Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

Simple installation, just connect to the DVR with the supplied USB cable, plug it in and follow the on-screen directions. It's easy to move recordings back and forth or to view directly from the hard drive. You can continue to watch TV while the recordings are being transferred. A neat thing is that you can use the external drive with any other Dish DVR you may have. You can record on your TV, connect the drive to the kids DVR and they can watch on their TV.

I had to return my DishNetwork DVR because of a malfunctioning HDMI output. I had saved several years worth of children's shows (not to mention some other programming) which the kids watch again and again. All of this would be lost when I returned the unit for a replacement. This expansion hard drive allowed me save all my recorded shows and later transfer them to the new device. The capacity is ample for many many hours of programming. In the past I have also had DVR fail after a few years with the loss of all programming. Treasured recordings could be moved to this drive which presumably would survive a DVR failure. This will also expand the memory capacity of the DVR, although so far that has not been an issue for me.

A couple of things to note, however:

1. DishNetwork charges a $40 "activation" fee per account, over and above the cost of the drive.

2. The drive will not work with a computer so you can only watch the shows on a "activated" DishNetwork DVR.

3. This is not a back-up device, in the sense that recordings can only reside in one place, i.e. either the DVR or this drive, not both. They are physically moved from the DVR's drive when you save them to the Western Digital and disappear from the My Recordings List. That said, they do appear in the My Media menu and can be played from the WD without having to move them back.

Buy Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Now

Just wanted to let potential buyers know that you can also use Wd My book Essential for pc as a dvr expander for Dish vip 722. I researched this and had difficulty finding an answer so I decided to hook mine up and see. The Dish dvr prompts you to reformat the external hard drive and it was a piece of cake! Completely compatible with dish. We got 1TB for 109.00!

Read Best Reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Here

Got this to increase the storage of a Dish network DVR. Plugged in this hard drive into the DVR, activated the USB port through Dish and everything worked smoothly. Since then I have used this drive with no problems to archive tv shows from the DVR and watch them later. Now if only the Dish network user interface to the hard drive was better....

Want Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Discount?

I bought this to expand the storage capacity on my Dish HD-DVR. It works as advertised and is easy to set up. I haven't been able to fill it up yet. I have 105 recorded HD events stored on it and still have 20% of the drive available.