Remove the cover and read the part markings on the largest chip. It could be that Google will turn up some reverse engineering (aka hacking) experiences with boxes based on the same chip.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hello.
I analyzed my HDD from CISCO 8485dbv and found some information about video.
reading the data you will notice some file names .idx .ifo .trp
then there is a lot of empty space $00
and to offset 4AA95E8 starts a data to offset 4D89218
then again, it is an empty space
and again, some data

The data given in range starred in the file dump00.trp
dump00trp file now you can play any TRP file player.
The picture shows a piece of broadcast.

It seems that the cisco broadcast divides into smaller files.
Unfortunately, without consideration of the filesystem, searching for pieces and combine them manually is a tedious.

I even tried to examine the filesystem...

Today I tried putting an other 20 GB HDD into the DVR, but unfortunatelly, recording did not work with this HDD - I dont know why. Maybe the DVR requires its 320 GB HDD.

@ fzabkar: okay the biggest chip says

STi7101KWD
DOT 9E830055
220KE9E
MLT 22 848

see photo1 below.

@ RadiM: man, you are great! it also worekd with my HDD. The offsets were slightly different from yours, but it worked! I saved the data between the 00000... and the "#Ž|F‚´... (which seems to be some kind of separation in this filesystem, see photo2) and extracted it into a new file with a .trp ending and I was able to play the file with Media Player Classic. It showed 10 seconds of a recording.

We are getting closer to hack this! Anybody has more ideas, how to get the full sized recordings from the HDD?

Thanks!!

I tried to analyze the various programs of the file system (PartitionGuru), unfortunately without success.
In the course of further analysis of data from the disk not found any more entries like "stream1.trp".
An attempt to analyze the following pieces of data stored as ".trp" also failed - "unknown stream" (Elecard Stream Inspector; TS Reader; TRP Converter; VCL)

I note that the analysis I only use 60GB of the 320GB of data.
Maybe analysis of the rest of the data to explain something.

@rotkraut
My 60GB cleaned drive also does not work at Cisco - There is no recording capability.
I have to try "factory reset" with 60GB HDD installed.

Yeah there must be a way to hack this filesystem.



I tried that. The factory reset failed with the unoriginal HDD installed.

Hmm.. wouldn't it be worth a try to put the HDD from my receiver into an non-censored receiver of the same type, so that the USB-out works? But where could i get a cheap Cisco HD DVR 8485DVB? On ebay are none..

Hello
If anyone need. I added new better photos in attachment.
FW and modules from HDD from this recorder

WD3200AAJS-56B4A0
WD-WCAT1E077027
01.03A01 05.D9E
Pinnacle (Royl)

Hi. I see this problem is still not solved. Here comes my experiments result info.
1. I've copy original 320 GB HDD to other HDD 160 GB using sector by sector method, as long as it was possible.
2. I've put this clone to UPC Cisco HD 8485 and ......
-- my records list was OK
-- it was possible to playback some recorded tracks
-- some tracks was possible to play from start to end
-- some tracks was possible to play from start to any point, when Cisco unit restarts (like soft reset, after error)
-- some tracks was not available and Cisco unit restarts
I think it was due the file error on to small HDD

3. Most interesting info comes here: my original 320 GB HDD (almost full of movies) was inserted into the other Cisco HD tuner, and recording list was EMPTY.
I think, CIsco and HDD are doing some kind of pair with any idividual encryption code, so other Cisco can't decrypt it.

What do you think about it ?

Your third point is interesting indeed, yes. By now, I found another approach to get the recorded content from my Cisco HD tuner by capturing the HDMI signal: I use a hacked HDfury 4K HDMI splitter for removing the HDCP encryption and a Hauppauge HDPVR 2 to capture the HDMI signal and get a nice H264 file out of it. Works fine.

The samples are small, but I checked them anyway and the data appears encrypted. But even if there's an encryption used, FS (of the OS partition or the whole drive) isn't ext.
Having the same samples from another DVR, I'll be able to tell more precisely.

Speaking generally, we work with DVRs regularly and should be able to help remotely if necessary, please feel free to contact me.
Although our approach is different - we do not repair anything, but analyze the image/drive manually and develop custom software to recover the recordings as video files, playable on any PC.

_________________
• Remote RAID, NAS, SAN, VMware, DVR (CCTV), flash and tape recovery. Data recovery support.