PVR Rip Discussion Thread

[Alan_113]

Well that Just Sucks... I guess it'll have to be the video capture route with messed up audio synch occasionally..

[Anole]

I really didn't mean to sound like a wet blanket, above.
I regularly (weekly) extract and burn numerous shows, and have a high success rate.
Building discs with multiple shows is a bit more exotic, and I've mastered that quite well.

The standard TV-show data rate is around 2.5 mega bits per second, and that translates into about 1gb per hour.
When you take out commercials, it's more like 42 minutes and 800 mega bytes.
Four or five TV episodes on a DVD are easy. Six shows takes a big hammer and a crowbar.

Quality is exactly the same as when you watched your satellite receiver. Identical.

On a decent computer, you should be able to turn an hour show into a single DVD in ... maybe half an hour, once you are experienced.
Though it may take an hour each 'till you get the hang of it.
That includes trimming the front, rear, and removing several commercial breaks.

I often spend just a few minutes more, making nice menu (to select the episodes on this disc)...
...adding chapter breaks...
...and printing artwork on the DVD with an Epson R200 or R300 printer.

[Anole]

Originally Posted by mrhooie

i was talking to a friend here in town yesterday and the subject came up about transferring from Bell. He's wired his player for USB. now all he does is have to hook up a USB cable and transfer it to his PC

I'll get the url of the group he uploaded his plans to

I, too, would be interested in his approach.
I'm doing something similar.

[trhaynes]

Originally Posted by Anole

I really didn't mean to sound like a wet blanket, above.
...

Quality is exactly the same as when you watched your satellite receiver. Identical.

On a decent computer, you should be able to turn an hour show into a single DVD in ... maybe half an hour, once you are experienced.
Though it may take an hour each 'till you get the hang of it.
That includes trimming the front, rear, and removing several commercial breaks.

I often spend just a few minutes more, making nice menu (to select the episodes on this disc)...
...adding chapter breaks...
...and printing artwork on the DVD with an Epson R200 or R300 printer.

That's very impressive! Can I ask what software you use to do the transcoding and what you use to do the authoring?

Thanks

[MrGrinch]

Originally Posted by Anole

not that I do it this way, but I've wondered if you couldn't pull the drive cable where it plugs into the main board, and use some sort of adapter right there?

Howdy... just a couple of questions... sorry if they sound newbie...

1) If you're not disconnecting where the drive connects to the motherboard where exactly are you disconnecting from? Sorry... I've never opened my 5100.

2) Did you simply connect the drive to your computer's motherboard and run with it... or in other words did you need any special software or drivers to get your PC to recognize the added PVR drive?

This all sounds really interesting. Perhaps a good reason to keep the 'ol 5100 around in addition to the 9200!

Thanks!

[Nuje]

The hard drive is simply plugged into the "motherboard" of the PVR....just as it would be on a computer - the IDE cable and the power supply cable.

I have a removeable drive bay in my computer - I just slip the PVR drive into the bay caddy, pop that in the drive bay, boot the computer, and then run PVRexplorer. Too easy!!!

The only thing to be aware of is that the PVR drive is jumpered as a "master", so if you put that on the same IDE cable as another drive in your computer, you'll probably have to jumper it as a "slave" (actually, you can jumper the either drive as slave - I have my DVD burner permanently as the slave on IDE-1, so that I don't have to do anything when I pop in the PVR drive.)

Hope that helps.
Mike

[Anole]

BEV/Dish to DVD:

Hugh started the thread off right.
The first post above points to the Yahoo group, DishRip
However, the program to get from there is called: PVRexplorer, ver 1068
...unless a newer ver has been released.
Please disregard any references to any other (older) programs.
They are horrible, and really should not be tried since they have been replaced!

Unfortunately, finding answers on the DishRip or DishMod sites is a real pain.
That forum format is less useful than a newsgroup.

Most DVD players in the last several years will play the formats that BEV/Dish transmit
(see my comments above)
If yours won't , buy a new DVD player!
Else, you'd have to spend the extra time re-encoding to full DVD specs,
and for that, I use WinAVI, about a $30 program.
To put it simply, find a way to NOT re-encode, and you should be happier.
I only do it to very special projects, such as if I get a 640x480 show,
or if I want to convert DivX shows I've gotten off the internet.

Editing for commercial removal is done with VideoReDo.
That is about a $50 program, but they have a full-function evaluation copy you can try for several weeks.
They also have a nice forum where the developers and friendly users help people with questions.

Up to this point, I'll suffer no fools who want to ask, "but can I use THIS program instead?"
Use the tools listed. They get the job done.

The next step is "authoring" the DVD.
That process includes re-muxing (not re-encoding) the sound and picture,
making all sorts of index files to support chapters, menus, etc.
I use DVD Labs, ver 1.3 for that, and you'll find a lot of discussion by folks who are fine with many other authoring programs.
You can look to the VideoReDo forum,
or to http://www.doom9.net/
or possibly on http://www.videohelp.com/

Learning what you can/should do in the authoring step is another learning experience.
But, once you become familiar with what looks like an over-complicated program,
and decide which three things you -need- to do to make what you want,
it's really not so bad.

At the end, I burn with Nero 6.6 (but 6.0 or 5-something will work)
I'm trying to not repeat myself, so do read my other posts in this thread, above, for more clarification.

Hardware comments will be in the next post, in a few mintutes.

[Anole]

BEV/Dish to DVD: hardware

Now for the hardware questions:

Getting to the drive -
Turn off power with the front panel or remote and wait one minute (listen to the unit)
Now, pull out the smart card, and wait one minute (listen to the sounds)
At this point, you can pull the mains power, then wait another minute for the drive to spin down.

The 5100 is opened by removing two black screws from the top rear of the unit.
The cover slides off rearward.
Orient the unit with the black face toward you on a table, and the power cord away from you, rightside up.
The hard drive is mounted to the right, on a bracket of its own.
That bracket is held with three silver screws.
The one to the rear of the unit, and the one to the (right) side can be removed easily.
The third is under the black front bezel.

Double check that the unit is unplugged from the mains, and slap yourself if not!
Carefully lift up the left plastic tab where the front panel locks to the front metal chassis, and pull that edge of the bezel away from the unit about 1/4".
Do the same for the plastic tab on the right top, beside the hard drive.
At this point, the third silver screw may be exposed, but hold on.

Consider the silver security sticker on the drive bracket.
Deside if you want to violate it. You will not succeed in removing the sticker intact.

To make access to the third screw easier, use a pencil or other thin object, and reach the bottom front bezel latch beside the hard drive, and disengage it.
This allows the (right) drive side of the front bezel to come forward about half an inch.
Remove the third screw.
Lift out the bracket holding the drive.


What you'll find that a lot of people do (and it works) is to turn off their computer,
attach the PVR drive to it, restart, and run the PVRexplorer program.
Well, if you don't know your way around a PC, this is a bad idea!
The PVR hard drive is jumpered for Master, and some folks change that to Slave before connecting to their PC.
It's better to connect the PVR drive to your secondary IDE port, and make sure it doesn't conflict with any CD/DVD drives, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.
If you are not comfortable at this point, do not proceed.

You'll see (at DishMod) where some like to mount a drive slide-bay onto or on top of their PVR, so they can remove the drive easily.
If you choose that path, make sure you unplug AC to the PVR before removing the drive tray, and make sure you unplug the computer before mounting the slide tray.
And I mean each time you transfer the drive between the PVR and computer, and back again!
I know those products claim hot-plugability, but after careful evaluation, I WON'T DO IT !
Hope that was clear enough.

Another popular approach, is to mount the bare PVR drive (or perhaps on a slide tray) into an external Firewire or USB 2 enclosure.
You can then hot-plug that into your computer.
Windows will automatically recognize a new drive, and attach it.
Since there is no Windows formatting on the drive, you cannot browse it.
Start up PVRexplorer, and it will find your new PVR drive.

I use a variation on the USB 2 connection method.
With a fast computer, you should be able to extract and remux to .MPG, a 1-hour show in 4 minutes.
That falls to three minutes, if you have dual, fast hard drives.

Hope this info has been helpful.


edit: see comments above, by Nuje, for more good info.

[Nuje]

If you want to get really fancy, I've seen/heard of peeps who have taken a dremel tool to the side of the 5100 and cut a hole in there and mounted a drive bay there as well. When it's time to dump programs off the drive, simply unplug the 5100, turn the key on the drive bay, pull out the caddy (with drive in it), slide it into drive bay on PC, and presto-whammo! Ready to rip!
Of course, I believe this may indeed void the warranty on the pvr

[Anole]

Yea, here are pictures of the very well done work:
http://www.sonicperfection.com/501album/

I considered this approach, and did buy a number of top-quality drive slide bays.
The cheap , crummy, all-plastic ones are a joke.
I got some with major components made of aluminum.
In the end, this approach was junked due to unacceptable technical problems.
(and better ideas )

[Nuje]

The "cheap, crummy plastic ones" that I have are all working fine - had zero problems with them....glad I found what works for me for just $6US each.

[MrGrinch]

Thank-you for all the great information Anole and Nuje... I will definitely be trying this out in the next 0-3 weeks when I can find some time to open things up and purchase some of the hardware you note to make things easier. I have tons of stuff on my PVR that I want to dump to my PC but can't. Will let you know how I make out.... (famous last words)

[Anole]

Technically, this is off-topic, but here is another good way to save your shows to DVD, and with a lot less trouble...

Another Way:
A buddy of mine works long hours and drives two hours each day.
He's technically capable of executing the above proceedures.
He has, at best, two hours awake at home per day.
His wife is clever and technically saavy, but she works, and has other hobbies.

About this time last year, the extraction/edit/author/burn proceedure outlined above was not reliable, and WAY more complicated.
If you think it sounds hard now, ... well...

He had been looking at the stand-alone DVD recorders for the living room.
He'd put off buying one, waiting for them to come down in price, and add an optical sound input.
I think they'd just come down from around $600/$400 to the $250 range.
I found him one for $150, which didn't have the optical in, and suggested he limp along with that 'till better units came out.

For the last year, it's been hooked up to his PVR via the Svideo cable, and his wife has taken it over.
She even transfers -his- shows to DVD, manually pausing to cut out the commercials.
She's a sweetie.

She records movies in the 2-hour mode, which seems great.
She records his/her regular TV shows in the 4-hour mode, and personally, I find it less than wonderful.
With the price of DVD media so cheap (shop around if you don't think so), one or two shows per disc is fine.

Optional Thoughts:
One other option some people discuss on the VideoReDo forum (that's the video editor), is to take discs from your home DVD recorder, pull the data into your computer, edit, re-author, and burn new DVDs.


Just various options to consider.
You know what camp I'm in.
/

[MrGrinch]

Well I just wanted to say thanks guys for all of your pointers. This past weekend I was able to open up my 5100 and take out the hard drive. Purchased a USB docking station for the 3.5" drive, downloaded PVRExplorer, and was off to the races.

Dumped the Bomber-Rider CFL game to my system and 6.1 gigs later all was transferred. Still sniffing around out there for cheaper editing / rendering solutions. I've found that ReJig is a nice free little app that allows for compression of video and/or DVD authoring... and it's free.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...ools/rejig.cfm

[MrGrinch]

Originally Posted by Anole

I only do it to very special projects, such as if I get a 640x480 show, or if I want to convert DivX shows I've gotten off the internet.

Anole... perhaps getting a hair off topic but can I ask you (and other users) what you use to convert your mpeg files to DivX. I've tried a couple like Dr. DivX but they come out looking so bad. Is this normal? I've seen much clearer DivX files. Here's an example usng Dr. DivX...

DivX



DVD



Is this normal that the DivX looks so bad? Thanks!