- Yes it is possible to capture Netflix and burn to a DVD.
I have been a Netflix subscriber for a few years now and never really thought about capturing the movies to my hard drive to watch later or to burn to a DVD. But with the recent outcry of Netflix users and the breakup of Netflix streaming division and the DVD rental service (now called Qwikster) I would assume that many are looking to get the most out of these services that they can, now that prices have almost doubled. I’m not suggesting that this is the best way to get even actually I’m not even sure if it’s legal (I’m sure that this will need to be addresses in the near future) but I have been playing with a few different screen captures software applications that can record the video screen of an online video stream and save it to your hard drive in the video format of your choice, MP4 anyone?
Reasons to Capture Streaming Video
Did you ever have the need to capture a Netflix movie? I would think that with all the devices that are supported by Netflix now that there really wouldn’t be a need to download the movies but if you did want to here are a few reasons that I can think of why it would be useful:
- Most movies only stream for a certain time period
- You want to watch on a device that does not have a 4G connection or WiFi is not available
- You want to watch on a TV set that does not have a Netflix compatible game system hooked up to it
- Your HDTV is not connected to WiFi
- Heck, having a DVD collection is the way to go.
Software to Capture Netflix Streaming Video
I have recently been testing a few different software applications that can capture online video streams and I am truly impressed with the capture quality.
The first offering is called Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate there are both Windows and Mac versions available. This software is a full fledged video and DVD software and it has the ability to capture and download any online video. The beauty of this software is that it has one of the faster more reliable video converters out today and it will burn the captured movie into a standard DVD disc which you can then take to your DVD player and play like a regular DVD movie. In addition it will convert it into a format of your choice if you would rather port it over to your portable device like your iPod, iPhone, or Andorid Smartphone.
Take a look at the video below that shows the Netflix video capture in action. Note that you must capture in real time.
Once the video is captured then it’s an easy step to then convert it into other formats or burn to a DVD.
Like I show in the video, the Wondershare software handles all the dirty work of capturing, converting, and burning. All I need to do is input a blank disc then carry it to the DVD player. Try it our for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Underhanded, but I like it. Doesn’t prevent me from ever having to dig through their list to find movies or deal with their load times anymore! Now just gotta plugin and watch!
Once this burns to dvd, does it remove from your hard drive, or do I have to manually remove it, and if I have to remove it, how do I find out how to do that/
You have to manually remove it. By default it will save to your documents/video folder.
I use the Mozilla Firefox video downloader for recording streaming videos. Go to Mozilla.com and download their browser “Firefox”. As a bonus
CORRECTION. I commented that I used a FireFox downloader. That is wrong. I use the Ant.com downloader to download and record online streaming videos and I have had better success running it in the FireFox web browser than Internet Explorer. I really like the Ant.com recorder because it runs in the background and is not in “real time”. You can also be recording several streams at once. Great for YouTube videos etc. It has a “Manager”, a “Browser” and a “Player” as part of the program. I HAVE HAD much better success using it with the FireFox web browser. You can simply download the FireFox browser from FireFox.com and run it as you would any other program from your desk top and then download the recorder from Ant.com. The Ant.com recorder will put a function bar at the top of the screen so that you always have access to it if you see any streaming video you want to save to your hard drive. ONE THING I have not discovered it how to take those downloaded videos and burn them to DVD, which is what I would love to do because I am getting quite a collection of videos I would like to save on DVD to watch in the future. IF anybody knows how to do that please tell me.
you can also check out moviebox, it’s a recording software that does video converting and dvd ripping as well and it works nicely with Netflix streams. there are some how to instructions on how you can use it on this page: http://audials.com/en/how_to_record_stream_capture_music_videos_movies_from/netflix.html. It’s easy, you basically just do a screen recording and whatever you play on your screen, movebox will record. I would say it’s worth taking a look at this one as well and the price isn’t bad at all either.
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