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KobyBoy · 01-07-2006, 11:34 AM

You can't really look at them for two reason:

1) Just because your DVD has a hard drive in it doesn't mean that it is formatted with a file system that you could mount on a Windows box. I use Time Warner's Digital Cable service here in New York and they gave me a Scientific Atlanta Exlorer 8000 cable box (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/con...oxes/8000.htm). If I recall correctly it runs on an embedded Linux variant thus its hard drive is formatted with something that is standard with Linux (ext3, ReiserFS, etc...) or perhaps is something that Scientific Atlanta developed inhouse. Either way you can't just pop the hard drive of your DVR into your computer and try to mount the drive. It will not work. Windows will need a translation module to understand how the file system is laid out. Windows only understands FAT32 and NTFS natively. You need some third-party drivers for Windows to make sense of a drive that is not formatted with a file system that is not native to Windows.

2) Most likely there is somekind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) mechanism in place. The people who developed the DVR box had to account for people installing the hard drive into a computer and reverse engineering their file system specs (or experimenting with the native Linux file system if the went with that) so they had to incorporate some kind of DRM mechanism.

I don't know what kind of DVR box you have but mine doesn't have any SATA ports on the back. I do have a USB port in the front but that is for diagnostic purposes. If you try to hook it up with a Windows box it will not recognize it as a mass media storage device and nothing will happen. Apperantly other people have tried this also (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...hat~mode=flat_.

The last DVR I heard that you could hook up to your computer and examine its content was ReplyTV. I've never owned one but a couple of the TechTV guys had them and they loved it. If you want to record stuff off your DVR I still think the best way to do it is with a video capture card.

01-07-2006, 11:34 AM
KobyBoy Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Purgatory Posts: 201	You can't really look at them for two reason: 1) Just because your DVD has a hard drive in it doesn't mean that it is formatted with a file system that you could mount on a Windows box. I use Time Warner's Digital Cable service here in New York and they gave me a Scientific Atlanta Exlorer 8000 cable box (http://www.scientificatlanta.com/con...oxes/8000.htm). If I recall correctly it runs on an embedded Linux variant thus its hard drive is formatted with something that is standard with Linux (ext3, ReiserFS, etc...) or perhaps is something that Scientific Atlanta developed inhouse. Either way you can't just pop the hard drive of your DVR into your computer and try to mount the drive. It will not work. Windows will need a translation module to understand how the file system is laid out. Windows only understands FAT32 and NTFS natively. You need some third-party drivers for Windows to make sense of a drive that is not formatted with a file system that is not native to Windows. 2) Most likely there is somekind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) mechanism in place. The people who developed the DVR box had to account for people installing the hard drive into a computer and reverse engineering their file system specs (or experimenting with the native Linux file system if the went with that) so they had to incorporate some kind of DRM mechanism. I don't know what kind of DVR box you have but mine doesn't have any SATA ports on the back. I do have a USB port in the front but that is for diagnostic purposes. If you try to hook it up with a Windows box it will not recognize it as a mass media storage device and nothing will happen. Apperantly other people have tried this also (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...hat~mode=flat_. The last DVR I heard that you could hook up to your computer and examine its content was ReplyTV. I've never owned one but a couple of the TechTV guys had them and they loved it. If you want to record stuff off your DVR I still think the best way to do it is with a video capture card.