Freeing up space on the 722

[PJW99]

Are there any other methods of freeing up space on the 722 other then paying the $40 one time fee to activate external USB storage? I did this about an hour ago(not thinking at the time that USB flash drives do not work with this)
Portability is something that is very important to me(Before my HD upgrade on Tuesday I had a 322 instead of a 722 in my living room. I also had a series 2 TiVo connected to that 322 for recordings. The nice thing with TiVo versus Dish Network's DVR's, are that you can transfer programs to your computer and burn them onto a DVD.

Im considering possible purchasing a seperate DVD recorder/player. But Im not sure if something like that will work, because I heard there is a special encryption or something like that on all recorded programs which prevents it from being burned to a DVD.

Can you guys help me, or give me any advice.? If worse comes to worse I'll bite the bullet and purchase an external USB hard drive(even though it can only be connected to the receiver). But Id like something which allows me to play that recording in other places besides my receiver(If that is even possible).

 

[Sundown]

You can use a DVR recorder to burn content from the VIP722 to disk, as others and I have done. As far as I know, the encryption is only added to content tranfered to external hard drives.

The VIP receiver simultaneously outputs the video signal through the HDMI, component, and S-video connections for TV1. On TV2 the AV signals are sent out through cable or RCA connections.

However, you most likely will have aspect ratio issues, given that the video might be horizontally compressed for some reason; if your TV can stretch the image back to full screen it’s not a problem.

I have successfully used several different recorders with the722, and prefer my Panasonic for several reasons. Recording 4:3 aspect ratio content is fairly simple, you can simply stretch the image if need be, by using the format button on the Dish remote control, prior to recording the DVD.

Recording 16:9 aspect ratio content can be a bit more challenging, depending on what your preferences are concerning the finalized disk. You can record as mentioned for 4:3, but may need to also adjust your TV to full screen for 16:9. Since I prefer to burn my disks to have the ability for any DVD player to be used with any TV, I go through a multi-step process recording to a RAM disk and using computer software to render a true 16:9 screen image, prior to burnning the final disk with my computer.