Bell PVR External Hard Drive Can I copy the movies from my PVR to my computer and watch them

Bell PVR External Hard Drive Can I copy the movies from my PVR to my computer and watch them?

 

Bell PVR External Hard Drive – Can I Copy the Files to a Computer?   After blogging about the Bell Expressvu 9241 / 9242 HD PVR Plus receivers and the Bell Expressvu 6141 HD Receiver with external hard drive, many people have been emailing me and asking the same question –  ”Can I copy the movies from my PVR to my computer and watch them?”

Well, that’s a 2 part question and there are actually 2 answers.  From what I have experimented with, yes you can copy the files to your computer system but no, you cannot watch them on your computer system or burn them on a DVD and watch them later.

The external hard drives that you attach to your Bell Expressvu receivers will be formatted by the receiver.  The format is not directly compatible with Windows.  The external hard disk drives on the Expressvu PVRs is actually formatted in EXT3 format – which means they can be read by systems with Linux.  I have successfully copy the files from an external hard drive I had attached to my Bell Expressvu 6141 HD Receiver and move it to my Windows XP computer system.  However, the file type was not recognized and could not be played in any media player that I had.

It is apparent that files copied from the Bell Expressvu PVR are in MPEG format, but they are obviously encrypted and require the receiver to play back.