Is there an easier way to get TV recordings to a hard drive?

I'm looking for some advice regarding transferring recorded TV programmes onto my computer to store on a hard drive.

My current ritual involves connecting my Tivo box to a HDD/DVD recorder. I initially record off the Tivo onto the HDD, and then transfer the programmes from the HDD to a DVD RW disc, simply because I can trim and edit the recording on the HDD before I burn it. Then I rip the contents of the disc onto my computer, convert it accordingly, format the DVD using the recorder and start the whole process again.

It's a bit of a pain in the bum, but it's a ritual I've been using for several years. It was probably the easiest method when I first started doing it, but now I'm starting to wonder if there's an easier method. There are drawbacks at the moment including time consumption and fairly cack picture quality from a SCART lead. But with their being devices to record gameplay from consoles nowadays, is there something along those lines that can be used to not only save time but boost picture quality?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: just realised you're specifically talking about transferring existing recordings. Bit trickier, that. I'll leave this here anyway.

If you're wanting to record Freeview broadcasts, you could get a DVB-T (or T2) USB stick. I got a refurbished one of these:

http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B002EHVP9C

and while the provided software isn't brilliant, it does at least record straight to a .mpg file.

You can use Windows Media Center with it instead, but the recorded files are some obscure, proprietary format.

Apparently you can also use one of these sorts of sticks to record live image data from a Russian weather satellite as it passes overhead. Haven't tried that yet though.

What Tivo do you have - the original one or a Virgin Media one? The original Tivo had RGB SCART in and out if you used the right sockets - and if you had a DVD RW with RGB input it delivered quite good quality results. I used to use this as my main DVD archiving solution - though I edited on a PC (I'd archive to DVD RW, ingest to the PC, edit out the ad breaks and re-flag 16:9 video as 16:9 in the MPEG2 headers so that it played back properly, and then burn to a DVD-R and re-use the RW)


If you have a Virgin Media one - what outputs does it have? (I'm guessing you have a VM Tivo unless you hacked the alternative listing sources into an original Thomson one)

If the Virgin Tivo has component then you can get a Component HD capture solution, if it has HDMI only then that could be a bit trickier. Most HDMI capture solutions won't capture HDCP-ed content, and most consumer devices will add HDCP to their HDMI outputs to stop people... Copying the content...

However it is possible to solve this (for a very low cost) - but probably not something for discussion here.

I'm not Larry but the Virgin Media TiVo has a single HDMI and a single SCART (which the Cisco quick reference guide says can be used to connect to VCR/DVD)

Sorry, I should've specified. It's the Virgin Media TiVo. AFAIK VMPhil is correct. It's been a while since I've looked at the back of a box but I don't recall any other outputs than HDMI and SCART. I don't even think my recorder will take any input that isn't SCART or RCA.

Hardly that obscure now. It's been possible to demux (and optionally transcode) H264/MPEG2 .wtv files produced by Windows Media Centre for years with ffmpeg - meaning they play in VLC and Kodi/XBMC (and all the other players that are based on ffmpeg), and using ffmpeg you can easily rewrap them as mkv, mov, mp4, transport streams etc., or transcode them for playback on other devices that don't like interlaced content.

The only thing you're likely to lose is the subtitles if there are any. If you're a masochist there are a few solutions that will extract WST subtitles and I think at least one that will extract DVB bitmap subtitles too.

Huh. I searched for ages and don't remember finding that answer. Thanks noggin.

Tried it and got lots of errors though, and the result had no audio, so I'll stick to the software that came with the stick.

The Zidoo X9 Android TV box has an HDMI input for recording MP4 files in 1080p which you can then save to a USB drive. Might not be what you're after but there might be something out there that does a similar job.

There is but as noggin says its get illegal when you start stripping hdmi protection.

Really? I've had zero problems rewrapping from .wtv to .mkv or .ts or .mp4, with MPEG2 and H264 .wtv files made from DVB-T/T2 and S/S2 cards in Windows Media Centre. You need to know what you're doing in ffmpeg (one of the two DVB-T/T2 audio tracks is silent when there is no audio description for instance) - but it works fine. VLC should play them fine.

I used to convert .wtv files using MC-TV Converter, but it'd leave stuttering audio. So eventually changed my PC PVR software which records in .ts format. It's easy enough to convert into a different format using Handbrake which I use for H264 recordings or TEncoder for MPEG2.

Learning how to use ffmpeg is definitely worth it (and most software that does transcoding and rewrapping is based on it). It remuxes (i.e. doesn't transcode) content incredibly quickly - which is what I do for .wtv files usually - and gives you a LOT of options for transcoding (if you want to take 1080i H264 and 576i MPEG2 and converth them for iOS etc.)

I've only had one source of .wtv files that it has struggled with (and those were from non-UK pay-TV sources using a CAM which mangles the PTS elements of the stream I think)

Handbrake is great for a quick conversion without having to think, but if you learn how ffmpeg works and aren't afraid of a command line, then it pays dividends. It often works for very oddball formats too. It's a great Swiss Army knife for video.