Hard drive with Dish 211K for RV?
I'm considering buying a hard drive to use with my dish receiver for rewind and record purposes in my RV. Who uses them and how well do they work and with the receivers? Also which one did you buy and...
Forum Discussion
I've had great results using a hard drive with my VIP 211k + Tailgater.
The connection on the receiver is USB 2.0, the older USB standard. Virtually ANY USB 3.0 drive should work with this. I happened to have an old, powered USB 2.0 drive box, and I used a WD 2TB 3.5" hard drive.
2TB is the limit to the drive, and dish says that the receiver cannot recognize a larger drive. The receiver will erase EVERYTHING on the hard drive when it originally formats it.
Many here are using 2.5" laptop hard drives, and dish says that is OK, along with 3.5" desktop hard drives. Dish insists that the hard drive have a separate power supply, which all 3.5" USB drive boxes have. I've read reports here that some are using UNpowered 2.5" USB drive boxes, and that the reciever is supplying enough power to make it work. I would not do this, because even if it works now it may hiccup at some point in the future and destroy all your data, if that matters.
The programs seem to be stored in the identical quality of the original beam. A 2TB drive shows a capacity of roughly 200 hours of HD programming or 900 hours of SD, IIRC. The interface for selecting your shows is very clunky, and although you can add custom names to your shows the process for doing that is clunky also.
I am told you can swap out your HD for another one, and in this way store more than 2tb of programming, although you cannot access more than one drive at a time. Occasionally on restart the receiver will insist on scanning the drive, which adds another 10 minutes to the process but doesn't destroy any data.
All in all I am very happy with the HD PVR function. It is very simple, once you see it set up, and as the OP noted it is not dependent on proprietary hardware. You supply the drive and that's where your shows are.
I did NOT ask Dish, and I do not know if a drive used with one reciever can be used with another--say if you upgrade or replace your reciever. But I suspect it cannot be used with another customer account.
The connection on the receiver is USB 2.0, the older USB standard. Virtually ANY USB 3.0 drive should work with this. I happened to have an old, powered USB 2.0 drive box, and I used a WD 2TB 3.5" hard drive.
2TB is the limit to the drive, and dish says that the receiver cannot recognize a larger drive. The receiver will erase EVERYTHING on the hard drive when it originally formats it.
Many here are using 2.5" laptop hard drives, and dish says that is OK, along with 3.5" desktop hard drives. Dish insists that the hard drive have a separate power supply, which all 3.5" USB drive boxes have. I've read reports here that some are using UNpowered 2.5" USB drive boxes, and that the reciever is supplying enough power to make it work. I would not do this, because even if it works now it may hiccup at some point in the future and destroy all your data, if that matters.
The programs seem to be stored in the identical quality of the original beam. A 2TB drive shows a capacity of roughly 200 hours of HD programming or 900 hours of SD, IIRC. The interface for selecting your shows is very clunky, and although you can add custom names to your shows the process for doing that is clunky also.
I am told you can swap out your HD for another one, and in this way store more than 2tb of programming, although you cannot access more than one drive at a time. Occasionally on restart the receiver will insist on scanning the drive, which adds another 10 minutes to the process but doesn't destroy any data.
All in all I am very happy with the HD PVR function. It is very simple, once you see it set up, and as the OP noted it is not dependent on proprietary hardware. You supply the drive and that's where your shows are.
I did NOT ask Dish, and I do not know if a drive used with one reciever can be used with another--say if you upgrade or replace your reciever. But I suspect it cannot be used with another customer account.
