I checked the waybackmachine.org also . This is what I found. It's a later post from the one you mentioned....
".....Alright tried to get a 5 minute recording off the HDD and I couldnt copy the files !
In the above screen shot the recorded file is stream.str ! all other files in the above screen shot copied except stream.str , this was a 6 minute recording and the file size was 122 MB .
I couldnt open this file with any of the media players either....
Some sort of write protection!
So looks like if you want to upgrade you just cannot get a new HDD and add it you will mostly have to first use norton ghost and ghost the original HDD to the new HDD then it may work (planning this experiment for next week.
I did try connecting my 120 GBG hdd and when I switch on STB no channles showed up.
So hold on for the next few days ill try to see what exactly we would need to do to upgrade the HDDs and copy recorded content.
Upgrading HDD may work but copying the recorded content may not !
R15: Need to copy/transfer saved videos/movies - DBSTalk.Com
Frojm a user on the above site ".STR files are encrypted on the hard drive, and the only way to de-crypt them is with the original DVR and access card they were recorded on. There is absolutely no way to retrieve or recover them as a computer file"
India's Premier Food and Drink Forum "
HERE is another link:
http://broadbandforum.co/threads/ta...e-inside-with-photos.28688/page-9#post-319504
Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPHV2pdUeSI#t=60 ( may be helpful for experimentation !)