Folks who receive service from a cable franchise that doles out set-top DVRs made by Scientific Atlanta may find themselves in a unique position: a third party storage vendor is offering to expand that DVR’s storage capacity. Iomega has announced its DVR Expander eSATA Hard Drive, an external mechanism that can connect to Scientific American 8300 and 8300HD DVRs via an eSATA port and add up to 300 hours of standard-definition storage to the units.
"Everyone loves their DVRs and watching television on their own schedule, but I don’t know anyone who likes being forced to delete programming to record some more," said Iomega’s global manager for hard drive products Ralf San Jose, in a statement. "With the new Iomega DVR Expander Drive, you get a massive capacity increase for your DVR with no installation hassles."
The DVR Expander drive offers 500 GB of storage, and connects to the eSATA port on the back of the Scientific Atlanta DVRs (and should work with future eSATA models). Management of the added storage is handled completely by the DVR: as soon as the new drive is detected, the system will automatically start using it.
Iomega says the DVR Expander Drive is also compatible with TiVo Series 3 and TiVO HD DVRs and expects the drive will be certified for use with other cable set-top boxes in the future; however, the company warns using the drive with an eSATA-capable PC will mean reformatting the drive, which will erase all stored programming.
Iomega says the 500 GB DVR Expander Hard Drive will be available this month for a suggested retail price of $199.95.
