# external SATA port



## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

I know that it isn't activated by Tivo, but is there any realistic hope that it ever will be?


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## Gregor (Feb 18, 2002)

Yes.


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## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

thanks for the hope, any idea if there is a time frame.


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## mdscott (Jun 26, 2002)

No.

Michael


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## Gregor (Feb 18, 2002)

No idea of time frame.


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## missiontortilla (Sep 26, 2006)

If you call up TiVo they will probably say 2 weeks!


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## AgentSmith (Dec 22, 2001)

No idea of the time frame, because TiVo isn't the roadblock. The eSATA disk must be copy protected so that you cannot lift programming off of it (say, by connecting it to your PC). TiVo has submitted their technology to CableLabs, who must certify it before the feature can be activated.

So, someday.


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## Boot (Mar 15, 2000)

AgentSmith said:


> TiVo has submitted their technology to CableLabs


Are you sure of this?


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## Stanley Rohner (Jan 18, 2004)

The eSATA connector has been actived on the DIRECTV HR20 HD DVR since sometime around the end of 2006.

It works great !! I just hooked up a 500Gig drive to it last week.

I wonder what the holdup is with the TiVo Series3 ?


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## Boot (Mar 15, 2000)

Stanley Rohner said:


> I wonder what the holdup is with the TiVo Series3 ?





AgentSmith said:


> No idea of the time frame, because TiVo isn't the roadblock. The eSATA disk must be copy protected so that you cannot lift programming off of it (say, by connecting it to your PC). TiVo has submitted their technology to CableLabs, who must certify it before the feature can be activated.


.


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## AgentSmith (Dec 22, 2001)

Boot said:


> Are you sure of this?


Pony said so in September of last year. See the eSATA items in the FAQ stickied here.


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## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

Thanks for the info. I have a 500gb external Sata drive that I was hoping to use instead of upgrading the internal drive.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

I hate to say it but Its possible that cablelabs will never approve it or that they will make it so difficult that tivo wont bother. (same could be said for MRV and TTG of cablecard content).

I hope it doesn't come to that but look at the battle that the big boys are having with cablelabs that they got the FCC involved to settle. The big guns can afford a battle with cable. Can tivo?

At this point it seems likely that cablelabs has exceeded the time permitted for an answer so it seems the original answer may have been no. If that's the case- how does/did tivo react. Obviously we haven't seen them appeal to the FCC like the others.


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

BTW, CableLabs has recently (4/20/07) released a revision of the DFAST licensing agreement that would allow Tivo (or anyone else) to support an eSATA drive (or Firewire, or USB, or heck ... even potentially IP to a network storage device) without any explicit CableLabs approval / verification / certification / whatever.


> DFAST License Agreement
> 
> 3. Copying, Recording, and Storage of Controlled Content
> (...)
> ...


Tivo certainly _should_ be able to enable eSATA within those guidelines. Some kludginess required but ... seems doable.

Also interesting, they've approved a new DRM (Motorola IP Rights Management - IPRM) which I hadn't heard of before.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

dt_dc said:


> BTW, CableLabs has recently (4/20/07) released a revision of the DFAST licensing agreement that would allow Tivo (or anyone else) to support an eSATA drive (or Firewire, or USB, or heck ... even potentially IP to a network storage device) without any explicit CableLabs approval / verification / certification / whatever.Tivo certainly _should_ be able to enable eSATA within those guidelines. Some kludginess required but ... seems doable.


Very interesting, thanks! Yes, I agree that this should enable TiVo to give us eSATA, and without changing their algorithm much. There's light at the end of the tunnel!


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

dt_dc said:


> Also interesting, they've approved a new DRM (Motorola IP Rights Management - IPRM) which I hadn't heard of before.


Moto has been seeking a way to move protected content from one client to another. Looks like it was finally approved.


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

alexchiz said:


> Thanks for the info. I have a 500gb external Sata drive that I was hoping to use instead of upgrading the internal drive.


Why not upgrade now, and plug the 250 stock HDD into eSATA when it's turned on?


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## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

yunlin12 said:


> Why not upgrade now, and plug the 250 stock HDD into eSATA when it's turned on?


Because I do not want to lose all of my recordings and the wife's entire season of Gilmore Girls.


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## d00ks (May 1, 2007)

Stanley Rohner said:


> The eSATA connector has been actived on the DIRECTV HR20 HD DVR since sometime around the end of 2006.
> 
> It works great !! I just hooked up a 500Gig drive to it last week.
> 
> I wonder what the holdup is with the TiVo Series3 ?


Do you have instructions on how to hook up a large drive to the eSATA? Mainly what to format with, i.e. NTFS, FAT. Any help would be appreciated.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> Very interesting, thanks! Yes, I agree that this should enable TiVo to give us eSATA, and without changing their algorithm much. There's light at the end of the tunnel!


I'm not so sure about that, particularly when you consider the mandatory encrypt that the new revision to the agreement requires. Computing AES or 3DES on the fly is a very computationally intense procedure, and is typically done in hardware. Does the S3 have a crypto chipset built in ? If not, it's probably not practical for TiVo to do it in software.

Also, to protect against the "disk cloning" attack, it'd probably be easiest for TiVo to set up the internal and external drives as a RAID-0 array where recordings are split equally between the two drives. However, this set up kind of stinks for data integrity due to drive failure, since a failure of one drive invalidates all data across all drives. Not exactly a user-friendly solution to say the least.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

PaulS said:


> I'm not so sure about that, particularly when you consider the mandatory encrypt that the new revision to the agreement requires. Computing AES or 3DES on the fly is a very computationally intense procedure, and is typically done in hardware. Does the S3 have a crypto chipset built in ? If not, it's probably not practical for TiVo to do it in software.
> 
> Also, to protect against the "disk cloning" attack, it'd probably be easiest for TiVo to set up the internal and external drives as a RAID-0 array where recordings are split equally between the two drives. However, this set up kind of stinks for data integrity due to drive failure, since a failure of one drive invalidates all data across all drives. Not exactly a user-friendly solution to say the least.


Yes, all S2 and S3 TiVos have hardware encryption that I'm almost positive meets the CableLabs requirements (I can't seem to find the encryption scheme at the moment). My understanding is the shows themselves are encrypted by hardware in blocks as they come in, with keys to each block being encrypted with a MAK or machine dependent key in a block header. Transfer to/from a PC only requires the block header to be re-encrypted which I believe is done in software.

Early reports from TiVoPony indicated that they were planning to use the same multi-disk scheme for the eSATA disks as for the existing models with two disks. That implies that indeed a failure of one disk means all shows will be lost.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

dt_dc said:


> BTW, CableLabs has recently (4/20/07) released a revision of the DFAST licensing agreement that would allow Tivo (or anyone else) to support an eSATA drive (or Firewire, or USB, or heck ... even potentially IP to a network storage device) without any explicit CableLabs approval / verification / certification / whatever.Tivo certainly _should_ be able to enable eSATA within those guidelines. Some kludginess required but ... seems doable.
> 
> Also interesting, they've approved a new DRM (Motorola IP Rights Management - IPRM) which I hadn't heard of before.


Damn, sounds like they could also squeeze some form of MRV in under those rules if they are careful.


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

Leo_N said:


> Damn, sounds like they could also squeeze some form of MRV in under those rules if they are careful.


Not really ... not in the traditional sense of Tivo MRV


> b) the Controlled Content is uniquely cryptographically associated with the original UDCP connected to the storage device, such that Controlled Content is unusable to any other product or device.


They could set up some sort of 'Multi Room Storage' under those rules. Transfer to another Tivo for temporary / additional storage but you'd have to transfer back to the original Tivo for viewing. Something like that. But no transfering to and viewing on another Tivo (MRV). To do that, you still need to either 1) use an already approved digital output / storage technology or 2) get approval for your own new one.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

dt_dc said:


> Not really ... not in the traditional sense of Tivo MRVThey could set up some sort of 'Multi Room Storage' under those rules. Transfer to another Tivo for temporary / additional storage but you'd have to transfer back to the original Tivo for viewing. Something like that. But no transfering to and viewing on another Tivo (MRV). To do that, you still need to either 1) use an already approved digital output / storage technology or 2) get approval for your own new one.


Yep, that is what I was thinking when I said "some form." I agree the original MRV would never fly.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

alexchiz said:


> Because I do not want to lose all of my recordings and the wife's entire season of Gilmore Girls.


I believe the upgrading is essentially 'same as it always has been', and you don't have to lose your recordings.. you just wait hours & hours.


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## AgentSmith (Dec 22, 2001)

mattack said:


> I believe the upgrading is essentially 'same as it always has been', and you don't have to lose your recordings.. you just wait hours & hours.


Nope. Internally, the S3 only has one SATA port, so it can only support one disk internally. The existing drive must be removed and replaced, and all its content will be lost in the process. It's not like the S2 where you can perform divorces/marriages with two disks.

eSATA, OTOH, promises a plug-and-go expansion with no loss of content.


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

AgentSmith said:


> Nope. Internally, the S3 only has one SATA port, so it can only support one disk internally. The existing drive must be removed and replaced, and all its content will be lost in the process. It's not like the S2 where you can perform divorces/marriages with two disks.
> 
> eSATA, OTOH, promises a plug-and-go expansion with no loss of content.


I think he means that one can copy the whole driver over to the new HDD, including the shows, and copying those takes hours and hours.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

yunlin12 said:


> I think he means that one can copy the whole driver over to the new HDD, including the shows, and copying those takes hours and hours.


exactly- just dd the old drive to the new drive and then expand the new drive.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> ...
> 
> Early reports from TiVoPony indicated that they were planning to use the same multi-disk scheme for the eSATA disks as for the existing models with two disks. That implies that indeed a failure of one disk means all shows will be lost.


there's some older posts floating around with more specifics. THe gist was they would tweak the current system so that if the S3 found the external drive was disconnected (loose cable, unplugged, truly dead, etc) that the S3 would prompt you to attempt to correct the problem and if you couldn't it would kill off allshows on the external drive but wouldn't nuke the internal drive.


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## jmace57 (Nov 30, 2002)

alexchiz said:


> ...and the wife's entire season of Gilmore Girls.


Are you sure?!? 

Jim


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## spike2k5 (Feb 21, 2006)

Looks like eSATA can be activated on S3 on software V 8.1.1.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350491

Someone try it on 8.3.


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## Sevenfeet (Jun 24, 2000)

alexchiz said:


> Because I do not want to lose all of my recordings and the wife's entire season of Gilmore Girls.


Did your wife freak when Gilmore Girls was cancelled? Mine nearly jumped off a proverbial building...


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## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

she has been very depressed since the news broke.


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## alexchiz (Apr 12, 2007)

spike2k5 said:


> Looks like eSATA can be activated on S3 on software V 8.1.1.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350491
> 
> Someone try it on 8.3.


I tried it on v8.1.1 also, and it worked like a charm.


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