[PhysicalPresence]

I've had an HR10-250 since late '05 and have since added another. Within the last 4 months, I've added two HR20s to my account. When I added the last one last week, I deactivated my original HR10 because I've only got 3 tvs in the house.

I'm thinking about selling it but I've got a big dilemma. My original hard drive has approximately 20 + hours of HD NFL playoff games that I don't want to lose. I've already archived them to DVD, but of course, I want to keep the original HD footage intact if I can.

I have a spare 400 GB hard drive that I was using with 3.15e already on it. My question is if I sell the unit with the spare hard drive attached and keep the original hard drive with all my games, is there any way to get the footage from my original drive to work. From what I've heard, and I might be wrong, I can't just open up my 2nd Tivo, that I still have active and swap the hard drive. Correct?


Are there any other options including hacking? I'd love to hear from the knowledgeable people here.

 

[gworkman]

If the drive was not hacked prior to the recordings, they will be encryped and unavailable for any archiving purposes.

 

[or270]

Best thing to do is use a DVD burner.

 

[PhysicalPresence]

I've already used a dvd burner. I was hoping that I could somehow keep the original files somehow and they could work without my original tivo unit.

 

[stevel]

No, you can't. There aren't "files" and they're encrypted so that they can be played only on the box on which they were recorded. It's possible to disable encryption of new recordings and copy the recordings, with some "hacking" work, but if you have shows already encrypted things are much tougher.

 

[captain_video]

Interesting that my response to this thread was deleted. I guess the anal police have struck again. As always, the mods are more concerned with censorship than a helpful nudge in the right direction which didn't actually violate any forum rules.

 

[TyroneShoes]

No, you can't. There aren't "files" and they're encrypted so that they can be played only on the box on which they were recorded. It's possible to disable encryption of new recordings and copy the recordings, with some "hacking" work, but if you have shows already encrypted things are much tougher.

I think pretty much anything recorded to a HDD can be considered a "file". If they aren't "files", then what are they?

 

[captain_video]

No, you can't. There aren't "files" and they're encrypted so that they can be played only on the box on which they were recorded. It's possible to disable encryption of new recordings and copy the recordings, with some "hacking" work, but if you have shows already encrypted things are much tougher.

Yes, you can (and I know you know better, unless you never paid any attention during your trips to DDB or that person with your user name is actually somebody else) . The thing is, it's not a trivial task and not something a novice hacker should attempt unless they know what they're doing.

 

[PhysicalPresence]

Thanks captain_video. I'll look into your advice.

 

[stevel]

The recordings are a series of records in a database, nothing that looks like a file. There are tools that can be used to pull the recordings out into files, so perhaps the distinction is not relevant.

I am unsure if "unscramble" works on an HR10. I have seen several people say that it does not, though otherwise I would have otherwise thought it did. But the effort you would have to go through just to get that far seems excessive to me unless this was an ongoing concern.

The only box I've used "unscramble" on is a DSR6000 - my HR10 has had encryption disabled since day 1.

 

[captain_video]

It works, but it's a different version for the S2 Tivos. If you use mfs_ftp or some other unmentionable program you'll see the recorded programs listed as files. Basically, a file is nothing more than a group of coherent bits enclosed in a wrapper (i.e., file extension that describes the type of file). For the purpose of this discussion, referring to them as files is just fine since that's what you end up with after performing the process we can't talk about. If calling them records in a database floats your boat then so be it. Just remember - bits is bits.