# saving Recorded Shows From OLD R15 to NEW R15



## Sirrah (Oct 20, 2007)

My R15-100 died (no response from the front of the receiver but fan was working and had a red light in the digital audio port in the back) and I was sent a refurbished R15-500. My original thought was to switch the hard drives in the two receivers, but 1 is a SATA and the other is an EIDE. I have several complete (and unwatched because of work schedule) series saved on my old receiver that I would hate to lose. How can I move the programs from my old to my new?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Sirrah said:


> How can I move the programs from my old to my new?


You cannot.

Even if you had been able to swap drives, no receiver can play the content recorded on another receiver.


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## Sirrah (Oct 20, 2007)

Why not? Same network (DirecTV), same connections, same format, etc. So why can't they be viewed on another receiver?

So what can I do to get the shows recored so that I can watch them?


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## dbmaven (May 29, 2004)

Sirrah said:


> Why not? Same network (DirecTV), same connections, same format, etc. So why can't they be viewed on another receiver?
> 
> So what can I do to get the shows recored so that I can watch them?


When a D* DVR is fired up for the first time, it "formats" the hard drive. This can also happen on occasion if it finds hard drive errors that are unrecoverable - when you least expect it. Part of that format appears to be a "tag" or encryption key that effectively marries that drive to that receiver.

If the 'old' R15 is truly dead, then your content is buried and cannot be retrieved.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Sirrah said:


> Why not? Same network (DirecTV), same connections, same format, etc. So why can't they be viewed on another receiver?


Encryption.


> So what can I do to get the shows recored so that I can watch them?


What part of "you cannot" are you not able to come to terms with?


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## Sirrah (Oct 20, 2007)

harsh said:


> Encryption.What part of "you cannot" are you not able to come to terms with?


The part where just because someone says "you cannot" I am supposed to accept it with no questions asked. What part of "inquisitive mind" and "human curiosity" are you having difficulty grasping?



dbmaven said:


> When a D* DVR is fired up for the first time, it "formats" the hard drive. This can also happen on occasion if it finds hard drive errors that are unrecoverable - when you least expect it. Part of that format appears to be a "tag" or encryption key that effectively marries that drive to that receiver.
> 
> If the 'old' R15 is truly dead, then your content is buried and cannot be retrieved.


Thanks for the explanation dbmaven. That's all I was wanting.


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## dbmaven (May 29, 2004)

Sirrah said:


> Thanks for the explanation dbmaven. That's all I was wanting.


You're welcome. I always try to give a bit of an explanation - providing a few facts (or at least my understanding of how things work) seems to work better than just "Yes" or "No". We're all curious and want to know the "why"...

Sorry to hear you lost so much recorded stuff.


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## Sirrah (Oct 20, 2007)

dbmaven said:


> You're welcome. I always try to give a bit of an explanation - providing a few facts (or at least my understanding of how things work) seems to work better than just "Yes" or "No". We're all curious and want to know the "why"...
> 
> Sorry to hear you lost so much recorded stuff.


I've lost about 80 - 85 hours worth of shows (several complete anime series, The Unit", "MI-5" , track meets and football games. Just thinking about it has me wanting to cry. :nono2: :nono2: :nono2: :new_cussi :new_cussi :new_cussi


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## personman (Apr 24, 2007)

Sirrah said:


> I've lost about 80 - 85 hours worth of shows (several complete anime series, The Unit", "MI-5" , track meets and football games. Just thinking about it has me wanting to cry. :nono2: :nono2: :nono2: :new_cussi :new_cussi :new_cussi


Trust me, the MI5 that your used to is nothing like the real show.

The version that BBCA airs is edited for content. They shave it down from 59 mins no commercials to around 41-43.

Always remember that a DVR is not meant to be a permanent medium for content.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Sirrah said:


> The part where just because someone says "you cannot" I am supposed to accept it with no questions asked. What part of "inquisitive mind" and "human curiosity" are you having difficulty grasping?


Knowing why something won't work won't restore your lost recordings; especially when that failure is by design.

It is important to note that dbmaven's answer is not correct. The correct answer cannot be shared because it may be construed as an effort to subvert the copy protection built into your receiver. I've been reprimanded here at DBSTalk for offering the detailed answer.

The neat thing about modern TV is that all that was old will be new again and except for live newscasts, it is almost likely that they will be re-run at some point.


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

harsh said:


> Knowing why something won't work won't restore your lost recordings; especially when that failure is by design.


No, but asking for details can help you judge whether the poster knows what he/shes talking about.


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## personman (Apr 24, 2007)

The shows are encrypted using a key that only that receiver has. If you know why you can't get the shows back, look into encryption.


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## SDizzle (Jan 1, 2007)

I know that it will not bring back your past recordings, but with the HR20 you can get an external drive. So, in that case you could be protected if this were to happen. My R15s are in bedrooms that I don't watch TV on, so I haven't really paid a lot of attention to them, but I don't think you can use this type of external storage with the R15??


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## cartrivision (Jul 25, 2007)

SDizzle said:


> I know that it will not bring back your past recordings, but with the HR20 you can get an external drive. So, in that case you could be protected if this were to happen. My R15s are in bedrooms that I don't watch TV on, so I haven't really paid a lot of attention to them, but I don't think you can use this type of external storage with the R15??


That's won't work for the same reasons that swaping the internal drive won't work. Programs on an external drive hooked up to an HR20 are not watchable if the drive is moved to a different HR20.


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## dbmaven (May 29, 2004)

harsh said:


> It is important to note that dbmaven's answer is not correct. The correct answer cannot be shared because it may be construed as an effort to subvert the copy protection built into your receiver. I've been reprimanded here at DBSTalk for offering the detailed answer.


If you took my response to be "technical" in nature - then it was misconstrued. I don't profess to know the specific details of the encryption mechanism. However, from an "end-user" perspective, my response was essentially correct - stuff on the drive is encrypted and tied to a specific receiver, and can't be moved among receivers - regardless of whether you're discussing the internal or external drive.

Instead of being "harsh" with responses, you could have said the same thing - maybe even better than I did.

It's perfectly reasonable for people to ask for more than a "no, you can't do that" response - they want to know some basics of the reasoning behind the response.


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## SDizzle (Jan 1, 2007)

cartrivision said:


> That's won't work for the same reasons that swaping the internal drive won't work. Programs on an external drive hooked up to an HR20 are not watchable if the drive is moved to a different HR20.


Oh, that makes sense. I didn't know that the encryption would be the same for an external drive, but that does make sense.......


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Sirrah said:


> I've lost about 80 - 85 hours worth of shows (several complete anime series, The Unit", "MI-5" , track meets and football games. Just thinking about it has me wanting to cry. :nono2: :nono2: :nono2: :new_cussi :new_cussi :new_cussi


I feel your pain. I used to do IT Desktop support (before I retired) and it was almost like telling a person that a loved one had died when their HDD died in their computer and I had to explain that their data was gone.

HOWEVER, I always reminded them that they should have backed up their data because it is not a question of IF a hard drive is going to die but WHEN. And, of course, many computers have tape backup drives and so does your DVR. It's called a VCR!!!


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

dbmaven said:


> Instead of being "harsh" with responses, you could have said the same thing - maybe even better than I did.


You must have missed the part where I made it clear that I was given a reprimand for giving the correct reason that the content could not be transferred. I'm not going to risk getting suspended to elaborate on a question that has a simple and unconditional answer.


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## dbmaven (May 29, 2004)

harsh said:


> You must have missed the part where I made it clear that I was given a reprimand for giving the correct reason that the content could not be transferred. I'm not going to risk getting suspended to elaborate on a question that has a simple and unconditional answer.


Didn't miss anything - I read the whole thread before responding.
You're not missing anything either - you just don't want to see that a straight "NO" is going to automatically elicit a "WHY".

Here's a suggestion for the next time this comes up:
"I can't post the technical details, but it involves encryption that ties the recording/drive to the receiver it was made on".

Certainly not technical enough to get removed/banned - and more forthcoming than "NO".

But to each his own.

Cheers


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## Sirrah (Oct 20, 2007)

personman said:


> Trust me, the MI5 that your used to is nothing like the real show[/URL.
> 
> The version that BBCA airs is edited for content. They shave it down from 59 mins no commercials to around 41-43.
> 
> Always remember that a DVR is not meant to be a permanent medium for content.


I knew it was an edited version that is aired on BBCA, and I'm getting the entire series on dvd, but for now I wanted to be able to watch all of the episodes in order so that I could fill in the gaps. But the big dissapointment to me is the loss of all of the sports events (in particular, the track meets) I was saving. When I travel with the kids I coach, I like to show track meets to get them motivated to perform and to remind them of why we are travelling in the 1st place. I was going to burn them to a dvd when I got a dvd recorder but...


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## personman (Apr 24, 2007)

Season six just started, Season06Episode03 should air tonight on the BBC3.


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## canekid (Mar 30, 2004)

One thing I haven't heard here, has anyone even tried it? How do we know it is actually encrypted and not just formatted in a way that we can't perceive as being a DVB or DSS stream?

I remember a few years back, in discussions regarding the DVR-522, (dish) where everyone thought it was encrypted but it wasn't and it took a genius programmer from IO-Mega to see the pattern and figure out the format. It was a simple conversion and (BAM!) MPEG files your mother could play.

Now the single biggest factor that prevented development on playing videos without the originating DVR, is breaking the law or specifically the DMCA. If the file is encrypted then you shouldn't decrypt it or you risk going to jail.

So statements proclaiming the R15 recordings are encrypted, without references to tests and treatments or without statements from DirecTV don't hold much weight. No offence intended to the most venerable, but even Earl has not chimed in yet on the this post.

--------------------------------------

I totally agree that discussions of subverting intended protection of copy written material is very bad. References to material on attempts to do this or how to do this is also very bad. My main message is that one's words are not merely enough without references or else it's cyclical reasoning and illogical.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

canekid said:


> One thing I haven't heard here, has anyone even tried it? How do we know it is actually encrypted and not just formatted in a way that we can't perceive as being a DVB or DSS stream?


Early in the life of the R15, I attempted swapping hard drives between two R15's. From personal experience, I can tell you that you cannot play shows recorded on one R15 with the drive installed in a different R15. You can't get much farther into specifics on this without starting to discuss DirecTV security policies/processes, which is not permitted on these forums.

Carl


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

canekid said:


> One thing I haven't heard here, has anyone even tried it? How do we know it is actually encrypted and not just formatted in a way that we can't perceive as being a DVB or DSS stream?
> 
> I remember a few years back, in discussions regarding the DVR-522, (dish) where everyone thought it was encrypted but it wasn't and it took a genius programmer from IO-Mega to see the pattern and figure out the format. It was a simple conversion and (BAM!) MPEG files your mother could play.
> 
> ...


You might find this thread interesting.
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=54346&highlight=replace+drive


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## dodge boy (Mar 31, 2006)

I have a question.... let's say just for the sake of argument that you filled up your hard drive (in your R15) so you bought another one and pu tit in and formatted it. You could put your season passes on it and watch shows. If you switched back to your old drive would you be able to watch the shows on it? Could you take the drive out and copy the files say to a hard drive on your computer? refill your drive and do the same and move the older files back onto this drive and watch them on your R15? If so you could pull the drive from the R15 and put it in a computer as like a "Drive "F"" and copy the files over, format a hard drive for the R15 and copy your pre recorded shows to the new drive for the old R15.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

dodge boy said:


> I have a question.... let's say just for the sake of argument that you filled up your hard drive (in your R15) so you bought another one and pu tit in and formatted it. You could put your season passes on it and watch shows. If you switched back to your old drive would you be able to watch the shows on it?


Yes



dodge boy said:


> Could you take the drive out and copy the files say to a hard drive on your computer? refill your drive and do the same and move the older files back onto this drive and watch them on your R15? If so you could pull the drive from the R15 and put it in a computer as like a "Drive "F"" and copy the files over, format a hard drive for the R15 and copy your pre recorded shows to the new drive for the old R15.


No. File structure is not at all the same. You can't see or recognize individual recordings as files, so there is no way to copy or move them for storage.

Carl


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## dodge boy (Mar 31, 2006)

Thanks, just curious, if you would be able too then if you could access the r15 through the usb ports then you could increase recording capacity, and back up shows, in the event of a crash, but not beable to watch them on other devices, which would probably violate copy right and other issues.


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## personman (Apr 24, 2007)

No, it wouldn't violate copyright if you were using the recordings for your own personal viewing.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

carl6 said:


> Yes
> 
> No. File structure is not at all the same. You can't see or recognize individual recordings as files, so there is no way to copy or move them for storage.
> 
> Carl


Unless you have a "sector by sector" copy utility that makes an exact image file copy of a hard drive.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

Yes, you can copy the entire drive. I used dd to do such a copy, and the clone worked just fine.

However, there is no way to extract individual programs or recordings for archival purposes. They are not contained in separate files - there is only one 100GB big file on that drive for all the customer recordings.

Carl


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