Thread: Can U-verse read a Dish External Disk?

AT&T has just brought U-verse to our neighborhood so I immediately got a sales call. Interesting service, but won't write anything down until I place my order. N.G. I just dumped DTV (no HD) for Dish (w/HD) four months ago for $$$ reasons. Dish is very nice but some of U-verse's features look nice too, plus I like the faster VDSL. I have a 1TB external disk connected to my Dish ViP722 DVR with 140+ NCIS episodes recorded on it that I wouldn't want to lose. The U-verse saleslady assured me that while the U-verse tech wouldn't do it for me that it was possible to view the Dish-recorded disk on U-verse. I thought (for an unknown reason) that Dish keyed the disk to the DVR to where only that DVR could read the contents.

So, is it possible to watch shows off the Dish-recorded disk on a U-verse DVR?

--Lars Greninger

Fact: the u-verse salesperson is full of crap if they told you that you can view your dish content from the EHD on thier equipment. It is in fact keyed to your account at dish and will only work with active DVRs on that account.

I'll second the U-Verse salesperson blowing smoke...AT&T would be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if they engineered a set-top-box that deciphered Dish Network's disk encryption as well as potentially violating the broadcast/cable media's copyrights. The recording on your external hard-disk are married to your Dish Network account. You may be able to reuse your external drive with U-Verse (don't know much about their equipment), but the drive would be reformatted and you will certainly lose your recordings.