Run DVR with no cable signal?

[TeraFlexd40TJ]

I have a Comcast/Motorola Dual Tuner/HDTV DVR, and also an older Series Two TiVo Model TCD24008A and i am curious if anyone knows how to operate either one of them without the presence of a cable signal? I would like to record several shows and be able to take the DVR out to my boat and watch them there. I attempted to do that with the Motorola unit but it wouldn't work without the cable signal present. I'm assuming it dosen't like the absence of the time signal or something. Is there a way to bypass this on either unit to solve my problem? Thanks a million!!

[Beau_in_Austin]

Would choosing over the air antenna connection before shutting down make a difference? Rabbit-ears on the boat?

[willardcpa]

Hook up the tivo in series with your motorola unit between the motorola and the TV via RCA jacks. Go through guided set up and tell the tivo that you are hooking it up to a satellite system and that you are inputting the audio and video via the RCA jacks and that you will control your satellite receiver with the IR blaster. Go ahead and hook up the tivo to a phone line so that it will download the guide information (although this is not absolutely necessary). Now your tivo is happy, it is getting a signal through the RCA jacks and it thinks that it is a signal from a satellite receiver, and it thinks that it can change the channel in order to record whatever it wants to record. If you did hook up the phone and have it download the guide then you can go ahead and tell it to record John Wayne in the Searchers tomorrow night at 8:00 the tivo will go ahead and record for two hours tomorrow night starting at 8:00 whatever is coming in on the RCA jacks. Of course you would want to make sure that the motorola is going to be tuned to the movie, otherwise it might end up recording a half hour of "Full House" and the David Lettterman show.
If you don't download the guide, or don't want to record something from the motorola live, set up a manual recording on the tivo for two hours beginning at say 7am when you go to work, and start playing back the movie on the motorola then. Of course then you have to write down what the movie was that shows up in the tivo now playing list as a manual recording at 7am on September 8th.
My daughter used this "scheme" for a couple of years with a tivo that was hooked up to one of the Big Dishes (eight footers), they had something called 4DTV and it had the ability to schedule the channel changes. She recorded her shows, the guide never matched, but she had a system to identify what was what. For example she knew that if the guide said it was "jerry springer" that it was actually her daily dose of "General Hospital".

[Idearat]

I haven't had a standalone TiVo in a long time, but didn't remember it needing to see a signal to play back a previously recorded show. I'm surprised you can't just skip to "Now Playing" and watch old stuff. MAybe it's just something I didn't remember. My DirecTivo will complain like crazy if there's no antenna connection but I can still go to the old stuff and watch it.

If that's the case, and since a cable box usually just outputs on channel 3 or 4 anyway, would it be possible to just loop a Coax cable from the Tivo's channel 3 output into it's input that usually just sees channel 3? If that fooled it you could just watch via the RCA jacks.

Don't think you'd want to see what was on live TV though, that might be ugly. While you were watching a pre-recorded show though the buffer would just be fulling with whatever you were watching.

[classicsat]

You can relocate the TiVo to work to playback without signal or a service connection fine.

[disneyjoe7]

Of course then you have to write down what the movie was that shows up in the tivo now playing list as a manual recording at 7am on September 8th.
My daughter used this "scheme" for a couple of years with a tivo that was hooked up to one of the Big Dishes (eight footers), they had something called 4DTV and it had the ability to schedule the channel changes. She recorded her shows, the guide never matched, but she had a system to identify what was what. For example she knew that if the guide said it was "jerry springer" that it was actually her daily dose of "General Hospital".


Please step into the 21st Century www.dvrblackbox.com