How can I keep the recordings on my DVR?

AGaGu’s favourite ‘reader’ returns with another stumper: he has a bunch of precious things in his box and wonders if anything faff-free can be done to save his special recordings when said box reaches its natural end-of-life. Heck no, Mr Lewin. This is not the age of VHS.

Here’s the thing: you don’t really own those recordings. The law says you kinda vaguely own a theoretical and non-perpetual license to keep one single time-shifted copy of the content in one place. In this sense, the things on your DVR are similar to your hoary VHS copy of the ITV airing of RoboCop where there are inexplicably no swears or penis shootings. Keeping your own tape of that is fine (you do you) but if you were to start dubbing it onto blank E180s in order to make more copies you’d be entering the realm of piracy.

The same would be true of making copies of the content on your cable box. There’s a reason TV providers encrypt the recordings that go onto DVRs. You wouldn’t even need to faff around with cables and getting the tracking right – piracy would be a drag-anddrop endeavour, and they’d be enabling it if they didn’t lock it down. That sucks for you, but it’s the way it is.

Guru could make long-winded suggestions involving computers and HDMI capture cards and all sorts, as it is at least possible to force-copy those recordings if you are truly determined. GaGu suspects there would be very little chance of someone knocking on your door for a serious chat even if you did. But think of the inevitable demise of that box as just another format shift: you might have a room full of Betamax tapes and HD-DVD discs that you can’t bear to part with, but most people are happy to just shrug and awkwardly move on to the next thing.