Home audio & video forum: Looking for HDMI passthru capture device

Is it recorded from a Satellite or Cable company issued DVR? If so, you will likely run into copyright protection issues. Most boxes/providers use 5C protection or make it difficult to export even the unprotected content you've recorded/saved. Please be more specific on which DVR & content (which channels) you have in mind.

I have Comcast digital cable. The front of my DVR says "Xfinity (Motorola) RNG200N". There is also a sticker on the bottom that says Model No. DCX3501. My TV is a Samsung PN63B590T5FXZA.

I am not trying to export any content directly from the DVR. I want to put a NEW device in series with the HDMI cable that goes from the DVR out to the HDMI input on my TV, like this.

DVR > CAPTURE BOX > TV

where each > is an HDMI cable.

AFAIK, the TV doesn't do any decryption so the signal from the DVR to the TV should be unencrypted.

Don

AFAIK the content captured on the hard disk of the DVR is encrypted or flagged 5C, with the exception being a few of the network channels possibly. It's basically the end result of a 'copy once' policy that the cable companies have to accommodate in order to protect content that is owned by the networks. There are some workarounds involving certain Motorola boxes that have firewire outputs, but even those might have their own set of limitations if you google around. The content I have seen captured using this method produced poor results, FWIW.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/

Scroll down to the Capture products.
Bob

When looking for the HDMI solution I have seen many devices with RCA jacks for composite video plus audio on one side and a usb cable on the other side to connect to the computer.

Is composite video encrypted? If not then would this solution work?

I originally wanted to use HDMI because it has high quality video plus audio but if that won't work I'm willing to use composite.

Thanks,
Don

Sorry but to speed this up you may want to research MACROVISION ENCRYPTION on google.

Also, composite video is usually 480i so it's up to you to know if that is acceptable.
Bob

The HDMI capture card is a low cost solution for capturing high quality uncompressed video from HDMI devices like decks, top boxes and cameras. Also it can compress stream input directly via professional codecs. It features On Air 2.0 functionality that allows you to use 2 Intensity cards on a Mac Pro computer, giving you a way to work with two HDTV cameras.

Please reply to the original poster since I already knew this except some would debate if this was low cost.
Bob