fig95's profile

Tutor

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8 Messages

Thursday, February 11th, 2010 12:21 AM

External Hard Drive

I have done some searching and I know that you can not add a external hard drive to the DVR.  I have seen post as far back as 2008 wishing for this.  Anyone know if this is in the works?

Professor

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3.5K Messages

14 years ago

There were questions about it in a Uverse customer survey that I took within the last few months, but no official or unofficial release date on it yet.

Tutor

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33 Messages

14 years ago

I do not expect this anytime soon. 

Mentor

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9 Messages

14 years ago

the big problem with enabling this, I was told, is that if it were enabled, you'd be able to order something on On Demand, and keep it since you could connect your computer to the hard drive.

 

BUT the guy told me the front USB port on the Cisco IPN4320 works. hasn't worked for me yet!

Expert

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20.4K Messages

14 years ago

It only gives power, there is no data capability thru the USB port. :smileywink:


Chris

____________________________________________________________________

Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-866-912-8216 for TS to avoid Mr. Voice Recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

Tutor

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8 Messages

14 years ago

As far as On Demand there are a ton of ways they can stop people doing that.  Both of my cable DVRs let you connect an external harddrive and they had On Demand too....

 

Just more excuses from a company more interested in expanding to new markets then making customers happy....

Guru

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363 Messages

14 years ago

Most DVRs I have seen that supports external hard drives have eSATA ports on them, and being that the U-verse DVR doesn't have an eSATA port, it would either need to be a USB hard drive (I think USB is too slow to support real time video, so the internal hard drive would need to buffer it before being sent to the external drive) or a network hard drive, and the DVR would have to be directed to the hard drive (by inputting an IP or MAC address on the DVR)

 

On top of that, to keep the recorded video from being copied to a PC (and probably to a DVD-R, even though some other DVRs allow that), the video would have to be encrypted specifically for the DVR, and the hard drive may need to have a special partition and/or formatting for the DVR


@mibrnsurg wrote:

It only gives power, there is no data capability thru the USB port. :smileywink:


Chris

____________________________________________________________________

Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-866-912-8216 for TS to avoid Mr. Voice Recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more


I think that the front USB port has potential for data transfer, and that a simple update could be made to allow data transfer over the USB port, but that either Windows CE or Microsoft Mediaroom blocks the use of the USB port in some way, so being that data transfer is blocked, it can only be used for power

 

Guru

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939 Messages

14 years ago

 


@mikedamirault wrote:
Most DVRs I have seen that supports external hard drives have eSATA ports on them, and being that the U-verse DVR doesn't have an eSATA port, it would either need to be a USB hard drive (I think USB is too slow to support real time video, so the internal hard drive would need to buffer it before being sent to the external drive) or a network hard drive, and the DVR would have to be directed to the hard drive (by inputting an IP or MAC address on the DVR)

 

On top of that, to keep the recorded video from being copied to a PC (and probably to a DVD-R, even though some other DVRs allow that), the video would have to be encrypted specifically for the DVR, and the hard drive may need to have a special partition and/or formatting for the DVR


 

This is somewhat true.  USB 2.0 should be fast enough -- the HD streams on U-Verse are ~6 Mbps, which USB 2.0 should more than handle.

 

The encryption/etc. wouldn't be any different from that used by the internal hard drive.

Guru

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363 Messages

14 years ago


@cheer wrote:

 


@mikedamirault wrote:
Most DVRs I have seen that supports external hard drives have eSATA ports on them, and being that the U-verse DVR doesn't have an eSATA port, it would either need to be a USB hard drive (I think USB is too slow to support real time video, so the internal hard drive would need to buffer it before being sent to the external drive) or a network hard drive, and the DVR would have to be directed to the hard drive (by inputting an IP or MAC address on the DVR)

 

On top of that, to keep the recorded video from being copied to a PC (and probably to a DVD-R, even though some other DVRs allow that), the video would have to be encrypted specifically for the DVR, and the hard drive may need to have a special partition and/or formatting for the DVR


 

This is somewhat true.  USB 2.0 should be fast enough -- the HD streams on U-Verse are ~6 Mbps, which USB 2.0 should more than handle.

 

The encryption/etc. wouldn't be any different from that used by the internal hard drive.


"This is somewhat true.  USB 2.0 should be fast enough -- the HD streams on U-Verse are ~6 Mbps, which USB 2.0 should more than handle."

 

That may be, I am used to using firewire for video, so I usually trust firewire more than USB when it comes to real time video transfer, USB 2.0 may be fast enough though

 

"The encryption/etc. wouldn't be any different from that used by the internal hard drive."

 

Right, my point to it was that if you decided to share the external hard drive with your computer (either network or USB), the format that the DVR would use would probably not be FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS, which are the only formats supported by Windows, and it may not use HFS+, supported by Mac OS, so if you choose to use it with a computer as well, it should be partitioned, also, for those that think they could use it to back up their shows, the fact that it uses a different format or encryption would stop them from doing that

 

It's probably not something that at&t thinks is worth their effort to implement such a feature

Expert

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9.4K Messages

14 years ago

I believe the file system written by the Sigma Designs 8634 chip (used in the STBs) is FAT32 and can be read by ordinary PCs.

 

However, the data that is saved in the files on the hard drive is encrypted by the Sigma chip.

 

The USB ports on the STB are USB 2.0 and can easily be used to read/write from a storage device, but the Windows CE Mediaroom implementation in its current form has no USB driver stack, so it will not currently recognize any devices plugged into the USB ports.

 

Guru

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363 Messages

14 years ago


@SomeJoe7777 wrote:

I believe the file system written by the Sigma Designs 8634 chip (used in the STBs) is FAT32 and can be read by ordinary PCs.

 

However, the data that is saved in the files on the hard drive is encrypted by the Sigma chip.

 

The USB ports on the STB are USB 2.0 and can easily be used to read/write from a storage device, but the Windows CE Mediaroom implementation in its current form has no USB driver stack, so it will not currently recognize any devices plugged into the USB ports.

 


"I believe the file system written by the Sigma Designs 8634 chip (used in the STBs) is FAT32 and can be read by ordinary PCs."

 

It may be FAT32, I was just saying that it is unknown (at least to me), and their are proprietary hard drive formats made especially for certain devices, so it was a possibility, and if somebody wanted to also use the hard drive on a PC, it could be unusable, of course if it is FAT32, then like you said, it would be compatible with PCs

 

"However, the data that is saved in the files on the hard drive is encrypted by the Sigma chip."

 

Right, the question is how it's encrypted, I think I heard something somewhere about the files on the DVR's hard drive aren't based on the recordings themselves but on clusters of files filling the entire drive/partition, that together result in the recording on the DVR and unused storage, given I have never tried connecting the DVR's hard drive to a PC, I have not seen anying firsthand, so I am not really sure how the DVR records or encrypts shows

 

"The USB ports on the STB are USB 2.0 and can easily be used to read/write from a storage device, but the Windows CE Mediaroom implementation in its current form has no USB driver stack, so it will not currently recognize any devices plugged into the USB ports."

 

Exactly, that was basically what I was saying, was that the USB ports do work (hardware wise), it's just that they are limited/blocked by software (by not having the proper driver stacks like you said), in which case, a simple update could make them usable, but at&t chooses not to make them usable

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