Firewire Port on Digital Cable Box - Ever Use It?

Has anyone ever hooked their DTV box to a PC via the firewire port?

Does it output whatever it's tuned to?

If the box outputs 1080i via HDMI, can you also get that via firewire?

If its a functional port then yes you can stream and record shit from it.

all depends on who the provider is. some require additional payment to 'enable' it.

i have dish network

it costs 5$ or whatever to 'enable' it (this is what my buddy with dishnetwork says, i haven't actually confirmed this)

also, when you try to pull things off DVR that way, it goes through an encoder process, so its encrypted and you can't just play it on your computer.

you can, however, throw it on someone elses' DVR.

you can also take the DVR apart, use IDE/SATA cables to hook it up to your computer, and (depending on provider again) use certain programs to pull it off w/o it getting encrypted since (at least with DishNETWORK) it doesn't do the actual encryption until you try to pull it off the USB.

If you use a satellite provider you can actually use the port.

If you use a cable or fiber provider you can't any of the ports on the back except display/audio, as far as I recall.