I finally got some good TV but now I ain’t got time to watch. Here’s what I have. Please tell me the best solution.
My service is MOD. It has enough channels. As far as I know I can’t program channels in advance. I can only select the channel I want and leave it on all night.
I have a VITO DVD recorder. No hard drive. I can program the times I want it to record. Of course it will be set on Video in.
I’m thinking of recording my shows on a re-writable DVD.
From there I’m lost…
I’ve never had much luck editing video shows Once I tried doing any work on my computers in the past. The video quality would go down hill. I had a video capture card at one point and free editing software. It would loose frames and it would look horrible.
My other DVD player can play avi and Mpeg files, so I would be happy some how get these shows into this format, and dump them on DVD’s or flash cards.
My VIto recorder is about to go to the junkyard in the sky soon, so I could try an other type of recorder. But TV isn’t that important to me. I don’t want to spend too much.
Are you trying to record local TV shows or the main steam US/UK prime time shows? Just about every single TV program show on US or UK TV can be found online for download with the ads cut out and neatly packaged.
I’m trying to record both. Shows that are offered on the Channels provided by my MOD service… Nickelodeon-Asia, FX, Kidsco et etc.
I’ve tried downloading them from the web but the shows I find are of bad quality. It’s also kind of illegal, though the same shows are available for free in the USA on line! We are geo blocked! I have considered buying an IP in the USA, but then… it’s too expensive. I already pay enough for programing.
Bottom line… I’m happy with the shows provided by my provider. I just can never watch the shows when they are on. I need to time shift for the most part but I do want to keep some favorite shows around on disk or the hard drive.
Will MOD offer a PVR soon? I think the remote has a record button but it’s unused. Is there a device that I can hook up to record MOD? Since I only watch one channel on days I want to record. A simple recorder that can just be programed to start and stop at the desired times would be enough. Please help.
If you use Kbro cable service, you can go with a package that include a PVR to record onto an external HDD they provide. Works pretty good all in all from my experience.
You could invest in a DVD recorder. Many of the better ones have a built-in hard drive, 160 GB or so. You could load that up and then burn stuff you wanted to keep, and delete files and continue to record the shows you want, etc.
KBRO… that is the problem. I had the first generation digital cable. It had almost all the channels I had on MOD.
I loved it for two years… six English entertainment channels
then 5, then 4, then 3, then two, then one… well… none
The box became an expensive digital clock. I complained. My wife complained. My friends complained. There was no justice. I vowed I will never go back to KBRO, so…
I can only join them when never is over… that’s my problem. I have a dvd recorder. It’s kind of old.
I don’t need the channel switching features of a DVD recorder because I can only use video in. Is there some kind of box that is designed to be hooked up to the video out of a cable/MOD box that can let me program the times I want recorded, then plug it into my PC to transfer the files.
I would prefer to have my tv shows in AVI format or MPEG format as they can just be popped onto an SD card and viewed on any cheap DVD player. I like that. I tried editing my Videos that I recorded with my DVD recorder into compilations, but every video file I ripped or recorded from my video capture card at the time then re-encoded to DVD lost quality dramatically. It became like a stop action animation film or the audio lost sync to the picture. I don’t know what I was doing wrong. In therory my pc was powerful enough, but who knows.
At the present time I just record videos from the web, convert them to mpeg or AVI with tune bite and there are no worries. But these are just clips and short features. Now, I’d really like to record from my TV, get an mpeg or avi and watch later using my memory stick.
Are you sure your DVD recorder can’t be programmed? It should be able to be programmed for recording TV channels, and then somewhere in there you can specify you want it to record from line in. What make/model is it?
[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]KBRO… that is the problem. I had the first generation digital cable. It had almost all the channels I had on MOD.
I loved it for two years… six English entertainment channels
then 5, then 4, then 3, then two, then one… well… none[/quote]
I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about then. I have many English channels. Seriously, well over 20. Maybe even 30. Maybe you had the most basic package they offer. I’ve clogged up my PVR with too many movies and 1-2 hour long documentaries, but the capacity isn’t bad and for recording TV series, it’s a jiff.
Yes, my recorder can be programed. I can’t use the tuner because I must use its line in feature.
Mod can’t be programed, like I used to on my Kbro digital set up years ago.
With MOD, i can only set it to the channel I want and leave the box on all night.
That’s not a problem.
My biggest problem is organizing. The dvd recorder only records in DVD format. I want to rip it into an AVI format and store it on my computer or a DVD. I tried editing DVD’s in the past and got nothing but trouble.
I’m expecting my DVD recorder to drop dead soon, so I would like an other alternative as well.
PS: I had it a long time ago… There were … THe Halmark Channel, Nickelodian, Yo-Yo TV 2, MGM, and many others. Little by little they all disappeared. They’re back now… but now it is too late.
No offence, but it sounds to me like you don’t need new stuff, you need to learn how to use your current stuff.
That said, DVD recorders are, well, meh imho.
Sadly there aren’t a lot of alternatives in Taiwan unless you get a video capture solution for your computer and connect it directly to the MOD box.
Something like this would be able to capture good quality video if the MOD box has component video output avermedia.com/avertv/Product … spx?Id=528
You wouldn’t be able to capture the HDMI signal as I would presume it’s HDCP copy protected.
Here are some of your software options en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison … e_packages
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]No offence, but it sounds to me like you don’t need new stuff, you need to learn how to use your current stuff.
That said, DVD recorders are, well, meh imho.
[/quote]
No offence taken. Me, a couple owners of local computer shops and the techies of that yellow 3 C that the gambling karaoke singer who looks like “Moe” is the spokes person for could not get my system to encode captured videos or even ripped and edited DVD files well. (I live in the country guys… My Chinese is not great! I have nice guys like Gomer, Goodber and Barny who want to help me, but they’re specialties are games and office systems. Not video capture…It’s Mayberry, Hooterville or Petty Coat Junction, not New York. )
That problem took care of itself. The damp weather rotted away my video capture card, I had two mother boards go south since then. I gave up on encoding DVD’s. There is really no need to nowadays anyway with those USB slots and DVD players that can play computer video files.
So… here is what I have…
Old DVD Recorder that Can be programmed to record at preset times. I can record one hour per DVD at good quality.
A great format converter program called Tunebite.
I need a decent program that will rip my recorded DVD file into any other computer file that Tunebite can take care of. I don’t want to loose quality. Standard video quality is ok. It’ just TV. No HD set anyway.
What is this PVR box sold at costco? There is also some “record anything” box sold at 3C. There is no English documentation on any of those devices.
What spec is your computer, as this really matters. In other words, what’s the CPU, model name, how much RAM and how much free hard drive space.
What software are you using for editing the DVDs?
How do you connect the DVD recorder to the MOD box, i.e. what type of cables (composite (yellow plug), S-video (black plug with four pins) or component video (red, green, blue plugs)) as that matters as to how good the quality will be too.
As for your DVD recorder, I can’t really help you, you’re going to have to figure that one out on your own in terms of how to program it. But if you only get 1h of decent quality video on a single disk… there’s only so much you’ll be able to record with it anyhow.
Never ever heard of Tunebite, but they claim they rip DVDs so…
If you get something like a video editing program, even a simple one, you can edit out ads etc. and a decent one would let you save the files in any format you’d want. As far as free ones goes, well, Windows Movie Maker would do the job I guess, it’s simple, works and shouldn’t have too much of a problem handling your recorded discs, and it’s free. explore.live.com/windows-live-mo … r?os=other
You might also want to have a look at videohelp.com/ which contains a lot of useful, if somewhat hard to find info about all things video related.
Not seen the PVR boxes, but get me a model name and I’ll dig out some info. Problem is, most PVR’s won’t let you take the content off easily and are limited to poor quality inputs (like composite video) unless they have direct antenna input like this box for example shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=item … 1301&c=A05 although it seems to be for HiHD rather than cable and what not.
It seems to offer direct to PC editing as you can record to an external USB/eSATA hard drive and the other bonus of something like that is that it’ll also play back what you’ve recorded, edited and then put back on the hard drive. It can also play back stuff of a USB DVD/Blu-ray drive which would replace your DVD player and it can also stream files over the network from your PC.
It might be a bit overkill though, it all really depends on how much cash you want to spend. I can’t seem to find one that would connect up to your MOD box in a sensible way though.