retrieving old Dish Dvr memory

[bushrod43]

I'm getting the new Dish dual DVR receiver today and I would like to retreive some of the old DVR's shows on to the new Dual DVR or on my PC whichever is the easiest. I know there is a way, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Krispy Kritter]

Some are retrievable and some aren't, it varies by DVR brand and model.

[sorinicu]

Always you can "play" those recordings and record them via an analog converter - it might be the new DVR even.
The second way is to retrive them digitally with a specific software. Those are varying by the DVR type and producer and on some DVR's is even not possible. So... all depends of the type.

[WhoCares?]

I'm getting the new Dish dual DVR receiver today and I would like to retreive some of the old DVR's shows on to the new Dual DVR or on my PC whichever is the easiest. I know there is a way, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

If you're talking about Dish Network, you might look into PocketDish. I have the 7-inch model and it's slick. Just plug in a USB cable and a menu pops up to manage the player. Transferring data is quick and painless (depending on the model of your DVR) and for the older models you can record real-time during playback. Obviously this is a bit slower, but still accomplishes the task. All of the files transferred to the PocketDish are in AVI format and your PC will recognize the PocketDish as another hard drive so transferring to/from your PC is a snap too. The only downside so far to the PocketDish is that is won't play/convert HD content, so if you've saved an HD program to your DVR you're stuck with the old fashioned way of transfer via playback.

You can use a capture-card to transfer the data across analog RCA connectors too, but again, this is a real-time playback capture mode. Personally I own a "Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge" which has it's own built-in MPEG converter, which saves on computer resources. That isn't as big of an issue with today's PCs, but when the dv-bridge was popular PCs weren't as powerful as they are today.