Virgin V+ box to iMac - any way of hooking them up to record video to my iMac?

[zen]

One for people in the UK:

I've just had a V+ box installed by Virgin, and was wondering what I would need to hook the box up to my iMac so I can transfer the recordings off the V+ and onto my hard drive for archiving.

I was looking at various Elgato EyeTV products, but nothing seems to do what I want.

Any suggestions? Basically the V+ allows you to dub off to a DVD recorder (which I don't have) via a SCART lead. I think I need some kind of bridge so I can record onto my iMac.

[Rickyrazor]

Hi Zen,

Did you work out how to hook up the V+ box and the imac? If you did can you publish how you done it,

Many thanks

[brcampbell]

Hi,

I've nearly filled the HDD on my V+ box while waiting for a way to backup shows that I've recorded.

My latest attempt has been to buy a Neuros OSD from Play.com (£129). I have it hooked up to the secondary scart of the V+ box, and then via an ethernet cable to my home network. It can record in MP4 format to a memory card, USB stick, or direct to a share on my Mac (I have a share set up on an external firewire drive). The network option doesn't connect 100% of the time but it's not bad, and I don't have to drag any kit around the house to get content to my Mac. A 2GB SD card can hold an hour of content if I choose that method instead.

The MP4s can be edited in iMovie, but like every other device I've tried the Neuros creates 4:3 video even if the content is widescreen. I run it through a piece of software called Stomp to get it back to widescreen, then drop it straight into iDVD.

So still not entirely perfect, but much better than recordable DVDs, then ripping/converting/editing, and re-burning to a 'real' DVD format, and the recording quality is reasonable.

Another handy thing about the OSD is that it ignores Macrovision, so catch-up TV can also be recorded (how come if I record a show 'live' at 7pm it's recordable, but if I watch it on catch-up at 9pm it's protected?). If you just want the show captured to watch an iPod, then the OSD has a setting to create a file for that directly, with no other messing around required.

[dalvin200]

Originally Posted by zen

I was looking at various Elgato EyeTV products, but nothing seems to do what I want.

Any suggestions? Basically the V+ allows you to dub off to a DVD recorder (which I don't have) via a SCART lead. I think I need some kind of bridge so I can record onto my iMac.

the eyeTV hybrid does exactly what you want..

i have it now and have archived a load of programs off my skyHD box via the scart output..

only snag is, it records an analogue signal.. so you do lose a bit of quality.. i'm not that fussed as it's mostly kiddy programs anyway