# USB Thumb drive capture DVR recordings Motorola DCH6416



## VivatHD

They swapped out our lockup king Motorola DCT6412-III for a DCH6416. It has an active USB port on the front that rumor has it you can put an 8 gigabyte or so USB thumb drive in and download content off the hard drive (??...) but then its only a rumor.


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## demonfoo




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *VivatHD* /forum/post/12699157
> 
> 
> They swapped out our lockup king Motorola DCT6412-III for a DCH6416. It has an active USB port on the front that rumor has it you can put an 8 gigabyte or so USB thumb drive in and download content off the hard drive (??...) but then its only a rumor.



Almost certainly not - providers rarely even activate those USB ports, and even if it *did* allow you to copy a show to one (and it fit - big if unless you dropped a *lot* on a USB flash disk), it would most likely be locked to that one unit forever.


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## Fusion1

What good are these ports eSATA or Firewire or USB if you can't even copy the hard drive to watch on PC or burn to DVD? What a waste. With people able to crack WEP wireless connections, you would think the encryption on these Set top boxes would be cracked by now...


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## Fusion1

My point being I can take the hard drive out of my Panasonic DVD recorder and hook it up to my external box to my PC and transfer video that way no problem. Should be able to do that with a cable box or tivo.


Question does an actuasl TIVO encrypt this stuff too, or can we thank just our cable companies for giving us the screw job?


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## demonfoo

Yes, TiVo encrypts the video on disk, and the downloaded stream has an encryption wrapper, but it can be decrypted with the appropriate tools (which are conveniently available via The Internets(tm)).


The USB ports on the cableco boxes just are not activated - it's not a matter of "cracking" it, if the port just isn't doing anything. Many of the boxes have options for external storage (not all, but anyway), but the cablecos disable those features because they don't want you to be able to expand the storage, move shows from place to place, etc.


Unfortunately if you want that sort of place-shift flexibility, you need to get a TiVo or something else - the cable companies really haven't got much of an incentive to provide what you're asking for. Personally I'm quite happy with my Series3 TiVo, so they'd get my nod...


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## 11001011




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Fusion1* /forum/post/12813526
> 
> 
> What good are these ports eSATA or Firewire or USB if you can't even copy the hard drive to watch on PC or burn to DVD? What a waste. With people able to crack WEP wireless connections, you would think the encryption on these Set top boxes would be cracked by now...










The encryption used in the cable stream is advanced so far beyond WEP they are not even in the same league.


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## Tigre

Well it's a good thing I came here and saw this topic. Every since I got this cable box I was wondering if I can stick my thumb drive in and dl some of my shows but I guess not


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