SA8300HD DVR- Review and adding an external eSata hard drive

wihogfan

Before getting the DVR from Time Warner, I had a ReplayTV unit that I opened up and put a larger hard drive in. I got chose the ReplayTV unit over Tivo because it came with a lifetime subscription to their service, the programming guide could be updated via an ethernet connection (something that only the top of the line Tivo models offered at the time I got the ReplayTV unit), and it has a feature to automatically skip commercials on recorded shows.

My first impressions of the SA8300HD DVR from Time Warner were not very favorable compared to my old ReplayTV unit- it's not as user friendly, I really miss the automatic commercial skipping, and the ReplayTV unit allowed me to transfer recorded programming to my PC where I could burn it on to a DVD. But I've decided I'm going to have to learn to live with the cable company DVR because it records HD programming where my ReplayTV unit doesn't.

Now the one thing I quickly discovered about recording HD programming vs. SD programming is that it takes up a lot of hard drive space. One HD movie and one HD baseball game was enough to fill about 30% of the internal hard drive capacity, so I started researching to see if there was a way to expand the memory of the SA8300HD DVR. What I learned is that it has a eSata port on the back of it and an external hard drive can be added using this port if the cable company has enabled that feature.

I wasn't sure if Time Warner here in NE Wisconsin did have that feature enabled, but I decided to test it.

I purchased an APRICORN ADVRX-500 500GB 7200 RPM eSATA external hard drive from Newegg for $139.99 and it does work and work well. Installation consisted of plugging the external hard drive in, plugging the included eSata cable into the DVR, and then powering off and then back on the DVR- it took maybe 2 minutes.

While researching external hard drives, it seems that some other external eSata drives will work with the SA8300HD but some others won't. I chose to give the APRICORN ADVRX-500 a try because it was advertised and sold specifically to work with the SA8300HD. Western Digital makes a similar drive that is marketed to work with DVRs, but it is more expensive.

I just wanted to let anyone who has looked into external hard drives for their rented DVR know that Time Warner in NE Wisconsin has enabled the feature that allows you to add one.

The risk you take with getting an external hard drive for this purpose is that Time Warner could either disable the function or switch to a different type of DVR. My thought was if that happens, I'll just reformat this external drive and use it with my PC (in addition to an eSata connection, it also allows for a USB 2.0 connection if you're using it with a PC instead of a DVR).