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Hardware Western Digital Launches My DVR Expander
Wolfgang Hansson (Blog) - October 23, 2007 3:05 PM

25 comment(s) - last by timmiser.. on Oct 24 at 7:40 PM

Western Digital My DVR Extender (Source: Western Digital)

Western Digital adds 60 hours of HD Video capacity for TiVo users

Digital video recorders are quickly becoming as common in a home theater as a DVD player. With the proliferation of HD programming on DVR systems, more storage space is needed. Currently when your TiVo fills up your option is to delete content.

Western Digital announced a new product today called the My DVR Expander that adds another, much better option to the list. The My DVR Expander looks just like the Western Digital My Book external hard drives, which is what the My DVR Expander is in the grand scheme of things.

The 500GB external hard drive connects to all TiVo HD and Series3 DVRs via the eSATA port and is recognized automatically by the DVR. The additional 500GB of storage space allows for up to 300 additional hours of standard definition video and up to 60 additional hours of high definition video.

The drive uses passive cooling for silent operation and a low intensity LED light to minimize distractions while using your home theater. Western Digital also says that the My DVR Expander will work with Scientific Atlanta models including the Explorer 8300 series DVRs. Included in the package are the drive itself, an eSATA cable, AC adapter and the quick install guide. The drive is available now for $199.

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Sweet

By FITCamaro on 10/23/2007 3:07:51 PM , Rating: 2

I'm gonna have to look at my DVR tonight, it'd be sweet if I could get my video on this thing. What'd really be nice is if there were a way to fool your DVR into putting all the video on this thing. Then disconnect it and plug it into your PC. That way you can see about pulling the recorded shows off of it.

RE: Sweet

By Zagor on 10/23/2007 3:17:54 PM , Rating: 2

Not likely. There is no way in heck that hollywood would allow you to pull the recorded shows. Everything on this drive will be encrypted and can only be viewed while attached to the DVR. You can't even attach it to another similar DVR and have it work. Should the DVR you used to record the shows crap out on you, there goes all the recordings too. Got to love hollywood.

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RE: Sweet

By FITCamaro on 10/23/2007 3:58:08 PM , Rating: 2

Anything that can be encrypted, can be decrypted. Will just take a bit of time for someone to figure it out. I highly doubt there is a complex encryption though on the video since that would require more powerful hardware to do this in real time.

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RE: Sweet

By mdogs444 on 10/23/2007 3:19:16 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah that would be awesome. I have a Time Warner scientific atlanta box or something like that, ill have to see what connections it has.

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RE: Sweet

By FITCamaro on 10/23/2007 7:10:44 PM , Rating: 2

SWEET! I've got a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR!

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RE: Sweet

By RamarC on 10/23/2007 3:21:36 PM , Rating: 2

all high-def tivos and sci-atl boxes encode the video for the box itself. pull the drive and the video is unusable. lots of folks are trying to figure how decrypt the video but the really good hackers are busy on other projects. ;-)

there are some firewire hacks for the sci-atl 8000 series which are discussed over at http://www.avsforum.com/.

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RE: Sweet

By Mitch101 on 10/23/2007 4:41:54 PM , Rating: 2

I thought they modded the module which does encryption so the files are no longer encrypted to the hard drive allowing someone to network into the tivo and extract the contents.

Or at least on Direct Tv tivo's this has been done.

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RE: Sweet

By RamarC on 10/23/2007 5:06:07 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I thought they modded the module which does encryption so the files are no longer encrypted to the hard drive allowing someone to network into the tivo and extract the contents.

Not on the Tivo HD recorders. They're still locked AFIK.

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RE: Sweet

By johnsonx on 10/23/2007 6:50:00 PM , Rating: 2

Series 2 DirecTiVo HD - yes, can be hacked to disable the encryption module (actually any Series 1 or Series 2 TiVo/DirecTiVo can be hacked, though a few models require a non-trivial hardware mod to defeat anti-hacking protection)

Series 3 TiVo - no, not as far as I know, but I'm not totally up on the TiVo hacking scene.

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RE: Sweet

By FITCamaro on 10/23/2007 4:07:29 PM , Rating: 2

You also have to wonder if its possible to create some kind of setup where you daisy chain a few of these, or just regular SATA drives in an eSATA enclosure, and the DVR sees it just as one big drive. You could have a 2-4TB video array right there off your DVR. Of course you have to wonder how well your DVR would like seeing that many files....

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Well at least Tivo has options.

By RjBass on 10/23/2007 4:41:16 PM , Rating: 2

I just attempted to hook up an external HD to my Dish Network DVR the other day using the USB port on the back of the DVR box. It looked like it was going to work, but then I got a message saying that the option was not supported yet.

Further investigation into the feature revealed that DishNetwork only allows their Hi Def customers to access those kinds of features.

DirecTV uses Tivo boxes for their DVRs so I may have to make the switch back to them.

RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By euclidean on 10/23/2007 5:21:04 PM , Rating: 2

We have Charter Communications...they use Moxi boxes (which are real pieces of shit) and you can plug any External HDD into it and use it as more storage...it was just a software update they pushed to our box...so I hope people aren't going to think this is the "Great new Thing!"... :\

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RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By johnsonx on 10/23/2007 6:44:08 PM , Rating: 2

No, DirecTV doesn't use TiVo any longer. You can still use DirecTiVo's if you have one (as I do), but you can't get them anymore at least not from DirecTV. The HD DirecTiVo's may be of limited use in the future because they only support MPEG-2 and DirecTV will be switching to MPEG-4 for HD (I think the newest HD channels are already MPEG-4, but I really don't know as I only have an SD DirecTiVo).

You can't plug an external drive into a DirecTiVo either; with 3rd party software tools you can upgrade the internal drive, or add a second internal drive with a little work (I have done both: I have a 250GB main drive and a 200GB secondary). The USB port on the back of a DirecTiVo is only useful if the unit is hacked, and then only for hooking up an Ethernet adapter.

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RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By timmiser on 10/23/2007 7:35:53 PM , Rating: 1

He was talking Dish network...not direct tv.

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RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By johnsonx on 10/24/2007 2:09:39 PM , Rating: 2

try reading the original post carefully.

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RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By timmiser on 10/24/2007 7:40:29 PM , Rating: 2

Correct. My bad. Sorry.

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RE: Well at least Tivo has options.

By timmiser on 10/23/2007 7:37:52 PM , Rating: 2

I've got the Dish HD DVR and it allows me to plug in any USB drive to expand my recording storage space. When I send a program to the USB drive, I can even view it directly from the drive itself which is pretty sweet. It takes a long time to transfer a few hours of HD programming but fortunately you can watch and record TV while it is doing this.

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Series 3

By teng029 on 10/23/2007 5:51:27 PM , Rating: 2

no series 2 support. :(

RE: Series 3

By Anh Huynh on 10/23/2007 6:15:43 PM , Rating: 2

Series 2 doesn't have e.SATA.

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RE: Series 3

By thestereotype on 10/23/2007 9:37:10 PM , Rating: 2

What makes this special over standard My Books with eSATA ports? What happens if you plug an eSATA My Book into a Series 3 now?

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RE: Series 3

By Anh Huynh on 10/23/2007 10:38:14 PM , Rating: 2

I don't know. Waiting for WD to get back to me on that.

I don't think anyone's tested it yet on the TiVo Community forums yet.

I want 1TB internal + 1TB external on my TiVo HD :(.

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Got one....love it

By KenpoKen on 10/23/2007 3:23:54 PM , Rating: 2

I just picked up one of these drives for my SA 8300HD. Installation was simple and works great. Don't try to get the data off the drive....formatted differently....Windows can't read it. Can't move it to another SA8300HD....it will format it again.

P.S. Once installed, you can't rewind live TV, don't know why.....kinda sucks......

RE: Got one....love it

By FITCamaro on 10/23/2007 4:01:30 PM , Rating: 2

I didn't think Windows could read it, but you could dump the raw data from the drive. Someone will figure it out eventually.

As far as the rewind issue, I'd guess its probably because the box realizes theres a potential non-secure source and it disables that feature. Or it might just be a bug since the box wasn't designed to work with the external drive.

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RE: Got one....love it

By MrSmurf on 10/23/2007 10:44:08 PM , Rating: 3

The boxes themselves are designed to work with external harddrives, hence the port. The software your box uses, however, is another story. I can only speak for Time Warner Southwestern Ohio but the rewind works on our SA 8300 series hardware with external harddrives. We've been playing with these for a while now and haven't experienced any major bugs.

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COMPLETELY AWESOME!

By Wolfpup on 10/24/2007 3:48:31 PM , Rating: 2

Turning on Tivo 2 Go and adding another 60 hours of storage space to a Series 3/HD makes it absolutely perfect. Those were my two problems with it, and they're both fixed. YAY! (Since I absolutely love my Series 2!)

I guess if I really wanted to gripe, I'd prefer having like two accessible drive bays on the Tivo to slap in any normal SATA drive, and or at least getting a second eSATA port...but that's kind of nitpicking. I watch a ton of TV, and my 80 hour series 2 (really more like 30-50 hour) actually has less storage space for SD than a TivoHD does for HD with this drive attached.