P Smith said:
Not true.
Find a thread here where is described expanding disk space by using replacement disk.
That thread only tells you how to copy the entire contents of the filesystem from one disk to another. It did not address the extraction or copying of a single recording or subset of the recording on the entire disk. Today, the only way to extract individual programs is via analog outputs, which means recording then in "real time" to DVD or other media.
I don't want to break any copyright or DMCA laws, but I would like a way to hold onto some of my recordings in such a way that they (a) don't take up valuable space on my active DVR disk and (b) aren't susceptible to random DVR failures that cause them to be erased.
There has been some discussion here recently about a rumored D* DVR with a Blu-Ray disc player (or burner?) built-in. It's probably just "vaporware" or the product of a vivid imagination. Many people said that having a built-in player is not a good idea because it's just one more thing to fail and the only gain is to use a little less cabinet space. Of course the though of a burner in the DVR was immediately dismissed as unacceptable because it would allow pristine digital copies and be prohibited by the content owners.
Case closed, right? Well, what if the DVR did have a built-in Blu-Ray burner, but the content burned was still encrypted? The only way to view it would be to play it in that very same DVR, as its encryption key would be tied to the specific hardware. In this case, it's no different than recording to the hard disk, but it solve the problems of your "keepers" filling up valuable disk space and having to worry that it might get erased due to some weird hardware burp or disk failure. Hmm…
