On 29/01/2012 00:02, brass monkey wrote:
I have a TV which can become a PVR if I attach a hard drive to its USB port.
Is it possible (scuse my thickness) to use a wireless bridge to somehow
shunt the hard drive recordings to my NAS? Like some kind of dual-port hard
drive? Or is there a better way and lose the hard drive altogether?

Hmm, that is an interesting one...

Well there is the possibility that you could take said hard drive / usb
memory device and copy stuff from it to the NAS on your computer. That
does depend on the device using a file system that you can persuade the
computer to read. (many will be Linux style systems, so its quite often
possible even under windows to gain access to them).

Some NAS devices also have the capability to automatically suck the
contents from external drives. For example, if you plug a flash drive
into the front USB port of mine, it will automatically copy the content
to a folder on the NAS drive.

Both of those amount to "sneaker net" solutions though. The better
solution would be some more "joined up" mechanism, but I can't
immediately think of one that I know for sure which would work...

Some things to consider... does the TV have ethernet or wifi? (or can
you plug a USB ethernet / wifi adaptor into the USB). If so, can either
be used either to save recordings directly via that route, or would they
allow access to the USB drive from a remote machine via that route?

You can get manual USB switches that would allow the drive to be
switched between the TV and another device (i.e. a computer or a router
with mass storage device capability)

I have not tried it, but some external drive enclosures support
connecting a drive by both USB and Firewire. You may be able to find one
that is able to use both at once[1]. Hence a TV can fill a drive via the
USB, and second "computer" could copy from it via firewire.

(an external drive with two USB interfaces would be ideal - but not sure
I have ever seen such a thing)



[1] IIUC the mass storage device transfer protocol used by most USB
drives is based on the SCSI command set. That at least allows for the
possibility of more than one controller sharing a peripheral. Alas I
can't see that being something the designers of the enclosures would
readily support.






--
Cheers,

John.

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