# Putting shows on DVD with DVD Recorder



## NoVaJEF (Jul 25, 2014)

I had a Humax Tivo and loved it. I put shows on DVDs for my oldest son while he was in college. He is out of college and a naval aviator in San Diego and on his own so I thought I could upgrade to a nice Tivo Roamio. Well....he is getting deployed next month and has given me a long list of shows he wants recorded and mailed to him while on the ship. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I don't have the old Tivo hooked up anymore. So here are my choices: I do have a DVD recorder that I could hook up to the Roamio but I cannot find anything that would enable me to put a recording on another device on the Roamio menu (even with my ancient Tivo2 before the Humax, you had the "Save to VCR" option), I could have the DVD recorder record live tv and schedule the recordings which would be a pain as I would have to find out every week which shows plays at what time....or....I can hook up my old Humax Tivo to another TV and have to keep my Verizon FIOS box which I was planning on getting rid of since I have a cable card in my Roamio. I'm not the savviest technology expert so I can't do an elaborate set up. I also do not have a computer with a DVD writer any longer, just a laptop with Windows 8 or an Ipad (if that were the route I had to go). Thank you for any help anyone can offer.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Just use the composite and stereo audo outs on the Roamio to the composite and stereo inputs on the stand alone DVD burner. 

I put my GFs Lifetime and OWN recordings on DVD for her. It works the same way it did with the Premiere and the Series 3 TiVos. This has been the easiest way for me to do it. Or you could transfer the content to a PC and do it that way too.


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## replaytv (Feb 21, 2011)

I have heard that standard definition looks horrible on a high def TV screen, so wouldn't the SD DVD look bad on the HD screens on board ship?

Because recreation is such a important part of life on board ship, I am thinking they must provide TV shows for the crew members. ( shipmates ? )


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Meant to quote OP not aaronwt....



aaronwt said:


> Just use the composite and stereo audo outs on the Roamio to the composite and stereo inputs on the stand alone DVD burner.
> 
> I put my GFs Lifetime and OWN recordings on DVD for her. It works the same way it did with the Premiere and the Series 3 TiVos. This has been the easiest way for me to do it. Or you could transfer the content to a PC and do it that way too.


I might suggest a HDMI capture card in your home computer assuming you have the ability to burn dvds on it. There is a third thing required which is a HDMI splitter that's fixes any HDMI issues you might encounter. Search for ViewHD HDMI splitter on Amazon, they are around $20 and well worth it. The only other issue it a rather manual time consuming process which can't easily be automated.

It takes a little practice and trial & error to figure out the video file formatting and conversion however you get a few done, it gets rather easy. I myself use a Black Magic Intensity Pro PCI card, I don't recommend the USB capture solutions as the USB 2.0 devices are limited in video resolution and the USB 3.0 devices are picky about the PC chipset were you may need a special motherboard to support them properly.


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

If you are willing to spring for a USB DVD burner such as:
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronic...qid=1406322698&sr=8-5&keywords=usb+dvd+burner

you can transfer the shows to your laptop, then use VideoReDo or any of several other converters to convert them to .mpeg and burn them to DVDs.

-- Doug


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## shrike4242 (Dec 1, 2006)

DougJohnson said:


> If you are willing to spring for a USB DVD burner such as:
> http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronic...qid=1406322698&sr=8-5&keywords=usb+dvd+burner
> 
> you can transfer the shows to your laptop, then use VideoReDo or any of several other converters to convert them to .mpeg and burn them to DVDs.
> ...


Seconding this option.

VideoReDo works great to convert Tivo shows to DVD.  Roxio's Creator NXT 2 also works, though I stopped using Creator when it was being twitchy for me to burn DVDs from Tivo files.

kttmg + VideoRedo + Handbrake has worked great to make MKVs out of Tivo files and they play + sound great.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Another option is to get a bunch of USB memory sticks or SD cards (If he watches with a PC or DVD player that supports them), 32GB or 64GB will hold a lot of shows. They can be mailed easier back and forth.

Downloading from Tivo is easy, using KMTTG, PyTivo or the old fashioned Tivo Desktop (not free). Files would be in a .TiVo file format which is an encrypted version of a .MPG. KMTTG will be able to decrypt. .MPG will play on any PC while .TiVo will only play on PCs with Tivo Desktop installed.

Otherwise a PC with a DVD burner will work but DVDs only hold 4 GB. With a windows PC, you could use VideoReDo TVSuite to edit out commercials, and burn to DVDs.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

replaytv said:


> I have heard that standard definition looks horrible on a high def TV screen, so wouldn't the SD DVD look bad on the HD screens on board ship?
> 
> Because recreation is such a important part of life on board ship, I am thinking they must provide TV shows for the crew members. ( shipmates ? )


It's DVD so it can't be HD. There is no way around it if you are using a DVD burner. It is going to be SD content.

Now If I take my own content to my GFs house. I either bring my Roamio Basic or I put the content on a hard drive or flash drive and use a media player to play it back. That way I can watch it in HD. My GF doesn't care whether the content she watches is in SD or HD. Anyone who uses DVDs is going to be watching SD content.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

If it isn't copy protected, you can download it to your computer. If it is copy protected you can use something like the Hauppauge HD-PVR to capture it to a computer (of course, that takes an hour to capture a 1 hour recording, so it is a little slow). Once on a computer you can get lots of programs that can re-encode it to a .mp4 file (which will be lots smaller than the downloaded .mpg files). You could then put those files on a DVD just using it as a data disk and they can be played back on any computer (and probably any tablet or phone as well).


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

aaronwt said:


> It's DVD so it can't be HD. There is no way around it if you are using a DVD burner. It is going to be SD content.


As long as the content burned to the DVD is H.264 in either a mp4 or mkv container and the player supports either format, HD works fine with a DVD-R blank.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

CoxInPHX said:


> As long as the content burned to the DVD is H.264 in either a mp4 or mkv container and the player supports either format, HD works fine with a DVD-R blank.


Yes that is true. I can even burn a DVD in the HD DVD format. Or at least I used to be able to. But a DVD burner is going to be SD. The solutions to get HD on the DVD are going to be more trouble than they are worth. Plus a DVD is low bitrate and very slow to burn. Even burning to a BD is very slow. It's much easier and faster to just copy an HD file to a flash drive or portable hard drive. And then view the content from that. Or like me, bring a Roamio Basic with me that had the HD shows transferred to it. I personally try to avoid putting files on disc since the process is so much slower than using a flash drive or portable hard drive.


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> [...]Plus a DVD is low bitrate and very slow to burn. Even burning to a BD is very slow. It's much easier and faster to just copy an HD file to a flash drive or portable hard drive. And then view the content from that.


It depends a lot on what equipment his son has to play the shows. If he is playing on a computer setup of some kind, mailing flash drives back and forth seems good. You can get HD, it's fast, and pretty cheap since I am seeing 64GB drives for under $30. If all he has got is some DVD player and TV setup, he is pretty much stuck with DVDs.

-- Doug


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

What about getting him something like a WD TV Live?

Then load up the shows on a portable drive or a flash drive and you're good to go.


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## NoVaJEF (Jul 25, 2014)

Do you schedule the shows every week or is there a possibilty to do a season pass on the DVD recorder just like the Tivo? I haven't looked in my DVD recorder's menu yet (it's a hand me down from my work so I haven't used it yet)


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## NoVaJEF (Jul 25, 2014)

Thank you all for taking the time to answer. However, I'm so technologically challenged that I think I'll stick to the DVD recorder as I don't understand how to transfer the shows from the Tivo to any other media.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

It's actually EASIER to transfer them to a computer nowadays.. don't get me wrong, for many years I was of the opposite opinion.. and I still use my hard drive/DVD recorder most days (to dub some stuff to it and watch faster than realtime -- though I do that MOSTLY by downloading to computer and using VLC on my iPad)..

ALSO, you MAY run into copy protection issues, sometimes for shows which are freely downloadable from your Tivo. I have run into that for some shows.. Somehow they trigger Macrovision, but are freely downloadable. (One example is World News Now.. Sometimes segments of it make my other recorder stop due to being copy protected..)


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mattack said:


> It's actually EASIER to transfer them to a computer nowadays.. don't get me wrong, for many years I was of the opposite opinion.. and I still use my hard drive/DVD recorder most days (to dub some stuff to it and watch faster than realtime -- though I do that MOSTLY by downloading to computer and using VLC on my iPad)..
> 
> ALSO, you MAY run into copy protection issues, sometimes for shows which are freely downloadable from your Tivo. I have run into that for some shows.. Somehow they trigger Macrovision, but are freely downloadable. (One example is World News Now.. Sometimes segments of it make my other recorder stop due to being copy protected..)


It's still easier to use a stand alone burner. My GF setup a bunch of Lifetime recordings this past week. Last night I realized I needed to get over a dozen of them on disc before Sunday. So the easiest is to use a DVD burner since I can just set it and go. But I had to supplement this by using the PC. I had not used VideoReDo in while. So I was glad I was able to use the newer version with my registration key from five years ago. I also had purchased a couple of copies of Nero 2014 Platinum when they were only $35 recently

So First I have to transfer a two hour movie, around 14GB to the PC. WHich isn't too bad since transfer rates are around 160Mb/s with the recent TiVo software. I am using KMTTG for that. Then I use VideroReDo to change it from .TiVo to .mpg which is quick. But then to shrink it down to a single layer DVD and burn it takes around 35 minutes with my corei5 at 3.9Ghz turbo.

So while the actual process of doing this takes less time than using a stand alone DVD burner that burns in real time, there are more steps involved. But the quality seems a little better than the stand alone burner. But I would not use this method if I wasn't short on time. If I could have found one of my old DVD burners I bought over a decade ago, I would have rather connected them up to record to more discs than do the PC route.

If for some weird reason I was doing these for myself to have on disc, I would just put them on a BD which would really speed things up. Since it wouldn't need to be compressed down. But my GF needs them on DVD.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

aaronwt said:


> It's still easier to use a stand alone burner. My GF setup a bunch of Lifetime recordings this past week. Last night I realized I needed to get over a dozen of them on disc before Sunday. So the easiest is to use a DVD burner since I can just set it and go. But I had to supplement this by using the PC. I had not used VideoReDo in while. So I was glad I was able to use the newer version with my registration key from five years ago. I also had purchased a couple of copies of Nero 2014 Platinum when they were only $35 recently
> 
> So First I have to transfer a two hour movie, around 14GB to the PC. WHich isn't too bad since transfer rates are around 160Mb/s with the recent TiVo software. I am using KMTTG for that. Then I use VideroReDo to change it from .TiVo to .mpg which is quick. But then to shrink it down to a single layer DVD and burn it takes around 35 minutes with my corei5 at 3.9Ghz turbo.
> 
> ...


I would go the way of flash memory or SD cards and retain the full 14GB size. Its also easier to mail (1 or 2 stamps, 2x for CDs) and reusable. $30-$35 for a 64GB SD/MicroSD card, and there are 128GB, perhaps 256GB soon.

Burning to CDs limits to 4GB/8GB dual layers and blu-ray to 25GB/50GB for dual layer but not reusable, except for rewritables.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

The one problem with transferring to the computer and then doing anything from there is that glitched recordings don't transfer all the way.

In the olden days, when I was using Save to VCR with the Series 1, who cares if the recording had a hiccup in it? You'd have a blip on the recording, but you could still dump it off to tape.

I hear newer models are better about resuming transfers, but if you've only got a TiVoHD and a computer, and don't have a second TiVo to transfer to, it's kind of a drag.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

murgatroyd said:


> The one problem with transferring to the computer and then doing anything from there is that glitched recordings don't transfer all the way.


You can transfer by pausing after the glitches and resuming transfer with KMTTG. Remember to rename the original file beforehand.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

ThAbtO said:


> You can transfer by pausing after the glitches and resuming transfer with KMTTG. Remember to rename the original file beforehand.


Sure, but it's not a start and let-it-run process like it was when I was dumping to VCR.

(Thanks for posting -- one of these days I do need to get around to clearing out some glitched recordings.)


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Here's a lesser-known, and not part of the WDTV line, that is a "one box" for storing and playing already-recorded content:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=400

It's called the "WD Elements Play", and it's a separate product line from WDTV Products. It simply loses all the live streaming apps, and focuses on playing what is transferred onto the internal hard drive, or right off a USB drive. Supplying new content is as easy as getting it onto any type of USB drive (and can probably just play it right from some of them, rather than having to copy it to the internal drive). It's probably easier than doing DVDs (I would say it definitely is in most cases, special circumstances aside).

It can also play ISO & VOB files (from DVD/BD-rips).


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

murgatroyd said:


> The one problem with transferring to the computer and then doing anything from there is that glitched recordings don't transfer all the way.
> 
> In the olden days, when I was using Save to VCR with the Series 1, who cares if the recording had a hiccup in it? You'd have a blip on the recording, but you could still dump it off to tape.
> 
> I hear newer models are better about resuming transfers, but if you've only got a TiVoHD and a computer, and don't have a second TiVo to transfer to, it's kind of a drag.


I've had no glitched recordings with my Roamios. They have all completey transferred.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

nooneuknow said:


> Here's a lesser-known, and not part of the WDTV line, that is a "one box" for storing and playing already-recorded content:
> 
> http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=400
> 
> ...


DO they sell that anymore? I found a review from 2010 for it and it's price was over $200. My PCH A400 media players only cost a little more than that. And they can play almost everything I throw at it. Plus there are other, or used to be other small media players to use that could play a bunch of media types. All you had to do was play the files from over the network or from an attached USB drive. I've probably owned at least a dozen over the last six years. They all had their pros and cons. No one ever got it completely right. At least with what I wanted.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

aaronwt said:


> DO they sell that anymore? I found a review from 2010 for it and it's price was over $200. My PCH A400 media players only cost a little more than that. And they can play almost everything I throw at it. Plus there are other, or used to be other small media players to use that could play a bunch of media types. All you had to do was play the files from over the network or from an attached USB drive. I've probably owned at least a dozen over the last six years. They all had their pros and cons. No one ever got it completely right. At least with what I wanted.


It's still sold. It's just a lesser-known product, and will not show up when you look for media players, unless you know to look for it (on the WD website).

All the WDTV line has refreshed, with some being 3rd gen now (but, following almost an identical, and confusing, naming of each, much like Roku did/does).

One thing that WD TV (and the likes of the WD Elements player) are well known for is playing an almost incomparable number of formats. As most say about it "It just plays whatever I throw at it.

One could just get one of the WD TV products, without an internal drive, and play from the USB drives (SSD type and platter), which does get you some additional functions, like networking and streaming support. I get if you are going for small, lightweight, and internal storage isn't necessary, the WDTV line might be best.

I have two 1TB WD TV Live Hubs, which are my favorite media players, and also work as NAS for backing up my laptops to, and/or pulling/pushing content from/to. The DLNA works as good as DLNA gets, IMO.

Unfortunately, The WD TV Live Hub seems EOL, and seems that it will not get a refresh cycle product to take its place. Perhaps the Elements Play is also in the same limbo.

What impresses me with WD TV (and the like-Elements products), is that updates are regularly released, which tend to both fix things like a format being incompatible, as well as add new features not part of the product when purchased. Slingplayer client was one such addition.

When it comes to raw speed, and compatibility with formats, I have yet to find an equal, or greater, product from another company (in the same class, and cost bracket).


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