I’m considering upgrading from the HD DVR (2 channels) to the Genie model (5 channels). Is there any way to save the dozens of hours of recordings on the old one?
I have Dish not Direct, but I have an external hard drive connected for shows in want to keep. Maybe Direct has that connection available?
I don’t think so. When I upgraded our Directv DVR with an external hard drive the programs saved on the internal drive where unavailable. I think the recordings are associated with the DVR and can only be played by the DVR that recorded them. Is it possible to keep the old DVR and use it to watch what you have recorded?
In theory if I disconnected the external drive the DVR would revert to using the internal drive and my old recordings should be there. I never tried it though as the internal drive was failing.
When I upgraded, the tech told me I was not going to be able to keep the old recordings.
But I have found with the Genie that the search function is much better and will find older episodes of shows on the on demand channels.
I’m just in the process of doing this myself. The way to make it work seems to be this:
Get a Genie from Directv and have them install it IN ADDITION to your existing DVR.
Move all of your “season pass” recordings from the old DVR to the Genie.
Whenever you want to watch TV, watch shows from the old DVR.
When the old DVR is empty, return it to Directv and have them take it off your bill.
My situation is this. I currently have 2 HD DVRs but one of them has gotten flakey. For the last month or so I have concentrated on emptying out the flakey DVR (after moving all of the season passes to the other DVR). The flakey DVR is now empty enough, and I’m getting a Genie installed next weekend. When it is installed, I’ll do the same thing with the other HD DVR.
J.
I’m not sure about DirecTV hardware, but TiVos have had the additional, external hard drive option for a while and they make it very clear that it can’t be used to move or save shows to another device. The reason is because when you install it the TiVo operating system (Linux) creates one big partition spanning the two drives (essentially one virtual disk out of two physical ones). Once it’s installed anything recorded from that point on can (and probably will) have its data spread across both disks. It isn’t so much a security, anti-upgrade thing as it is a technical simplicity thing.
Take jharvey963’s advice above, it sounds like it will work that way.