Is there a piece of software that can capture video/audio out of a cable box or a tv via a USB cable, effectively making it kind of DVR? Windows PC.
You need the correct video digitizer, and it’s getting much, much harder to do these days.
It used to be simple, with a NTSC digitizer from Hauppauge, or some such, but with almost all “TV” going to encrypted signals over cable, it’s difficult to impossible.
In a word. No.
I played with “Home Theater PCs” for years. Much cheaper and easier to buy a TiVo.
The actual answer is “yes”. Sort of. With a lot of caveats.
I’ve done this with my server (a desktop) but OTA.
You need hardware and software.
I use NextPVR for the software. But be aware that it is very tricky to set up and configure. I’m an ex-Computer Science prof and I still found it a hassle. So YMMV big time.
If you have a capture device, it may also come with “PVR” software. Note the quotes. Calling it PVR software is a stretch.
One of the big issues is program guide. Your PVR needs to know what is coming up when on what channel so a desired program can be recorded. For a cable source the two main options are to use a pay service or configure and install a scrapper. The latter is not for the newbies. I did it and it took some work to get that set up.
And that’s just the software.
Note the OP mentions a cable box and a TV. I’ll ignore getting a signal from a TV.
For the PVR to work it needs to be able to change the channel on the cable box, get a signal from the cable box, and capture that signal.
To change the channel your laptop or capture device needs an IR remote blaster. A little IR emitter on a cord (although other more $ options exist). Put the emitter in front of the cable box and the PVR can change channels.
Getting the PVR software to properly do this is yet another fun little thing.
(I know that some older cable boxes had a serial port that could be used to change channels instead of the blaster. I used one in conjunction with my DVR years ago. Not sure if this still applies. Plus the PVR software issue may be more complex.)
Now as to the signal: What outputs does the cable box have. The high quality ones will probably have HDCP copy protection. Low quality ones like composite AV (yellow/red/white) aren’t protected. But sort of pathetic.
This isn’t the place to discuss HDCP workarounds but for less than $30 you can buy a solution from major web retailers.
Note that your signal is compressed, decompressed and compressed in this process. So some loss of quality should be expected.
If your cable company has some channels not encrypted then you can capture those straight off without going thru this cycle. My cable company used to not encrypt the local stations. But now the only real channels not encrypted are the home shopping ones.
As to the capturing device. I assume that your laptop doesn’t have HDMI in and since it’s a laptop adding an internal capture card is not an option like for a desktop.
So that leaves the USB option you gave.
There are HDMI-USB capture devices. Not usually as good as capture cards. Etc. Don’t expect any miracles here. In particular, the stream needs to be compressed in software as it is captured to save disk space. This will be quite a load and has to done uninterupted. So there’s that.
I assume that once captured you know how to watch the programs, either on the laptop or remotely. Kodi is good for the latter and runs on a lot of devices. It has a NextPVR plug-in and can be used to setup recordings, etc., as well as watch them.
In principle it can be done. But it definitely isn’t something every person can do nor are the results guaranteed to be satisfying.
While TV’s and cable boxes have USB sockets, they are USB hosts and can only accept USB devices - further more they are very likely to be only for USB drives, or perhaps the correct brand and model of WIFI adaptor.
PC’s are also USB hosts and can only have client devices connected to them.
That is, you don’t connect two USB hosts via just a cable…(and any hardware device to join hosts via USB would need driver support… both ends need to support that hardware…)
I want to make sure no one misunderstands the latter part.
Do not under any circumstances connect two USB hosts together with a regular USB (A-A) cable. This will damage the USB ports and possibly the device in general. It’s not just about the ends!
(They do make, but are getting harder to find, USB host-to-host cables with special electronics. E.g., for transferring data between a laptop and a PC. Hence a good search phrase is “USB data transfer cable”. But I doubt one of these would work to allow a TV to “see” files on the PC without things being set up right on the PC.)
If you need a DVR only for OTA broadcast, I have been recommended a really cheap solution. A digital converter box like this Robot or human? attached to a usb hard drive. The box is about $30, and you can even use an old iPod as the HD. The box has a built in DVR software.
I’ve seen a lot of cheap ($30-$60) “DVRs” on Amazon. Most seem to be basic Android boxes. Many, like the one above, mention “analog” way too much. Not sure if you really get true HD output on these. Also the issue of EPG source. For OTA there’s upcoming show info for several hours in the signal (sometimes:(). So the scraper can go thru the channels once in a while and grab that. But forget checking to see what’s coming up in 2+ days.
Some notes:
These are OTA only. Not for cable or even controlling a cable box and capturing the output.
You need a good external USB HD for actually storing anything. Speed matters here.
You can make a DIY OTA DVR with a Raspberry Pi 3, a HD, OpenElec (Kodi fork), an antenna, etc.
Note that cable companies are allowing more forms of access to the programs on their service. Lots of apps for phones/tablets/whatever. Also Comcast just announced a beta app for Roku that allows you to watch programs on your subscribed channels (for a “modest” monthly fee, of course). But sitting thru commercials is usually mandatory. Ugh.
There’s a thing called Eye TV which will do this. I won’t post a link in case that’s too commercial but they’re easy to find.
OTA, not cable.