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  1. Member
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    Hi folks, I am hoping someone can help me and point me in the right direction. So, you can download recorded programs from the dish hopper DVR to an external hard drive but when you connect the drive to the computer, windows can't even read the drive because the DVR had previously reformatted it in order to download the recordings. So basically what this is saying to me is you can download programs to an external drive but in order to watch these programs at a later date you have to upload them back onto the dish DVR meaning that if I want to keep these recordings I will have to be beholden to Dish forever!!!!!

    There has to be a way to be able to get the programs from the DVR to an external hard drive, convert them to VLC friendly format such AVI or MP4 and watch them to my hearts content when ever and not be stuck with Dish.................or am I wasting my time even looking for a way..................would I have better success if I was using a TIVO or is that going to give me the same problems.

    At the end of the day, my wife would be extremely grateful because she loves her old movies and unfortunately there are some that she has recorded that you can't even buy on DVD let alone bluray.
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    Originally Posted by paddyflan View Post
    So basically what this is saying to me is you can download programs to an external drive but in order to watch these programs at a later date you have to upload them back onto the dish DVR meaning that if I want to keep these recordings I will have to be beholden to Dish forever!!!!!
    Yep. That's exactly the way Dish and the cable companies want it. Welcome to the Digital Revolution. Now you know what it was really about.

    Originally Posted by paddyflan View Post
    would I have better success if I was using a TIVO or is that going to give me the same problems.
    With copy-protected material, the same problems.

    Originally Posted by paddyflan View Post
    At the end of the day, my wife would be extremely grateful because she loves her old movies and unfortunately there are some that she has recorded that you can't even buy on DVD let alone bluray.
    There are some threads that discuss these copy protection problems, but no one has devised a solution that doesn't require you to be a video engineer, buy lots of hardware, and have 5 hands. The best solution so far is a go-between such as a Hauppauge HD PVR, which records to a PC in HD and SD formats from the component outputs on your Dish box (if it has them). You can copy them, burn to disc, re-process, or whatever you want.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 09:11.
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  3. Banned
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    Tivo and other DVR/PVR boxes encrypt what they record because Hollywood demands it. Hollywood doesn't want you to be able to do anything with the recordings except watch them on the device that recorded them. In part this is because Hollywood feels that if you could so whatever you want with such recordings, you wouldn't buy them. In part this is also because American and Canadian consumers are quickly becoming obsessive compulsive about clutter and some people are literally refusing to buy media any more. There's just not much demand for Tivo and others to let consumers do what they want with the recordings. Most DVR/PVR solutions, if not all of them, use Linux file systems to cut down on costs. Also, this makes it harder for the average consumer to deal with the disk drives. Add to that encryption and you are stuck.
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    They may use linux but not because it's cheaper. It isn't actually necessarily cheaper to use linux or unix because you need more on staff tech support. They use it because it's better. Just like apple, google, and facebook do.

    Even if they're using an open source OS they're putting a highly proprietary shell around it, which is easy in linux and turns it into a closed system. That, and not the fact that the linux file system is different, is the OP's problem.

    In a closed system like a pvr it's simple to use encryption that's just about impossible to crack. You may be able to do it if you're an NSI or Mossad level hacker. But those people have better things to do.

    The next thing with regular computers & devices will be DRM built into your hard drive. This is largely why I use linux now. It lets you do what you want.
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  5. Originally Posted by paddyflan View Post
    So basically what this is saying to me is you can download programs to an external drive but in order to watch these programs at a later date you have to upload them back onto the dish DVR meaning that if I want to keep these recordings I will have to be beholden to Dish forever!!!!!
    It's even worse than that. Once your current Dish DVR dies, even if all the files on the external hard drive are fine, you won't be able to view any of your recorded videos on another Dish DVR. The recordings are locked to the DVR that recorded them.
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    Hm. Didn't know that. It figures, though.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 09:12.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Originally Posted by paddyflan View Post
    So basically what this is saying to me is you can download programs to an external drive but in order to watch these programs at a later date you have to upload them back onto the dish DVR meaning that if I want to keep these recordings I will have to be beholden to Dish forever!!!!!
    It's even worse than that. Once your current Dish DVR dies, even if all the files on the external hard drive are fine, you won't be able to view any of your recorded videos on another Dish DVR. The recordings are locked to the DVR that recorded them.
    Well that just adds salt into the wound. You would think that if people are willing to pay for the product you should be able to put the product on whatever media device you want for your own personal use.

    Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the people who load torrents of tv shows onto the net figure out a way to record these shows to their computers???????
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    Correct -- to their computers, not to DVRs.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 09:12.
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    Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    Correct -- to their computers, not to DVRs.
    So how does one do that?
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    A Hauppauge HD PVR is one way, and has been popular for a while now. I've had mine for a year. Pain in the neck building a small PC for it (or you can just buy a PC or use one you already own). I should have waited a while before getting one -- prices have been going down. They also make a PC capture card but that seemed like more of a hassle to me.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 09:12.
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  11. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    i remember when prices were $300, now you can pick one up for $99, at bestbuy, that's where i got mine. i'm still new to it, a month now. had lots of trouble with it at first, but for editing (ie, cutting out commercails or bringing telecined film stuff back to original 24p) is a serious pain. otherwise, to my surprise very good quality. as long as your source is clean, you can use lower bitrates like 5Mbps, aprox one thousand 1/2hr shows on 1 tb, roughly. i use that for most my directv 480i (SD) captures, except for some channels (rare) that requires higher bitrate. some content is just provider-encoded poorly. anyway. there is no perfect user interface for it. you have to use the included software or the graphedit route, which is also a pain since on some peoples rigs, the necessary settings do not stay and have to be rebuilt. i love and hate mine though mainly when i'm editing the captured stuff.
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    "willing to pay for the product"

    That's not what your paying for.

    You pay to watch or record if your elsewhere ... not to keep permanently / transfer / change format.
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  13. Formerly 'vaporeon800' Brad's Avatar
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    External hard drive? Can't be done. Internal hard drive? You have to really want to do it, but it is possible with Dish.

    Here are some facts:
    - Previous Dish Network hardware used various combinations of Linux filesystems and their own (dubbed dishpvrfs) to store files, but they are actually unencrypted on the internal drive.
    - Their file system was reverse-engineered, and user-friendly software was distributed to copy the recordings from internal HDDs of their earliest PVRs. The claim that "programming is saved in a format that cannot be read by non-DISH Network computer systems" was accepted as constituting a "copy-control measure", and so the author was ordered to pay $305,000 under the DMCA. (The case was primarily about a bunch of other software that allowed actual satellite signal piracy, to the tune of $2 million in damages.)
    - Dish's external drives use Linux filesystems that are easily browsed, but the files are themselves are encrypted. There's little incentive for anyone to break this publicly, and great disincentives.
    - Last week, a user reported success copying unencrypted recordings from the Hopper's internal drive, which uses an "XFS real-time" file system (don't look at me). As with all Dish hardware, the filenames are not user-friendly since the metadata is stored in separate files from the A/V data.
    Last edited by Brad; 13th Jun 2013 at 02:57.
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  14. Member
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    They are working on it. Check the Yahoo group on ripping The Hopper. Currently, it looks like the software that recognizes the unit will have to be rewritten. Other models can still be ripped from the internal hard drives because the software specifically recognizes those models. Give it time...

    But as the above poster has said...don't look at me. The technical end of this, Linux programming, etc. is completely beyond me...

    As to using the Hauppage, I'm waiting to get the HDPVR 2 which has the HDMI input. The analog capture is okay and most people will be hard pressed to notice any quality difference from the source but going through the HDMI might be easier. Will have to experiment some. Too bad the capture quality cannot be set as high as their Colossus card for desktops at 20 Mbps vs. the 13.5 Mbps for the standalone units. Might not make a difference for most people though...
    Last edited by oldfart13; 24th Jun 2013 at 09:39.
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  15. Member
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    Paddyflan is not quite correct.

    I just upgraded from a Dish DVR (722) to Hopper. Before switching I downloaded all of my saved programs to a fresh USB connected hard drive (it had to be specially reformatted by the DVR) and later transferred the recordings to the Hopper. Hopper gives you the choice to either watch programs from the external drive from the old machine or import them onto its own drive. Very easy process. After importing I examined the drive using disk utility. It had been formatted into 5 partitions (labeled 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 - so one may have been hidden) but was otherwise unreadable by my MacBookPro.

    I'm hoping to find a faster-than-realtime solution to transferring HD video from the Hopper but for simple archiving they make it very easy - As long as you stay in the Dish family.
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  16. Formerly 'vaporeon800' Brad's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by vaporeon800 View Post
    Last week, a user reported success copying unencrypted recordings from the Hopper's internal drive, which uses an "XFS real-time" file system (don't look at me). As with all Dish hardware, the filenames are not user-friendly since the metadata is stored in separate files from the A/V data.
    He has since posted several different ways to access the files (Ubuntu, Windows + Wubi, Windows + FSproxy, I think another one) and has also posted a script to extract the metadata and rename the recordings. The info and feedback is all at the PVRExplorer Yahoo group.
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    I am new here but looking for answers. I want to biult something i am calling a movie server that will basically record everything i watch and allow me to play it back like a dvr. I have made this illustration to show what I am thinking. So my dish would descramble the signal and then instead of sending it to my TV it would send it to the PC DVR and it would send the signal to the TV then when I playback from PC DVR it would send to TV Is this possible?Click image for larger version

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  18. Member
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    Originally Posted by flamehead View Post
    I am new here but looking for answers. I want to biult something i am calling a movie server that will basically record everything i watch and allow me to play it back like a dvr. I have made this illustration to show what I am thinking. So my dish would descramble the signal and then instead of sending it to my TV it would send it to the PC DVR and it would send the signal to the TV then when I playback from PC DVR it would send to TV Is this possible?
    You would need to have a suitable capture device to record everything that you watch with a PC. You could control the Dish receiver and recording process manually, or schedule your TV viewing in advance with PVR software and use a PC IR blaster to control the Dish receiver to automate the process. Regardless, would miss a little from the beginning or end of some shows because of the amount of time it takes to change channels and tune the signal.
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  19. Nearly all HDMI output is HDCP encrypted. Meaning you can't legally decrypt and record it. So there's no market for a DVR like you are looking for (there's no unencrypted HDMI to record). If you want to make something like that you'll need a PC, an HDCP stripper (can't legally be sold in many countries), an HDMI recording device (like a Hauppauge HD PVR 2), an IR blaster (if you need unattended recording), and some PVR software (BeyondTV, MythTV, etc.).
    Last edited by jagabo; 22nd Jul 2014 at 23:55.
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  20. Member
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Nearly all HDMI output is HDCP encrypted. Meaning you can't legally decrypt and record it. So there's no market for a DVR like you are looking for (there's no unencrypted HDMI to record). If you want to make something like that you'll need a PC, an HDCP stripper (can't legally be sold in many countries), an HDMI recording device (like a Hauppauge HD PVR 2), an IR blaster (if you need unattended recording), and some PVR software (BeyondTV, MythTV, etc.).
    Thanks that helped me out
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  21. Member
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    The external HD once attached to the DISH receiver, gets formatted into standard Linux EXT3. There are TWO directories created:
    1. lost+found
    2. DishArc
    The latter is where all the discrete movies are stored. Each movie will have a goofy name like 3dd6dec0 and contain:
    • xyz.png
    • cat
    • bm
    • tsp
    • wtt
    • abc.jpg
    the CAT file has the credits, title, and other meta. Can't determine WHY, but the JPG is frequently missing.
    from the size, it is easy to see that the TSP file is the actual video content
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