HDD/Freeview HD recordersand external USB drives

[yellowshark454]

Hi, hoping somebody can give me an understanding on this.

I need to replace my broken DVD HD recorder; I see Sony no longer sells this product and this has caused me to consider upgrading to a  twin Freeview HD tuner HDD recorder. Now a major part of my being is to record films to the HDD and then copy to a DVD for later viewing. I have also been using the broken unit to convert my VHS tapes to DVD.

Whilst I think it is possible to get one of these new HD units with a blue-ray disc drive that I can burn to, the cost seemstobe somewhat more than I wanted to pay. So I am looking at HD storage and using additonal usb 2 terabyte externaldisk drives- which finally gets to my question.

As I read it you can register up to 8 drives - but these drives are formatted by the HD recorder and cannot be used elsewhere  eg on your PC. So I build up a complete library of 16 terabytes of video but what happens when the HDD recorder fails and I have to buy a new one. Can I attach my external drives with my videos to a new recorder,presumably by then it will be a different model -compatible with my usb drives?

AsI understand it,registreing a usb drive cause a reformat of the USB drive (and the lossof my video files!!!) so I do not see how there is any future for my 16 terabyte library once my unit fails????????

Have I missed something or has the industry got it wrong?(Panasonic seem to manage this in the same way as Sony)

[Anonymous]

This is a concern I have too.

I have the Sony SVRHDT500B PVR Recorder, I have added an external 2TB HDD onto it.  I have nearly filled it too, with nearly 400 Recordings.

However, as I understand it, these recordings are encrypted using a seperate individual key for each PVR box (confirmed, as i cant add this HDD to my mums PVR which is the same model).

Now what happens when I want to upgrade my PVR down the line or if it goes Kapoot!  I loose all my recordings from this PVR as well as all the recordings on the 2TB HDD as well.

This also stopped me from sending my PVR back to Sony for a minor repair (IPTV problem), as I didnt want to risk them sending a replacement model out instead.

I guess that these devices are just not intended for long term storage for future watching(and rewatching).  I guess they want us to keep buying DVDs etc.

However, I have a Lovefilm and Netflix subscription, and I have found that I now use my PVR less and less.  (mainly i guess, due to the fact that there has been nothing interesting to watch in my oppinion on freeview for quite sometime, other than movies)

Sorry for the long post/rant too... (and sorry I cant offer any advice)

Cheers.

[yellowshark454]

Many thanks for your comments Quinnicus – you have been most helpful as you have confirmed my reading of the situation.

For me, it is clear that that these boxes, with their encryption and proprietary file formats  are not the way to go if you want to build a library for future viewing.

I am not sure what the best long term strategic answer is but I think in the short term I might fit a PC TV card and then ripthe video stream to a Windows video file on a networked drive- or buy a subscription to Netflix