Scientific Atlanta developed inhouse. Either way you can't just pop the hard drive of your DVR into your computer and try to mount the drive. It will not work. Windows will need a translation module to understand how the file system is laid out. Windows only understands FAT32 and NTFS natively. You need some third-party drivers for Windows to make sense of a drive that is not formatted with a file system that is not native to Windows.

2) Most likely there is somekind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) mechanism in place. The people who developed the DVR box had to account for people installing the hard drive into a computer and reverse engineering their file system specs (or experimenting with the native Linux file system if the went with that) so they had to incorporate some kind of DRM mechanism.

I don't know what kind of DVR box you have but mine doesn't have any SATA ports on the back. I do have a USB port in the front but that is for diagnostic purposes. If you try to hook it up with a Windows box it will not recognize it as a mass media storage device and nothing will happen. Apperantly other people have tried this also (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...hat~mode=flat_.

The last DVR I heard that you could hook up to your computer and examine its content was ReplyTV. I've never owned one but a couple of the TechTV guys had them and they loved it. If you want to record stuff off your DVR I still think the best way to do it is with a video capture card.

All new DVRs have DRM protection on the content, and another protection system as well. Also, now a days even some video caputre card software (such as ATI All In Wonder) won't let you record most movies. The broadcasters (showtime, hbo, etc) are passing along a signal with all their shows that blocks DVD Recorders (the standalone VCR style ones) and much of the new software.

I was pissed as fuck when I hooked up my DVD Recorder to my digital cable and tried recording some shows, only to see a fucking message saying that I can't record shit.

I love my Tivo with TivoToGo.

When did they start this? I recorded from HBO a month or so ago on my standalone DVD recorder. I hope to do so again in February when Bill Maher returns (I only subscribe to HBO during his season).

The cable/dish companies put software on the DVR recievers so that it's not easy to copy over. Your best bet would be to go with what KobeBoy said.