Pioneer DVR 550 and external USB hard drive

jackdup · Member Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Canada

I have a Pioneer DVR 550 and a Pioneer DVR 650 DVD recorder. The recorder has a USB 2.0 port on it and I was wondering if it is possible to connect an external hard drive through the port and copy some of what is stored on teh hard drive to the external hard drive. If it is, is it possible to see the files that are on the external drive using the disk navigator?

Thanks

p_l · Member Joined: 07 Jun 2002 Location: Montreal, Canada

AFAIK, no and no. Sorry.

PuzZLeR · Wild Card Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Location: Toronto Canada

Alot of these units with these slots mislead people, even me, into thinking they can easily migrate their content to their PCs without any burning...

At the risk of hijacking this thread, are there any DVR units on the market that actually allow the use of a USB 2.0 port to actually no-bull-transfer video, such as to a portable/external drive?
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p_l · Member Joined: 07 Jun 2002 Location: Montreal, Canada

There are some who claim success on a Philips machine with a USB port by formatting the drive as FAT32 and perhaps using a a powered 1:1 USB hub. Maybe worth a try. Of course on FAT32, your file size will be limited to 4GB, though. Also note that even if this works, it would probably only be for playing the files.

jackdup · Member Joined: 17 May 2008 Location: Canada

Thanks for the replies. Since posting I have checked with Pioneer and they have advised that it is not possible, on their machines anyway.

PuzZLeR · Wild Card Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Location: Toronto Canada

I guess they put that little hole there so their box/advertising can look nice saying "USB 2.0 interface", blah blah blah - even if it does zilch.

It seems quite obvious that these companies are purposely omitting this feature to discourage mass copying. Something to do with some form of copyright violation I would imagine. It's now within the domain of the tech savvy.

Not sure what USB "1:1" is in that thread, but if it's USB 1.1 with FAT32, then I would rather stick with disc burning to move video. (But as mentioned, it's probably for playback only, which would be nice as a consolation, but not worth the trouble for me...)

(BTW - USB 3.0 products are out soon. I personally think this is more of a bonus, while 2.0 was a need over 1.1.)
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LCSHG · Member Joined: 25 Jan 2005

As to the Pioneer
NO

I believe it was Polaroid that allowed another HDD to be used.There were not many that could and I don’t believe any are made today If any material is CP it could block any recording.

I do not believe the format was Fat 32

orsetto · Member Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Location: NYC

My two cents confirmation: NO to every question posed in this thread. All of these recorders are purposely designed NOT to allow direct transfer of material between their hard drives and a PC or external storage drive. Even if they could, the file format used by nearly every recorder is a weird proprietary UNIX variant thats hell on wheels to work with (ask anyone who's tried to restore a crashed recorder hard drive.) The USB ports you see on some models are there solely for the dippy Japanese home market of photo freaks who want to connect thumb drives full of still pictures to their recorders for viewing on their TVs. Making this feature actually work properly is such a PITA that very few in Europe or USA bother with it. Same story with the DV/1394 ports you see: they are there for downloading your camcorder footage to the recorder, that's it. (Although some pre-2005 models had undocumented abilities to output video from their hard drives in real time to a PC via the same DV connection, using a limited number of video software editing programs. And there was an older Toshiba model that did some interesting tricks via ethernet.) The brand new top-of-the-line Pioneer 660 model apparently has an ethernet port to connect with a PC, we eagerly await user reports from Canadian members regarding its actual functionality.

tcbijou · Member Joined: 01 Jul 2008 Location: United States

There is a bit of misinformation in the above posts. As for the Pioneers, the USB on the 650 is not for transferring video data. As advertised, it allows a keyboard to be connected in order to input titling information. It speeds up the titling process incredibly. The "arrow" keys can also be used to access many of the functions and features in the editing process.
The 650 has a firewire port, but as stated in an earlier post, it is only useful for uploading from a camcorder. It does not have an output function. However, the 550 does have a firewire in/out which I have used to output info from DVD's (non-copyright, original material) into both iMovie and Final Cut Express for video editing. It is a shame that they dropped this function; it is really very handy. Although I have both machines, I have not tried uploading from the 550 to the 650 through the firewire port. I don't know whether that will work or not.

Real time recording is the major method on both of these units although both can make exact copies of unprotected DVD's in a matter of minutes.