Many people these days have a DVR attached to their television set that allows them to pause, record, and playback TV shows and movies whenever they want. While this provides consumers with much-appreciated accessibility and flexibility, a growing trend worldwide is to connect a DVR to a computer in order to watch TV shows and movies on a desktop computer or take them on the go by connecting the DVR to a laptop. In this article, we will show you several methods that allow you to record shows from your DVR to your computer.

TV Tuner Card
A TV tuner card is an small, external cable box that connects your DVR to your computer via a USB connection. TV tuner cards are affordable and usually include additional software that allow you to record TV shows and movies directly to your computer or transfer previously recorded shows to your computer through a built-in interface. Some TV tuner cards can be disconnected from your computer once the transfer is complete while others require you to leave the device connected at all times, which can be a major drawback. Be sure to choose a TV card that can be disconnected at will.

Diamond Xtreme TV PVR600
Diamond Xtreme TV PVR600 is both a device and software that includes a TV tuner card built into it. Diamond Xtreme allows you to manage your videos in the same way that a DVR does, but on your computer. Diamond Xtreme can be disconnected whenever you need it to be and you can even take advantage of a remote scheduling feature through any Internet browser that allows you to record shows to your computer even when you are not home. Diamond Xtreme uses a small amount of CPU so that it doesn't slow down your computer, has an in-built stereo system, and features clear picture quality for all of your videos.How To Record A Show From DVR To A Computer

Dscaler
Dscaler is an ongoing project to get the best possible amount of quality out of digital videos on your computer. Dscaler also allows you to capture videos from digital devices such as camcorders, DVRs, DVD players, and more. While capturing the video in question, Dscaler also scales the video to the appropriate dimensions in order to fit on your monitor or home projector. This maintains nearly perfect picture quality and can even take up less room on your computer than the original would have.

USB + Intellimover
Intellimover is a software set that allows you to select which files and software you want and then transfer them directly to another device without having to go through a network or special equipment. Intellimover comes with free USB cables that include special built-in high-speed chips that make transferring files and settings even faster. Intellimover is generally built for computer-to-computer transfers but if your DVR has a USB port, you can use Intellimover to transfer videos to your computer.

CapDVHS + Firewire
CapDVHS is a software that uses firewire (similar to USB) to transfer files from a D-VHS player to a computer. D-VHS, or Digital Video Home System, is just a fancy word for DVR and similar technology. If your DVR has a firewire port, you can use CapDVHS to transfer your videos to your computer. Likewise, if your DVR has a USB port, you can get a firewire-to-USB adapter and use that as well. You can also transfer files from your computer to your DVR in the same fashion.

WinDV 123
WinDV 123 is a free, easy-to-use software that is capable capturing videos from external digital devices such as camcorders and DVRs through a firewire or USB connection. WinDV 123 can also convert videos back and forth between AVI format and DV (digital video) format. You can also use the software to break a video into multiple parts and rejoin them whenever you want. Most importantly, WinDV 123 maintains constant video quality between formats and devices.

Copyright Problems
No matter what software or hardware you use, some TV shows and movies simply cannot be copied from your DVR to your computer because of copyright protocols. The production companies that make these TV shows and movies do not want you to be able to put them on your computer as you would be able to share them with others. You may be able to transfer the videos over to your computer but the videos will appear choppy, broken, or will simply not work. There are probably ways to work around this issue but that is beyond the scope of this article.