ROI not Technical problem
I thought I had seen in prior messages that the 921 is really running on Linux. If that is correct, then it would be entirely possible to restore from tape and playback off the DVR menu. ...being unfamiliar with the D-VHS standard, it is entirely possible/likely that support for all the show meta-data that is displayed on the DVR screen would be lost as the video itself is pushed to tape. However, Dish could simply provide default values for that meta-data upon restore from tape; or, could provide a screen to prompt for the data, like:
what channel was this originally recorded from
what time was it recorded.
what is/was the name of the show
synopsis
Assuming this is Linux, it is *not* a technical problem to restore a video file from tape back to disk, and then display it through the DVR guide. My guess is that E* is asking itself what the ROI of implementing that functionality is, vs. just having end users playback through the D-VHS device.
Having programmed professionally through a segment of my IT career, I can tell you that adding the above functionality would be trivial, compared to the remainder of the software complexity of the 921 (probably 1-2 weeks development time by 1 person, at most). However, that still doesn't answer the question of whether or not E* will see this as a valuable use of that labor cost.
-NICK