Yet another newbie question

[jasirw]

I searched through the forum but perhaps i'm not entering the correct search phrases. I just bought a Hauppauge 500 MCE and downloaded a trial of SageTV (which is beautiful by the way). I dont doubt that i'll buy it soon but $80 is quite a lot of money for the moment. Anyway, before purchasing i want to make an informed decision. What I am wondering is this:

1) Is it legal to record TV shows from the tv onto my computer and burn them for my own personal use so that i can watch them on my DVD player? i'm not talking about distributing or anything. I assume it works the same as recording to a VHS but with digital rights being what they are i thought i'd ask

2) If it is ok to burn these for my personal use what determines the quality of the picture on my DVD player (bar my tv and the dvd player itself). What i mean is that Sagetv allows for different renderers but i assume they make no enhancement to quality when you are burning them. Is the tv picture i will see equivalent to the picture when i dont use a fancy renderer?

Thanks everyone, i appreciate your knowledge and help

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jasirw

I searched through the forum but perhaps i'm not entering the correct search phrases. I just bought a Hauppauge 500 MCE and downloaded a trial of SageTV (which is beautiful by the way). I dont doubt that i'll buy it soon but $80 is quite a lot of money for the moment. Anyway, before purchasing i want to make an informed decision. What I am wondering is this:

1) Is it legal to record TV shows from the tv onto my computer and burn them for my own personal use so that i can watch them on my DVD player? i'm not talking about distributing or anything. I assume it works the same as recording to a VHS but with digital rights being what they are i thought i'd ask

Provisioning this with the big old IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)....

Yes that's fine, the way I look at it, is as long as you're not distributing it (giving it to other people) you're fine. And as long as you're not breaking encryption (which is what the DMCA forbids) you're not doing anything illegal.

2) If it is ok to burn these for my personal use what determines the quality of the picture on my DVD player (bar my tv and the dvd player itself). What i mean is that Sagetv allows for different renderers but i assume they make no enhancement to quality when you are burning them. Is the tv picture i will see equivalent to the picture when i dont use a fancy renderer?

Start with the easy answer, the quality you'll see on your set top player is determined primarilly by your capture settings, both quality and calibration (color).

As for if it will be better/worse/equivalent to PC playback, well, I'm going to wimp out and say there are so many variables it's impossible to say without more info.

Thanks everyone, i appreciate your knowledge and help[/quote]