# Anybody hook up a DVD recorder to a DirecTivo box?



## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

I bought a DVD recorder (a Panasonic DMR-EH55S). It has a 200GB HD and a feature that allows you to copy something from the HD to the DVD media at an accelerated rate. 

I've read the reviews by others who've bought it and they've all complained that their TV Guide feature has problems with DirecTV (but not cable).

I guess the workaround is to set the DVD recorder to record manually (eg. record from 11am to 2pm) and then make sure that the DirecTivo box stays on the channel (from 11am to 2pm) that I want to record. That kinda prevents me from using the fast write feature though.

Has anybody hooked up a DVD recorder to a DirecTivo box?


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## Vroomfondel (Jul 10, 2006)

Many of us have DVD recorders hooked up instead of VCRs. Some have HD based recorders and others do not. The answer is the same, though.

Just as previously with VCRs, features like auto setup and TV Guide don't usually work with D*. As you said, you need to treat it as a manual setup and record by time (or record to the DVR and save out later).


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

Don't try to record to the DVD recorder in "live" mode. Have the TiVo record it and then you re-record it later to the DVD recorder. Of course, when you do this you can't watch anything else from the TiVo, although it will continue to record. I usually setup my DVD recorder before I go out or before bedtime.

The TV Guide feature in some DVD recorders is basically useless, unless you have OTA or cable.


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

I have a Panny DMR-E80H (no 'program grid/record feature') and I only use it as a 'dumb' DVD/hard drive burner via manual record - I _never_ use the timer feature! I get used to doing 'burns' when I am leaving the house or going to bed for the night so as to leave the DTivo freed up. I use the 'save to VCR' function so that it puts the 10 seconds of description banner on the recorded video.

Statement of obvious: There is no way to speed the transfer from the DTivo to the Panny DVD recorder - it must be done at normal viewing speed.

You/I also have 'flexible record', which is a great feature in a DVD recorder. If you (say) have a program that you want to backup that is 2:15 (slightly larger than a single DVD capacity at SP mode) then you can use flexible record mode and tell it that the video will be 2:15 long - it will slightly decrease the encoding quality (comparted to SP - 2hr-per-disc mode) and will use up the entire disc for the recording. Without this feature, you would have to record in 4hr-per-disc mode with much less quality result and lots of wasted space on the disc.

Another rule of thumb: If your goal is to first record to the hard drive in the panny, do some edits, then burn to DVD, make sure you record to the hard drive in the same record quality as you want to put on the final DVD. Example: You want to make a DVD disc in XP mode (1 hr per disc), them make sure you record onto the hard drive in XP mode when you record from the DTivo. Reason: Each time you change record quality, it must re-encode the video with a potential loss of quality.
By only doing the encoding once, you preserve the quality.

Another good reason to not change quality between hard drive record and DVD disc burn: You can do a 'high speed dub' (the accelerated burning you mentioned) from the Panny hard drive to the DVD disc which burns much quicker.

BTW, experiment with both S-Video and composite (yellow RCA) connections to the DTivo - on my Panny, I achieved slightly better results using the composite compared to the S-Video, which is counter-intuitive.

Finally: I've been very, very happy with the resulting quality of the DVD discs from my Panasonic E80.

*Added: *I find an enhanced DTivo to be a very nice companion to my DVD recorder.

Scenario: You have 12 30-minute shows that you wish to put onto a single DVD disc in 'EP' mode (6 hrs per disc)... a rather daunting task that would normally require _a lot_ of 'hands on' involvement to accomplish.

Using the 'merge' function (via web interface of the enhanced DTivo) I was able to select and order the 12 shows and create a resulting playlist entry. Just before going to bed, I did a 'Save to VCR' of resulting entry and started a manual record to disc in EP mode and went to bed. The next morning I 'finalized' the disc and I was finished. Total 'hands on' time: about 5 minutes compared to who-knows-how-long with an unmodified DTivo.


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Doomster said:


> ....That kinda prevents me from using the fast write feature though....


Not really, the "fast write feature" is burning it from your Pannys HD to the DVD disk. You can still do that. You just need to have the show on your hard disk first, and you were going to have to do that in "real time" anyway. Now way you were going to get the DTV show onto the Panny in any faster than real time. 
Jim and goony had it "right on". And this is what I do also, I have been burning DVDs for about three years, setting it up just before I leave for work or go to bed. And just a couple of weeks ago I also got a DVD burner that has a 120GB hard disk on it, the only thing I figure I can use that for is to edit programs (ie cut out commercials) on the HD before I burn it to DVD.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

I've had a Panasonic VHS/DVD Recorder hooked to my R10 and my SA TiVo for almost 2 years.

Friends and relatives are constantly asking me if I recorded such and such show that they missed, or misprogrammed their VCR for.
Yes, I've tried talking them into TiVo, and I'm slowly converting them over,
only problem is they all got DirecTV so far so no TiVo points.

If they have a DVD player, I put the show on DVD for them,
if they only hve a VHS, then I put the show on VHS for them.

Both work flawlessly.

Only problem is when I forget which TiVo is feeding which input on the recorder.

Now I have to swap inputs if what they want was only recorded on the HR10-250, but that works great as well.


phox


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

goony said:


> ....You/I also have 'flexible record', which is a great feature in a DVD recorder. If you (say) have a program that you want to backup that is 2:15 (slightly larger than a single DVD capacity) then you can use flexible record mode and tell it that the video will be 2:15 long - it will slightly descrease the encoding quality (comparted to SP - 2hr-per-disc mode) and will use up the entire disc for the recording.....


Will any other DVD player recognize this "flexible record" "speed". Or will it have to be played back in just the unit it was recorded in?
My Philips (I have had many problems with it so don't take this as an endorsement of the brand), has speeds of SP+ which is 2 and half hours and something (I can't remember their name for it) that is three hours.


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

willardcpa said:


> Will any other DVD player recognize this "flexible record" "speed". Or will it have to be played back in just the unit it was recorded in?


Once the disc is 'finalized', it should play back in any DVD player that will accept a 'burned disc'.

That's probably not 100% dead-sure, but I've yet to find a DVD player that failed to play a disc that I created using 'flexible record' mode - I suppose I've tried them in a dozen or so players, from the ancient to fairly new players.


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## austinsho (Oct 21, 2001)

willardcpa said:


> Will any other DVD player recognize this "flexible record" "speed". Or will it have to be played back in just the unit it was recorded in?
> My Philips (I have had many problems with it so don't take this as an endorsement of the brand), has speeds of SP+ which is 2 and half hours and something (I can't remember their name for it) that is three hours.


To ENSURE that your burned DVD-R/+R will play back, it is strongly urged that you use only the standard two-hour mode. Otherwise, it's roulette.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

And if you do record to the DVD recorder's hard drive first, make sure you record it in the quality that the DVD will be in later. Most DVD recorders don't re-encode. So I record to the HDD in 2 hour mode and that's what I get on the DVD. The're probaby some DVD recorders that will re-encode but this step will also slow down the burning.


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## bnm81002 (Oct 3, 2004)

JimSpence said:


> And if you do record to the DVD recorder's hard drive first, make sure you record it in the quality that the DVD will be in later. Most DVD recorders don't re-encode. So I record to the HDD in 2 hour mode and that's what I get on the DVD. The're probaby some DVD recorders that will re-encode but this step will also slow down the burning.


that's an excellent tip for newbie DVD recording, thanks for the heads up Jim :up: :up: :up:


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## What The Hell? (Jan 16, 2006)

goony said:


> I
> *Added: *I find an enhanced DTivo to be a very nice companion to my DVD recorder.
> 
> Scenario: You have 12 30-minute shows that you wish to put onto a single DVD disc in 'EP' mode (6 hrs per disc)... a rather daunting task that would normally require _a lot_ of 'hands on' involvement to accomplish.
> ...


This scenario is what I have been struggling with for a while. I was using my DVD burner like an old VCR and stopping the dvd when I got tired of recording manually. My main issue is that my partial recordings somehow got lost on my DVD-R. Frustrating as I was deleting my TIVO recordings as I was 'archiving' to a DVD.

Sounds like I need to employ enhanced Tivo or get a DVD burner that has a hard drive. Is that right?

Also, anyone out there know a good way to recover my shows from my partial DVDs?


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

What The Hell? said:


> Sounds like I need to employ enhanced Tivo or get a DVD burner that has a hard drive. Is that right?


Well, with what I described you don't need a hard drive in the DVD recorder at all, but you must realise you end up with one large, 6-hour long recording on the DVD disc. For me, that was OK - I didn't need separate menu entries for each program, skipping and FF to the desired part of the video was good enough.

The 'merge' functione on a 'Zippered' DTivo is nice to be able to get a group of shows to all play at the same time as one large recording.

FYI: If you did have a hard drive in the DVD recorder and you shipped it a 6-hour continuous show you could then use a 'divide program' type of function to divide the big program into smaller pieces; each of the pieces could then have a separate menu entry on the final DVD disc.

The 'divide' function is something a bit different than the 'edit' function used to remove unwanted junk from a single program.


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

bnm81002 said:


> that's an excellent tip for newbie DVD recording, thanks for the heads up Jim :up: :up: :up:


Hmm, I thought that's what I already said:


goony said:


> Another rule of thumb: If your goal is to first record to the hard drive in the panny, do some edits, then burn to DVD, make sure you record to the hard drive in the same record quality as you want to put on the final DVD.


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## bnm81002 (Oct 3, 2004)

goony said:


> Hmm, I thought that's what I already said:


oops sorry about that, I was skimming through this thread and Jim was a short post and I wasn't reading every single post thoroughly, again thanks for the tip


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

It doesn't hurt to reiterate things.


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

JimSpence said:


> It doesn't hurt to reiterate things.


...and to mention them again!


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

OK, the Panasonic DMR-EH55 arrived.

I'm doing a cursory read of the manual. Haven't set up anything. The setup guide says I need to hook up the IR blaster, which according to the manual, is included with the Panasonic DVD recorder. I need to do this if I want to hook up the DVDR to a DirecTV box.

What exactly is the IR blaster? 

And do I really need to hook up the IR blaster to use the DVDR with a DTV box?


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

Doomster said:


> OK, the Panasonic DMR-EH55 arrived.
> 
> I'm doing a cursory read of the manual. Haven't set up anything. The setup guide says I need to hook up the IR blaster, which according to the manual, is included with the Panasonic DVD recorder. I need to do this if I want to hook up the DVDR to a DirecTV box.
> 
> ...


No IR blaster needed.

I'm guessing this is for if you want to record DVD's live from satellite through the DTV receiver.

phox


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

phox_mulder said:


> No IR blaster needed.
> 
> I'm guessing this is for if you want to record DVD's live from satellite through the DTV receiver.
> 
> phox


Actually, how I want to hook it up is this:

Satellite to DTV box
DTV box to DVD recorder
DVD recorder to TV

Do I need an IR blaster with this setup?


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

In your post you use the term "DTV box" I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you are referring to a DTivo.

Now as to the IR blaster. I am not familiar with your particular DVD recorder. But I THINK that what you have is a unit that has the capablilty to set up to record shows in the future. Kinda like a Tivo. Look at your manual and see if it has an area on setting up timed recordings, or maybe even using some type of TV guide type info to record a specific show. If it does and you have some type of signal input other than a straight old antenna or old fashioned cable - ie. a satellite setup or cable box - an "outside box". Then the DVD recorder is going to have to somehow change the channel on the "outside box". This is where the IR blaster comes in, it is a wire with an IR emitter on the end that basically "fakes" being a remote and changes the channel on the "outside box" so that the DVD recorder gets the correct input to record the right show.

Go into the manual were it refers to setting up the IR blaster, it probably has a bunch of codes to enter into the box during some kind of setup procedure where you tell it what type and brand of "outside box" you have. I'm guessing that you may find a bunch of cable boxes and probably some plain old satellite recievers listed - but probably not a DTivo. If that is the case then the IR blaster is not usable by you in your scenario. The only way you will be able to record on the 
DVD recorder, be it the hard disk or direct to DVD disk is to record what is playing on the DTivo at the time. I am basing my theory that the DTivo is not listed because the whole idea behind the IR blaster is to punch the codes into the outside box at the appropriate time so that the show coming out on the RCA jacks is the right one, the IR blaster will punch in the channel for say CBS (channel 13) on thursday night at 8pm to get the outside box to show CSI so that it can record it. Which works fine for a "dumb" "outside box" but your DTivo isn't "dumb", it may have two season passes set up for that 8pm time slot. So it would go into the screens asking you what you want to do if you just punched 13 on the remote when it was going to record the two other season passes.

If this isn't clear enough, maybe Jim can come in and reiterate it.


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

I've had my a Pioneer DVR-220S hooked up to my DirecTivo for maybe a year or so. I only use it to archive stuff and dump stuff to DVD-R/-RW for people.



austinsho said:


> To ENSURE that your burned DVD-R/+R will play back, it is strongly urged that you use only the standard two-hour mode. Otherwise, it's roulette.


Why is that? Sounds a bit like voodoo to me. Pressed DVD-ROMs of feature films are VBR.

I do admit, I could see any issue if the resolution is "non-standard" (not 720x480). The resolutions vs. modes listed for the recorder at http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t239663.html match w/mine.


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## WO312 (Jan 24, 2003)

goony said:


> ..... you end up with one large, 6-hour long recording on the DVD disc. For me, that was OK - I didn't need separate menu entries for each program, skipping and FF to the desired part of the video was good enough. .....


I would imagine that if someone used your technique of combining shows but wanted an easy way to find individual episodes, they could just set chapter marks at 30 minutes and then skip from one chapter (episode) to the next.


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

willardcpa said:


> In your post you use the term "DTV box" I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you are referring to a DTivo.


Yes, DTV refers to a DirecTivo box.



> Now as to the IR blaster. I am not familiar with your particular DVD recorder. But I THINK that what you have is a unit that has the capablilty to set up to record shows in the future. Kinda like a Tivo. Look at your manual and see if it has an area on setting up timed recordings, or maybe even using some type of TV guide type info to record a specific show.


Yes, it has a TV Guide feature that allows you to record shows in the future.



> IThen the DVD recorder is going to have to somehow change the channel on the "outside box". This is where the IR blaster comes in, it is a wire with an IR emitter on the end that basically "fakes" being a remote and changes the channel on the "outside box" so that the DVD recorder gets the correct input to record the right show.


I now see what the purpose of the IR blaster is. But I'm a little confused. The IR blaster for the DVD recorder (DVDR) is attached to the Tivo. The instruction says to point the blaster to the front of the DVDR so that it faces the remote sensor. So it seems that the Tivo is controlling the DVDR and not the other way around. Is that right?


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## profbobo (Sep 19, 2001)

This thread got me thinking about what everyone is doing with the stuff they take off their TiVos and save to DVD. 

- Just archive for later viewing?
- Put on their computer or portable device for viewing?
- Other?

I want to get my purchased DVDs and TiVo recordings onto my PC so I can put them on my iPod.

I've looked at a few pieces of software out there. (Cucusoft and PQDVD) The pay ones for $30+ seem to work but they seem clunky and ugly. I've only used the trials. It must be the Windows' developers tools. It seems no one can make a application without neon green text and nasty icons. 

And there are too many steps (and time) for the free stuff. DVDShrink the DVD to get the VOB file, then use some crappy free conversion tool to get the MP4. Works, but time consuming for all the conversions.

This works for my purchased DVDs even though it's not the prettiest process.

I just picked up a Pannasonic DVD Recorder so I can get my TiVoed shows onto my iPod. I have R10s, so no zipper or stuff like that.

I figure I'll have to use the same process once I burn the shows to DVD from TiVo.

I'm just wondering if anyone has a better solution or advice.

My ideal solution would be:

Burn a show from TiVo to DVD.
Open the DVD on my computer.
Edit out the commercials.
Save as MP4.

Anything out there like that?

Something not too $$ and seems like a professional applicaiton.

Thanks,

Joe


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

profbobo said:


> I want to get my purchased DVDs and TiVo recordings onto my PC so I can put them on my iPod.


Try Google search with the following terms:

```
tivo ipod
```


```
"ty file" ipod
```
You may get some useful/interesting stuff. Oh, I see you have an R10. Forget the 2nd search then...


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## willardcpa (Feb 23, 2001)

Doomster said:


> ....The IR blaster for the DVD recorder (DVDR) is attached to the Tivo. The instruction says to point the blaster to the front of the DVDR so that it faces the remote sensor. So it seems that the Tivo is controlling the DVDR and not the other way around. Is that right?


I don't think that there is any way that the DTivo would be controlling the DVDR. DTivos aren't setup to control anything. Are you getting these instuctions from the manual for your DVDR?


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## profbobo (Sep 19, 2001)

goony said:


> Try Google search with the following terms:
> 
> ```
> tivo ipod
> ...


I have searched a lot for "dvd to ipod" and stuff like that.

What stinks is ripping dvds to ipod seems to be the next hot app that every small software shop from Romania is putting out; therefore, searching for "dvd to ipod" returns too many crappy results.

I was just wondering what others were doing. If anyone had any software recommendations. Cucusoft and PQDVD are the two I'm looking at. Xilisoft doesn't look bad either. I was just wondering if there was something out there with a little more polish. Maybe with some editing tools to remove commercials.

Thanks for the info though. The "ty file" search was pretty interesting. Cool stuff. Too bad DirecTV doesn't want the best DVR with the latest version.

Joe


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