"I can't really blame the cable companies; it would be a customer service nightmare trying to support all these features. Where I live, Insight Communications runs frequent commericals telling people how to "reset" their cable modem & router when the internet connection is lost. We all know this probably fixes 98% of all the "problems"-- but 98% of the customers can not seem to figure this out. I just can not comprehend how the cable company could support external drives/storage, networking, etc. . . . "
Well, I think you can blame the cable company. Why can Dishnetwork and directv allow one to extend the DVR memory and cable cannot? (Both satellite companies have allowed methods to radically enlarge or extend DVR recording times)
I do NOT want to copy HD material. IMO that is not the point. What people want is to have a higher capacity DVR. The hard drive in DCH3416 and other DVR's are way to small. You can almost fill the whole DVR with a couple of HD sporting events! We are not asking the cable companies to expend resources in bigger hard drives, although that would be nice, but we are asking is for them to have something similar to weaknees directv and a process similar to dishnetworks where one can buy an external hard drive. The technology is there in the motorola machine. I say let it live to its full potential.
IMO, what the cable companies are doing with dvr technology is anologous to what the telephone companies are doing with cellulars; both have hamstrung important technology.
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