DVR question saving movies to a hard drive

[gatorknights]

Hi guys

DirecTV was kind enough to give us movie channels free for 2 months, so I've been recording like crazy. The receiver has a USB port, does anyone know how to copy those movies to an external hard drive, or is that even possible or legal

Thanks

[LeafUF]

Have no idea but I am curious to see the responses on this one. My DVR does not have a lot of storage and always seems to be full.

[fastsix]

Is the DirectTV DVR TiVo based? It's pretty easy on a TiVo, but I gave up trying to get movies off my Comcast supplied Motorola brand DVR.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Most DVRs have the USB solely for firmware updates, etc. There are very few that allow you to transfer files from them.

[philnotfil]

There is no easy way, but if you really want to, you can get an AV card for your computer and play the movies into the card and then record them onto your computer from there, in real time.

Easier just to download them.

[panamacitygator]

I have a external esata hard drive which is called a "DVR expander" It is made by Western Digital and is 500 GB. It works with my Comcast Scientific Atlanta DVR.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Can you read that data directly from a computer, though? Most of them do internal encryption to prevent watching recorded content on another device.

[SteelGator]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

Most DVRs have the USB solely for firmware updates, etc. There are very few that allow you to transfer files from them.

Ditto this. It very much depends on the model that you have. You can look in the printed manual they should have given you to see if it's usable. Or, if you know the make/model, you can do a Google search. Something like "Dish 620 usb", something like that.

[Juggernautz]

Try "HowTo" .com