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Looking to record live tv shows from cable box? Please help?!

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  • TV Shows
Last response: in Other Consumer Electronics
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April 23, 2014 11:03:26 PM

I'm making the transition from being a Windows user to a Mac user. I want to record live tv shows broadcasted in HD. But, I don't have a cable box yet nor do I have a Mac or a capture card. I'm thinking about buying Black Magic Design Intensity Shuttle for Thunderbolt, to record/capture in the highest picture quality possible. For the video format, I'm thinking "Uncompressed". I contacted Black Magic support to see what I needed to record in such a high quality format, I was told by Black Magic support to either have a RAID set up or SSD set up. I considered a RAID setup as it's cheaper than SSD's.

Here is my set up with some links:

1. Mac Mini (Mountain Lion pre-installed) with Intel Core i7 quad-core processor
• 4 GB of RAM being upgraded to 16 GB
• Stock Hard Drive (1 TB [5400 RPM])

2. OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini (Enclosure & Software only)
• To add my own hard drives (Western Digital or Hitachi [1 TB each])
Link: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAI...

3. OWC Mercury Pro Enclosure
• Totally optional, but I want to burn optical discs since all Macs (Except the old MacBook Pro with built-in optical disc drive) no longer have disc drives

I contacted OWC's online tech support and asked them if the "OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini" is powerful enough to record/capture HD (720p) and Full HD (1080p/1080i) video in "Uncompressed" format and with no freeze, skips, or stutter when recording/capturing. They said "Yes". But that I'll also need their power adapter, too, since the Firewire bus power itself might not be enough to power the "Elite Pro" enclosure and hard drives.

Also, I have some questions if I may:

1. For those of you who have Cox as their cable and internet provider and their cable box to watch tv in HD, what channel is "Disney Channel HD" on?

2. What picture resolution and frame rate are "Disney Channel HD" tv shows broadcast in?

3. Sorry for this stupid/dumb question, but, what do I need to watch tv in HD? Like how on the Disney Channal, has the Disney logo that pops up and inside this logo, says: "Available in HD".

4. Is there any picture and sound quality difference between component cables and HDMI? I would like to record with HDMI, but I don't think I can due to HDCP.

5. Is the Intensity Shuttle able to record both "Analog" and "Digital" signials or does the siginal/video data not matter, since the Intensity Shuttle is just a video capture device and doesn't care?

6. Is "Uncompressed" worth it or not, since all tv shows being broadcast is already compressed?

More about : record live shows cable box

Best solution

April 23, 2014 11:39:45 PM

If you want to properly record television then get a cable card TV tuner such as the following

- http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/

- http://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHomeRun-CableCard-3...

- http://cetoncorp.com/products/infinitv/ (Don't know if it has MAC support)

- You can get a cable card from your service provider for 3-5 dollars a month so you can decode the channels so you can watch and record.

- http://ww2.cox.com/residential/support/tv/article.cox?a...

- Either of those should record television at 1080i easily.

- You just attach the coaxil cable into the device with the cable card inserted, and you won't need a cable box.
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