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Comment by johnklos | Hacker News Reader

Neat!

It'd be nice if there were consumer-ready hardware for something like this. I know a few people with VCRs (yes, in 2023) that still record to tape from their digital receiver and play back over composite.

I'm amazed that you can't just buy a device that acts like a VCR, with composite and line in and out, but records and plays back via digital files instead of tape.

I want to try this, perhaps using an older Intel Mac mini, but I'm wondering how to "sell" it to someone who just wants a VCR.

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> I'm amazed that you can't just buy a device that acts like a VCR, with composite and line in and out, but records and plays back via digital files instead of tape.

You can. They're called digital video recorders (DVR). I had one around 15 years ago (I don't remember brand or model). A quick search on Amazon had this one as the first result:

https://www.amazon.com/ClonerAlliance-Recorder-Playback-Conv...

Wow! Thank you :D I've been looking, but every time I've searched for anything like "DVR", I get boxes to record surveillance camera feeds.

This is expensive, but may very well be worth the money. Thanks!

Yes, you have to dig through the DVR results. PVR (personal video recorder) might be a better search term, I didn't try it. I'm sure there's some that cost less, that was just the first one I found.

It's not a fully Free (as in speech) Software solution, but Tivo does make a device that works with digital OTA broadcasts.

https://www.tivo.com/products/edge-antenna

Tivo has a pure OTA model that is a reasonable deal. And their UI still beats the pants off of everyone else. Heck they finally embraced commercial skipping too.

If you don't something cheaper/more DIY oriented I'm really happy with channels dvr. It interfaces with Youtube.TV and many others (anyone who partners with TV Anywhere) and can do Over the Air recording with HD Homerun. What I really like is it provides one unified, central location for the majority of the services I care about.

>I'm amazed that you can't just buy a device that acts like a VCR, with composite and line in and out, but records and plays back via digital files instead of tape.

HDHomerun does this.

The reason you can't just buy a "VCR-like" device is because everything is digital now, and it's much simpler/cheaper to capture and record the digital signal than do analog/digital conversion.

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