Record broadcast TV to a USB drive

The recorder inside our converter boxes is the feature people write to us about most, usually with some version of the same sentence: I did not expect this to be included. It is, on both boxes, and it needs nothing but a USB drive you already own.

Step one: format the drive

The box records to drives formatted in FAT32. Many drives arrive formatted differently, so do this once before your first recording: back up anything on the drive, plug it into a computer, and format it to FAT32. A basic flash drive of 16 or 32 gigabytes holds plenty of shows; larger external drives work too once they carry the right format. Skipping this step is the number one reason a first recording fails.

Recording right now

Watching something you want to keep? Press the record button on the remote. The box writes the channel you are watching to the drive until you press STOP, and that detail matters: pulling the drive out mid-recording is the one move that can corrupt the file. STOP first, then remove.

Recording on a schedule

Open the electronic program guide, find the upcoming show, and set a timer on it. The box wakes up, records the slot, and stops on its own. Timers can repeat daily or weekly, which quietly turns a forty-dollar tuner into a daily news archive. Two honest limits: the box records the channel it is tuned to, so it cannot capture two stations at once, and a recording is only as good as the signal, so a channel that breaks up live will break up on disk.

Watching it back

Recordings land on the drive as ordinary video files. Play them from the box’s media menu with the same remote, or plug the drive into a computer and watch them there. The media player also handles files you copy onto the drive yourself, in the common formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV for video, MP3 for audio, JPG for photos.

A drive that behaves

• Format to FAT32 before the first use, not after a failed recording.
• Leave the drive plugged in if you use timers; a timer cannot record to a drive that is not there.
• Press STOP before removing the drive, every time.
• If recordings stutter, try a different drive before blaming the box; slow, elderly flash drives do exist.