According to this thread on avsforum, this guy was able to connect his Mac mini to his comcast motorola HD cable box. He used some software called AVCvideocap.
I found some info about AVCvideocap.
One of the things that kind of concerned me is where it says the files size is 100MB per minute. So without re-compressing an hour show it would consume 6GB!
Also found this bit of information on another forum:
Don't know your specific unit - but if you download FirewireSDK from apple developer support, it includes freebies like AVCbrowser, AVCvideocap, virtualDVHS etc. Assuming your DVR unit has a firewire port enabled (my comcast motorola has one), you can hook up your mac by firewire and AVCbrowser now should be able to identify it, and AVCvideocap should be able to record mpeg2 streams when you play back your content on your DVR. Just to rub it again, 1 min of Hi def content will be about 120MB. And for playback on a standard dvd player you would have to edit it, which will be a very processor intensive task as well. My mac mini 1.4ghz records stunning quality hi definition content in real time without dropping a single frame! The best part is you can schedule it work like a PVR, it can change the channel of your cable box at a particular time to record a particular show and stop at a particular time! One CAVEAT to remember is this will only work on unencrypted channels like the broadcast channels - other cable only channels are usually encrypted and you might record something but won't be able to playback - at least not yet!
Here is a site with step by step instructions.
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I have tried earlier versions of this with minimal success. However, it looks like Apple has since released an update to the FirewireSDK and it may be time for another attempt at this. BTW, it looks like there are linux drivers to make MythTV do the same thing.
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