OK, I had a lightning strike a while back, which took out several different things. One of the things it took out was my cable line, and they actually had to replace some cable.
Also, it took out [something inside] the cable-company-supplied DVR box. Basically, I could access the recorded list, but that was it. That. Was. It. I could pull up the list, but I couldn’t play anything off the list–that part of the menu did not operate any longer–and it did not receive any channels. The cable line did work when plugged directly into the TV, though.
So. . . I had about 25-30 hours of programming on it at the time of the strike. Most of it was junk, but I did have a couple of movies that I would have liked making personal copies of.
The cable tech who came out said that he’d have to swap it out. I asked if it were possible to have the recorded programs copied over somehow. He told me that it’s probably possible, but the company just doesn’t do that. They just repair the box and wipe the hard drive.
So. . . would there have been any third party options to [legally] copy over the content to some other medium like an external hard drive, and be able to play it back?
Almost certainly not.
You’d most likely have to open up the box to extract the hard drive, then plug it into your PC. The cable company would probably be unhappy with this. Most DVRs run some lean and mean flavor of Linux and their drives are probably formatted with something like Ext. So there’s that to deal with as well. Not impossible, but you’d need some software to translate formats in order to mount the drive on your PC.
Now, about that DRM… I know with Dish Network’s top-end DVRs, they have an option to plug in an external USB drive for extra space, but the files are encrypted and only usable with another Dish DVR.
At best, you might be able to put the drive from the fried DVR and put it into a new DVR to watch your programs.
Not even that. The DRM is keyed to the individual STB, so content from one DVR won’t decrypt on another DVR, even if it’s the same model DVR & cable company.
Well, it will depend on the manufacturer. I know with Dish DVRs and external drives, the “new” box will recognize past use on another DVR and ask if you want to convert. I have no idea how many times you might be able to swap a drive between DVRs, but I’m pretty sure the DVRs both need to be on the same account.