I have the Comcast Cable Box with the High Def DVR in it? Well, I recorded all 11 (1 hour) episodes of the "Planet Earth" series on Discovery HD Theater. I got two other Discovery programs on there (Badgers, animal "superpowers") that I want to keep, but I'll get rid off those two if I have to. But I dont want to TOUCH those Planet Earth episodes. This takes up 62% of the storage capacity on the DVR. Theres a couple weekly shows that I record weekly but delete. So it goes up to 82%, then back down to 62%. I want to start getting some movies and football games in there, but sooner or later I'm going to run out of space. Until I get a stand alone DVR or a HD VCR, I dont want to just get rid of those Planet Earth episodes because they're in HD, and I dont want it in standard def VHS tape. Is there some kind of peripheral or external device that I can attach to the box that will expand the DVR capacity OR store the Planet Earth files somewhere else so I can free up room on the DVR? I dont want to get rid of those HD Planet Earth recordings and REGRET it later...

Currently, the general practice at Comcast is to not enable any means of expending storage for recordings.

The current option for folks looking for long-term storage for Planet Earth in HD, is HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, though some may also mention D-VHS.

Oh well, looks like I'll have to get the HD DVD now before I get the machine :). Thanks.

It will probably be another 2-3 years before we have affordable HD-DVD (<$500) or Blu-ray recorders.

Comcast should offer eSATA drive expansion for their Motorola DVRs in early 2008. Until then, your only option is a HDTV D-VHS VCR, or a TivoHD DVR with increased storage capacity. Tivo recently announced that they would release a software update in November to allow users to copy high-definition recordings from their TivoHD to the PC.

The D-VHS sounds good, thanks.

Can someone do me a favor? I know that there are like 3 D-VHS models out there. What brand are they, which one is the high end one, which one is best bang for the buck? I believe one is by Toshiba? Thanks in advance...

It will probably be another 2-3 years before we have affordable HD-DVD (<$500) or Blu-ray recorders.And you may end up encountering more restrictions that will prevent you from burning an HD program onto HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc than you had with analog programs. I'm not sure, but it is possible that Planet Earth was broadcast with copy protection in place.

Comcast should offer eSATA drive expansion for their Motorola DVRs in early 2008.I hope you're correct, but the best information I've seen contradicts that.

Tivo recently announced that they would release a software update in November to allow users to copy high-definition recordings from their TivoHD to the PC.And currently TiVo S3 (and perhaps TiVo HD) already support eSATA.

What is the business rationale to be so user unfriendly with helping expand DVR space? And why is it so tough to have higher capacity DVRs for rent? Hard drive space is cheap.

If I had to guess, I'd say "because they can".

What is the business rationale to be so user unfriendly with helping expand DVR space? And why is it so tough to have higher capacity DVRs for rent? Hard drive space is cheap.The small stock capacity is mostly a function of the cable company's desire to keep costs low. They also want to encourage the use of VOD, and limited capacity forces customers to rely more on that.

When it comes to extended capacity, it has to be done with DRM (encryption) and in a way that is sufficiently reliable to minimize service calls. In Motorola's case, they've had trouble getting eSATA expansion to work reliably with DRM. Scientific Atlanta figured it out on their platform, and today almost all deployed Scientific Atlanta DVRs support eSATA expansion.

One of the regulatory requirements incumbent in the design of support for external storage for the TiVo platform forced a doubling of risk of failure; if either the primary hard drive or the hard drive in the eSATA enclosure fail, then data on both drives is lost. TiVo has to live with the additional support cost and customer dissatisfaction from this design -- of course TiVo doesn't actually run a profit year-after-year.

If satellites can come up with DVRs with twice the capacity, what is stopping COMCAST and Motorola to come up with a more capacity DVR. Sure, low capacity makes VOD more of a thing to use enhancing that feature as a cable benefit. But when the competition which lacks VOD is offering DVRs with twice the capacity, cable is conceding one advantage needlessly.

Also, is the reason for not giving a a much bigger option for DVRs is because of the constant work the hard drive is going through thanks to the buffering of video required making it more prone to failure earlier on? In such a case, I wonder if they can design a DVR where a smaller capacity hard drive is always "ON" while the other hard drive(500G - 1TB) placed in the same unit is used for archiving long term recordings making it less likely a user will need to use eSATA. They could always charge the user a slightly higher premium price for these DVRs.

Hard drive usage has nothing to do with it, they're designed to run 24x7. They're just trying to keep the cost as low as possible. Get a Tivo HD, expand it as big as you want, and don't worry about it.

Also in my opinion its not that something is stopping them its just that they don't care, comcast has the advantage of being a huge cable company therefore they do not have try as hard as Dish and DirectTV to get customers hence the raising of the rates every couple months and the sub par equipment that is available

If satellites can come up with DVRs with twice the capacity, what is stopping COMCAST and Motorola to come up with a more capacity DVR.

In such a case, I wonder if they can design a DVR where a smaller capacity hard drive is always "ON" while the other hard drive(500G - 1TB) placed in the same unit is used for archiving long term recordings making it less likely a user will need to use eSATA. They could always charge the user a slightly higher premium price for these DVRs.

Two different designs.

DVRs are meant to time shift, not for long term storage, so large drives are not meant to be the norm for time shifting.

Satellite has larger drives because their VOD counts on taking up HD space which reduces the amount available for time shifting. Cable does not.