DVR Expansion?

mrbeankc

Ok, I've been enjoying my new HDTV for almost a week now and of course recording my shows in HD. I noticed something tonight though. I had three things saved on my DVR all recorded in HD. Two one hour TV shows and a movie that was 1 hour 40 minutes long. All told 3 hours and 40 minutes. To my surprise according to the DVR that took up 20% of my allowable space meaning in theory that I had less than 20 hours all told of space on my DVR for HD shows. A bit odd as I had been told that my DVR had enough space for 35 hours. So I call up Time Warner and ask them about it. Turned out my DVR (Scientific Atlanta 8300) has only 120 gigs of space. Smaller than what is said on their websote or what I was told.

Now this really doesn't surprise me that I was incorrectly informed as to the DVR's hard drive size. So far a good 50% of what the folks at TWC have told me as I did my research before buying my HDTV has turned out to be incorrect. For example 2 different TWC folks over the phone told me that they only provided component cables with their HD DVRs. One told me in fact that TWC "doesn't support HDMI". Kind of amusing then when they handed me my HD DVR they also handed me a HDMI cable to hook it up with.

So anyway while I was on the phone this evening with the TWC person who informed me that my DVR has a smaller hard drive than I was previously told I asked them about hard drive expansion. I might as well have asked them to spy for North Korea. They told me flat out that that wasn't allowed and in fact the ports on my DVR had been "blocked" to prevent that from happening as a "anti piracy measure".

So that's basically where I stand. The 120 gig hard drive simply isn't going to be big enough to hold in HD format all the shows my wife and I record. Especially my wife who tends to be a pack rat and store a lot of stuff on the DVR.

Thus we come to my question. What are my options in terms of expanding my hard drive size? I need something reasonable in terms of size and price. By that I mean I don't need anything huge. 500 gig would be more than enough space for our general TV use. Also I want to add a sound system soon and as such I want to keep this hard drive expansion to a tight budget so as to not have it be a factor when I tell my wife I am going to be spending money on a sound system.

Sooner Al

This thread has some information concerning adding an expansion drive to your SA 8300HD set top box.

Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD Manual And Setup Guide

There may be other threads if you use the search function...

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"When all else fails, read the instructions..."

mrbeankc

Well according to TWC (I called them this morning) our box can not use an external hard drive for storage because it uses Mystro software.

I also asked them about the discrepancy in terms of what their website says the capacity of the HD boxes are versus what I'm getting in reality. In short their website says you can store 35 hours of HD programming while in reality I'm getting 20 hours. When I asked about that I was told 35 hours was "approximate" and that due to the Mystro software my actual recording time "might be less". They sure are stretching the use of the term approximate if they think 20 hours is reasonably close enough to 35 to call it approximate.

I'm more concerned about the fact that they are telling me that the DVR because of the software can not have it's memory expanded through external storage. Means I'm stuck with a DVR that can only store 20 hours of HD programming.

Sooner Al

From a personal view I really don't like TW. I have TW at a vacation condo we own at SPI, Texas and I really think it s**ks so to speak. Only 13 or so HD channels tops. I had an SA 8300HDC set top box when I was last down there back in February. I believe it ran the SARA firmware at the time. I wonder if they are pushing Mystro to the RGV division boxes? Hmmm...

From the comments on the DSLReports.com Time Warner forum there seems to be a lot of issues with Mystro.

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"When all else fails, read the instructions..."

mrbeankc

Here in KC we have 60 HD channels (no BBC America HD oddly enough even though we have things like the Tennis Channel in HD). They've had Mystro now for I think 2 years. I've not had to much difficulties with it lately although there was a lot of problems early with it.

I still at this point however don't know of I can hook up an external hard drive to it. I know that the DVR has the hook ups of course. However I've gotten multiple answers from TWC on the subject with 2 people saying you can and 2 saying you can't due to the software. I also out of curiosity called up TWC's competition in this area SureWest (use to be Everest) and asked them about their DVRs. They use the same DVRs as TWC and I was told that they can't be expanded.

You would think with so many people switching to HD every day and the hard drives in their DVRs not being big enough to hold what is needed for many people that TWC would either start moving towards new larger hard drive boxes or make it so their customers can expand them. As it stands now I would have to think that with so many people going to HD that this would be something that they would address sooner rather than later.

mrbeankc

Took me several tries but I finally talked to a TWC tech support person who was knowledgeable on the subject. Not only did they tell me that indeed my DVR can be expanded (They have the same HD DVR box and have expanded theirs) they sent me to a website with directions on how to do it. So it looks like I'll be shopping this weekend for an external hard drive for it. Anyone know any sales going on?

Sooner Al

How about posting the web site with the instructions? That may help others...

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"When all else fails, read the instructions..."

remo25

thank you

mrbeankc

Here's the link

http://www.satasupply.com/satasupply.pdf