My best friend: TV

January 24, 2007 6:30 PM

I have Dish Network and my DVR has a USB port on the back. Is there a way to transfer programming from the DVR to my laptop? What is needed to make this happen?
posted by crapples to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Lifehacker just did a post about this, though the instructions were suited to a DVR with firewire. Maybe you could work from these instructions? Be sure to read the comments section.
posted by jroybal at 8:25 PM on January 24, 2007

I haven't seen much about this in a while, but most of what I've read said that the USB port's pretty useless, at least for now. Here's more from some random blog.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:10 AM on January 25, 2007

No. The USB port is for manual firmware flash updates.

It's not an output from what I understand.

If you had Tivo you could copy things to your PC and then take them on the go with Tivo2Go.
posted by PetiePal at 8:21 AM on January 25, 2007

There are rumors it'll be possible to expand storage via the USB port and an external hard drive with a future upgrade, but definitely not now, AND how likely it'd be to then copy files to your laptop is a function of how DRM-ish those stored files would be...

According to this, though, it might require a successor to the 622 before even simple external drive storage is available.
posted by rleamon at 8:45 AM on January 27, 2007