Watching tv via firewire

I have a firewire TV tuner - it's called a Motorola DCT-6412 DVR digital cable tuner.

I'm trying to figure out how to watch the output of that, which also sends its output into the mac via firewire.

When I boot this thing into windows, I'm able to watch the output via the firewire using a program called CapDVHS.exe - which records the ts output if desired, but also allows me to view it at the same time. The corresponding program(s) in the firewire sdk are DVHSCap.app and AVCVideoCap.app don't allow me to view at the same time, which all I really want to do.

I've looked at Elgato's products, but I couldn't view my pay channels using their QAM product, and there is no way to connect my cable box to their products without losing the HD quality of my cable box.

I know this is totally doable: out of the box, the Apple firewire sdk is able to see the motorola 6412, it can send commands to change the channel on the motorola 6412, and can record the TS output from the 6412. It shouldn't be too much of a step for someone to put a front end to this and allow people to watch the output from this box (this is a VERY popular HD DVR box - used by Cox, Comcast, and many other cable companies)

That's interesting, but I really just want to watch the programs live, not necessarily record them. The problem with all the mac versions of these programs is that you can't watch the stream as it is recorded. On my old windows box the program that recorded the streams also displayed the video and played the audio as it did so. I realize that I could probably run those same programs easily using Boot Camp, but I'm trying to find a way to do this in Mac OS X.

Thanks for the links.

Now I can sort of do what I want - I set up that version of VirtualDVHS to record to a file which I then watch with VLC simulataneously. Unfortunately this is going to chew up a lot of disk space quickly since I am still recording the show.

I've only used Mac OS X for a couple of weeks now, but I'm sure there must be someway to "pipe" the output of VirtualDVHS to VLC without continuously saving it to disk...

I think we're talking about different things here.

I know there has been discussion on how to pull a .ts file off of a dvr, afaik that isn't currently possible (with the exception of tivo-to-go) - it is true that in order to record a program that resides on a cable dvr's you usually have to play back that recording and get it off in normal time off of the firewire output.

What I am looking for is just to watch the "live tv" output off my cable dvr - whether I am watching live tv, or a previously recorded show: whatever a (HD) tv hooked up to the box would see is what I want to see (at the same time) on my iMac. Being able to record it would be an added bonus, but isn't a requirement.

The reason I want this is because I want to get rid of the hdtv monitor (proview 17 inch hd monitor/ntsc tuner) I have from my old system, just to save space. Currently it is sitting in here because it is the only way I can watch the output from my motorola 6412 hd cable box. I'm just trying to combine functions and save space.

As I mentioned I can do this now by saving to a file using the virtualdvhs program you supplied the link to, and then starting vlc and playing the same file as it is being saved by virtualdvhs. Gives me a lag of however long it takes to start up vlc, but works. I'm checking into how I can launch this setup using a command line or workflow with logical pipes instead of files...

The downside of this is that when viewing the firewire output from the box, you don't see the program guide or any menus of the cable box - those are only output via hdmi, component, s-video, and rca video.

Ideally, I would like to have something like EyeTV support cable set top boxes via firewire - change the channel, accept the firewire input as a legitimate source, use the EyeTV program guide.

Even better would be the same type of thing that used firewire commands to operate the other features of the cable box dvr, such as schedule dvr recordings that the dvr box would do (not on the mac, but on the cable box). I don't know if that part is even doable yet.