What do i need to...

Question

get my vhs tapes onto my mac book? Is there a cable to go from my vhs player to my mac book?
Thanks

Answer 1

Suze,
Typically, that USB port is for connecting another hard drive (an external hard drive). The DVR can then use this hard drive as additional storage for its recorder video. These ports also allow you to connect a thumb drive, and most DVRs support reading pictures from such a device.
Some DVRs also have a firewire port (mine does). This is for connecting a DV camcorder, allowing you to import video, and ultimately to burn it to a DVD.
With all of these ports, the design is to go from the external device to the DVR, not the other way around. In other words, you could not connect your Macbook and be able to read (or otherwise access) the DVR's internal hard drive. It's unfortunate, but that's the way they are made.
The only thing you could do (and believe me, I've considered this) is remove the internal hard drive from the DVR, place it in an external drive enclosure, and connect that to your Macbook. Who wants to be constantly taking a DVR apart and removing/replacing the hard drive, though?
Another very viable option, however, might be to burn recorded video to DVDs with the DVR. Those DVDs could then be played on your Macbook, if you want/need to do so. By adding Quicktime Pro ($30) and the Quicktime MPEG-2 component ($20) to the mix, you could even extract the video from the DVD to your Macbook's hard drive, allowing you to play and edit the video.
It all depends on how you want to watch what you record. AppleTV is fantastic, and adding an EyeTV to that mix would get you what you want. But I see this as unnecessarily cumbersome, if all you want to do is record TV shows then watch them only on your TV. AppleTV is better suited to getting content purchased from the iTunes Store to your TV; that's what it is designed to do. EyeTV extends that functionality to content recorded by you, but a DVR will do that on its own more simply and elegantly. On the other hand, if you want flexibility in whether you watch the content on the TV or your Macbook, the more cumbersome arrangement (AppleTV + EyeTV) might be the answer.
Scott