Any way to reuse HDD recorder from old Sony tv to new XG9005?

[KBLarsen]

I have used a USB HDD for recording on my KDL-40EX721 for 8-9 years. I have now purchased the new KD-49XG9005, and was expecting to be able to just switch the HDD on to the new tv and be able to view all previous recordings. That feature was not the only reason I decided on a Sony tv again, but a highly contributory factor.

However, the new tv insists to have to re-format the HDD in order to recognise it as a recording unit!

That is, of course, extremely disappointing, and quite annoying to have to erase a lot of recordings that I would still like to watch.

Any suggestions on what I could do, and still save the recordings?

I tried connecting the HDD to my Windows pc to copy the data but the pc does not detect the HDD as a usable drive. Any suggestions on how to hack that situation?

Thank you.

/Kenneth

[rooobb]

Keep in mind that asking for an hack in a public forum is not legal.

Anyway, recording are crypted by any single tv using their own motherboard key, you cannot watch them even on a different tv of the same model. Forget even trying with a PC, you can however repartition it in order to use it as an empty HDD

[kinggo01]

don't have experience with so old models but....

Try to plug that drive in linux pc. Even just live distro should work. I know that drives formatted on B,C and later series can be recognized in linux. If it works, copy that content to some other drive and then reformat the one from old TV on new TV. Once done, plug that one to linux pc, copy the old contents back and hope that the system will recognize format and folder structure. If not...... well..... I don't know any way to actually make those recordings usable on anything else. What's even worse, drive formatted on one TV does not work on another one. So even if you have two of the same TVs at home you can't watch the recordings on the second one. Which means that all of the above might not work for that reason also.

[rooobb]

As I said they are encrypted. You may find the files but they are not playable.

[royabrown2]

What, you won’t spend 5% of the price of your new TV on a fast modern 1TB hard drive for it?

[kinggo01]

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@royabrown2 wrote:

What, you won’t spend 5% of the price of your new TV on a fast modern 1TB hard drive for it?

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It's not what this is about. And he has every right to be angry. What's the point of that limitation when everything can be found on internet anyway.

[rooobb]

Are you joking? It is illegal and you want a movie company like sony to support it? Any tv works like this (if it support recording)

[kinggo01]

what exactly is illegal? Watching your own recordings on a new TV? But it's not on the old one?

My point is that all this piracy prevention phobia does nothing but makes life harder to those who are not pirating in the first place. Those who do go that way in the first place and have no problem with DRM and other BS.

And people record many other things which are not available on any other source. Movies are not a problem.

And I know that it's like that on all TV's because it's mandatory. But that does not make it less pointless.

STB mostly don't have that limitations and nobody cares, they are not banned or anything. So if anyone wants to pirate all he needs is some 30-40€ and he's good to go. And honest customers, like always, once the money is taken, get middle finger salute.

[KBLarsen]

Hi! By ‘hack’ I simply meant ‘solution’, no criminal intent implied. 😊

Thanks for the info on the motherboard key thing. I did suspect that something like that was at play...

[KBLarsen]

Thank you for this tip. Now I just need to get hold of a Linux pc... 🥺