Daily Blog - John E. Johnson, Jr. - May 5, 2008: WHAT’S THAT USB PORT ON THE BACK OF YOUR SATELLITE RECEIVER FOR?
If you have a relatitively new satellite receiver box from DirecTV or Dish Network, it probably has a USB port on the back.
What’s it for?
Well, if you don’t already know, these ports are for connecting an outboard hard drive so you can store recorded movies (recorded from satellite programming) once the hard drive inside the satellite box is full. It’s also useful to archive movies or programs that you plan to keep for a long time. This is especially important since the satellite box sometimes fails and you either have to get a replacement satellite box or reformat the hard drive, either of which will cost you the recorded programs that you want to keep. Think how nice it would be to have a 1 TB hard drive to store those movies that were only broadcast once at 3 am in high definition (like The Guns of Navarone).
Problem is, DirecTV’s USB port is not active at this point, while Dish Network’s USB port is indeed active (you have to pay a $40 fee to be able to use it though).
Recently, one of my DirecTV satellite boxes had a problem, and when I called them up, they said I could try reformatting the hard drive before requesting a replacement satellite box. When I asked about using the USB port on the rear panel to protect my recorded programs, they told me the USB port cannot be used at present. They didn’t know when DirecTV will make it a usable feature.
Well, I ended up just pulling the AC cord out and then putting back in, which rebooted the satellite box software. That seemed to work fine, but operation is a bit slow. I think something may be getting ready to blow on this sat box. But, I can’t move my recorded programs to an outboard drive to save them before the box crashes for the last time.
I am looking into switching my satellite service to Dish Network. The capability of using an external USB hard drive to back up prized recorded programs is a critical feature to me.
So, DirecTV, get that USB port feature working.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
John,
It doesn’t matter if the USB port ever works on the Directv HD DVR. The E-sata port already does work, so you can already hook up an external hard drive. However, two things: First, when an external drive is hooked up, the internal drive is bypassed (stupid, yes). Secondly, the Directv HD DVR encrypts all recordings so that they are only playable on that particular unit. So you could have all of your shows stored on an external drive, but they would become useless if your box failed or if you wanted to watch them elsewhere.
Apparently Dish’s HD DVRs work differently.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Well, that is a big problem then, because the USB port on the Dish Network satellite box lets you move recorded programs from the internal hard drive to the external one for archiving. Both drives are active at the same time. That is the whole point of having the external drive. However, I don’t know what happens when the satellite box fails. Whether you can recover the programs on the external hard drive with the new satellite box is a good question. I hope so. Otherwise, that could be a deal breaker. The external hard drive, to me, is a place to store important recordings permanently and safely. When the next satellite box is installed, it should be able to access that hard drive with all those archived recordings.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I certainly agree that that is how things should work….unfortunately DirecTV doesn’t feel the same way.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Of course, no one WANTS people to have permanent recordings of material (especially HD material). My HD PVR from my cable company has all sorts of connecting ports that are “for future use” (i.e. not active). I doubt I’ll ever see them “for present use”. I hope you find a solution that works, as I will then put pressure on my cable provider to get the same feature, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Content providers have NEVER wanted people to have unlimited and portable access to content and current technology allows them to limit portability, especially, as never before.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:54 am
Dish misleads you to think you can set up individual drives to store different catagories of programming, or just archive stuff on any number of external drives. What they DON’T tell you is that if you connect/disconnect a drive more than 3 times, you are forced to reformat the drive, losing everything on the drive…