Can't view a recorded show on my PC.

[SirLipe]

I used a USB flash drive to record a show on my TV and now I want to watch it on my computer but it says I have to format the flash drive before I can use it. Is this not an error and it's made to prevent people from uploading it to internet? Piracy and stuff?

 

[jasonkaler]

I had the same problem. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with copyright and uploading.

In my case, I think the computer was shut down before it finished writing to the flash drive. This leaves the file allocation tables in a bad state.
A USB flash drive can be slower than we realize. Rather record to your hard drive and copy it to the flash drive if you want.

 

[SirLipe]

I had the same problem. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with copyright and uploading.

In my case, I think the computer was shut down before it finished writing to the flash drive. This leaves the file allocation tables in a bad state.
A USB flash drive can be slower than we realize. Rather record to your hard drive and copy it to the flash drive if you want.

Thank you for your reply.
How do I record it to my hard drive? I have a little box next to my TV and I plug my USB in it, how do I plug my hard drive in the box?

 

[jasonkaler]

oh, I thought it was a PC with a TV receiver, sorry. That's what I have.

I'm not sure if your device will support a hard drive.
I guess it would have to be an external HDD like a WD passport, that has a USB cable.

 

[Rocky Bennett]

In my experience, every hard drive on the planet Earth can be plugged into the same USB jack that a flash drive plugs into. A USB jack is a USB jack, it doesn't matter what you plug into it. I have a 2 terabyte hard drive plugged into my TV box.

But on the practical side, what you are trying to do may never work because of something called proprietary CODECs. Most TV boxes use a proprietary CODEC that will not allow you to decode and watch the shows on a PC. It is simply copyright protection.