External Hard Drive

[HighlanderCFH]

Howdy,

I'm not sure if my question is applicable to this particular forum, but it seems to be the closest one for me to try.

I was a Dish Network subscriber for many years and had a 2TB exterior hard drive connected to one of my Hoppers. Over the years, I accumulated several hundred movies & TV shows that I recorded on the exterior HD.

I am no longer with Dish after switching over to Sling TV a few years ago, so the exterior HD has been sitting untouched to preserve all that recorded content. I am thinking about purchasing an AirTV for easier access to my local channels. From what I've read, the AirTV has no storage and requires an exterior HD to do any recording.

I would probably use that same exterior HD, but am not anxious to reformat it and erase all of those painstaking Dish recordings. My QUESTION is whether the external HD might be compatible with the AirTV without having to reformat -- and whether I could access all of those recordings already on the external HD.

I'm hoping this might be possible because the recordings were made via my Dish Hopper and the AirTV is also a Dish Network product.

Thanks much,
Chuck

 

[ethanlerma]

I was a Dish Network subscriber for many years and had a 2TB exterior hard drive connected to one of my Hoppers. Over the years, I accumulated several hundred movies & TV shows that I recorded on the exterior HD.

I am no longer with Dish after switching over to Sling TV a few years ago, so the exterior HD has been sitting untouched to preserve all that recorded content. I am thinking about purchasing an AirTV for easier access to my local channels. From what I've read, the AirTV has no storage and requires an exterior HD to do any recording.

This here is enough for me to tell you that you are most likely out of luck. Recordings are encrypted and tied to your account number, so only receivers activated with your account are able to read them. Think of the number as a key. Since you left Dish a while ago, even if you go back odds are you wont get the same account number, you'll just get a new account set up (I'm not 100% sure on this, but what I've heard from people with outdoor accounts is that the limit is two years of inactivity before the account gets deleted, guessing its the same for home accounts). So yeah, I would consider those recordings lost.

 

[HighlanderCFH]

Thank you for the information. I was afraid this might be the case.
Take care,
Chuck