OFFICIAL External Storage Information

[the_pabster]

Is there a way now to physically drop your recordings on to a media center pc via USB, and then network that througout your house?

Heh, talk about a pipe dream. They've got the recordings heavily encrypted and everything protected quite heavily to prevent any such nefarious activity. "Nefarious" being at the sole discretion of the content providers, who often find the notion of FAIR USE to be "Nefarious".

Anotherwards, no, and don't expect that to change.

 

[JamesThurber]

Is there a way now to physically drop your recordings on to a media center pc via USB, and then network that througout your house?

There has been a demonstration of that with an HP Media Server computer. That was done via the ethernet connection I believe. It has not been mentioned lately that I am aware of so I don't know if E* is just working on it in the background or if they are hoping that it will die off and not support it.

 

[adavis720]

Another happy customer here.

I had a old 120 USB 2.0/ieee1394 combo lying around. I called the number @ 8:20 AM EST and got a Rep right away, he knew exactly what to do and I was formatting the drive 5 minutes later. Transfered a 1 hour HD program and it took about 4 minutes. Just for fun I watched a show off the internal hard drive while it was transferring and it did seem to slow things down.

I then watched the show off the external drive and it looked good, but I experienced some video artifacts and audio dropouts.

I imagine this is due to the old external hard drive?????
I believe the drive inside was one of the first 120 gig HD's and I'd bet it has a 2mb or 4mb buffer at most.

I just ordered a 500 gig with a 16mb buffer, so I am hoping that will solve that problem.


The big surprise for me was being able to watch the show off the drive! I was under the impression the external drive was for archiving only, so that is just icing on the cake.

Thanks for all the insight here.

 

[tfoss]

Scott, where did you get the 1TB hd for the price of a 750gig? thanks

 

[kappy44]

Activated at 5:30Am CDT....1TB drive worked perfectly...*E software recognized available space at 930+MB.....transferred sample program...watched....worked perfectly....now transferring 15+ hours of material with time to complete transfer at 4.5 hours. Ordered 722 for lease at $99 including $100 redemption and return of one of my leased 211's.....kudos to *E!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[KAB]

Playback AOK!!

Transfered 8 hours. Watched about 20 minutes worth, everything looked as it should. No drop-out, pixelation, etc. All controls work. It's a wonderful world!

 

[Marc Kessler]

I found this deal today. Any comments?

Cavalry 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM 16MB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - CAUE37500 - Pre-Formatted as NTFS




Pricing

Additional Info
List Price: $139.99
Our Price: $119.95
Price After Rebate(s): $89.95
Shipping: $7.73
Buy.com Total Price: $97.68
including rebates

 

[tigershere]

did anyone else after formatting the ext get a 622 restart?

it all seemed normal and i was waiting for the format to complete and it reset

once it came back it was formatting and working but i was not expecting the reboot and wondering if itwas finished

 

[KingofKaty]

Called the special activation number. Got "Charles" - he didn't know about the external hard drive feature. I hung up and redialed. This time I got "Rosa". She fixed me right up.

Why do we have to play CSR roulette? They should have trained a single call center to do this starting at midnight to handle the Day 1 requests.

 

[primetimeguy]

did anyone else after formatting the ext get a 622 restart?

Yes the 622 will reboot after formatting the external drive.

 

[tfoss]

What about the 211 external storage, when?

 

[kappy44]

Scott, where did you get the 1TB hd for the price of a 750gig? thanks

I reported this and it was available at Best Buy on sale....Hitachi unit.

 

[NightRyder]

What about the 211 external storage, when?

Maybe by the end of the year, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

NightRyder

 

[tigershere]

thanks and i read back a few pages and see thats normal, opps

now i dumped californication as it was HD to see how playback was
Seemed flawless and i FF through it and it was the same it seemed as on the DVR.

now i made a timer and saw the 'ext' option was selectable. Time went off and the channel changed but it was not recording, hum

I am guessing it can't record to usb this way but it should not have let me try either

 

[primetimeguy]

Since I'm impatient, I've gone into the USB storage menu while I knew transfer was going on. Most of the time the window with time remaining appears. Twice I've had the window come up with no time showing. One may think it is done or hung up. Each time it eventually finishes in about the time it originally said. So if you see this don't assume it is done and disconnect the drive.

 

[Joewee]

What happens if I later on I upgrade my hard drive and want to take the dish network formatted hard drive and put it back on my computer. Will there be any problems reformatting back to work with windows vista on my computer?

Also, just a side note, I see dish hasn't updated their HD guide on their web site with the new HD channels. Anywhere we can find a tv schedule of all HD stations?

 

[kstuart]

Just called and the phone rep did not know anything about it. However, she did a good thing - she transferred me to a Technical Support Rep - who did know about it.

Transferring 3 Star Wars movies is 26gb and it will take 1HR 48MIN 52SEC.

I already tried transferring a 30min HD recording which took about 10 minutes, and then I played back some of it from the USB drive, so that works.

I'm using a brand new Fandom Titanium II external drive - 500 gb. It has a metal case and a physical on-off switch. It has consistent good reviews on Newegg. To me, it seems to be an enclosure company that buys hard drives. I didn't want to recommend it in the Bargain Watch thread before I tested it.

 

[cparker]

What happens if I later on I upgrade my hard drive and want to take the dish network formatted hard drive and put it back on my computer. Will there be any problems reformatting back to work with windows vista on my computer?

Also, just a side note, I see dish hasn't updated their HD guide on their web site with the new HD channels. Anywhere we can find a tv schedule of all HD stations?

If windows vista can manipulate linux native file systems then it should be able to remove the partition and reformat it. If Vista has any brains at all it may see the linux native partitions as "non-DOS" partitions. If that's the case you can simply remove those.

I'm sure there's a bootable CD that can do this but I'm at work and may not have time to hunt it down.

 

[JohnR]

Happy Camper

I called in at 7:30am, CDT this morning. I have two 622's and the CSR thought I should be charged 39.99 X2. I corrected her, and after a long while on hold while she checked it out, she came back on the line confirming I would be only charged 39.99 one time (per household). It took about 10 minutes for both receivers to have access to the USB Drive. One of the receivers gave me a "too many USB devices attached" message. I disconnected and reattached the USB cable and all was well.

As an aside, I established the ethernet access on both receivers last night. I used Netgear Powerline gear. It worked flawlessly.

Cheers!

 

[Smith P.]

So, practically the transfer speed it 3..5 Mb/s. Hmm, it's close to USB 1.1 then to USB 2.0

Now tell me about advantage using USB v2.0 with theoretical speed 480 Mbps .

D* made right choice using eSATA !