Someone (The Borg?) assimilated two or more threads into this one, but somewhere some folks suggested using Hopper folders to separate the recordings made by various household members. Assuming that some day we may have no options other than Dish Hoppers (or changing providers), I looked into Hopper folders. My expectation was that they may effectively segregate the Hopper's drive into independently operating partitions, but Nooooo ... they (may) LET a viewer push a series of buttons whenever he CHOOSES to protect a specific recording from the other viewer's DELETE button.
Googling Hopper Folder Management revealed, for example, one You Tube video that showed how one expert hacked his Hopper folder process to operate ... sometimes ... maybe ... in part ... like independent DVRs. The video was 25 minutes long.
Surely they jest. With real, live, 5-pound pieces of hardware (aka DVRs) beneath each TV in the house, what's mine is mine and what's hers is hers. Each person's watching, recording, erasing, etc. is autonomous, requires just one button push (e.g., RECORD, WATCH, PAUSE WHILE I GO WINDSURFING, DELETE, PROTECT UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER) per operation, and continues automatically until he intervenes (e.g., when a series turns out to be a dud.)
The whole folder concept sounds much like dimming a smart light bulb. Here's how that goes:
1. I'm eating breakfast and reading the newspaper.
2. I decide to dim or brighten the light.
3. I go downstairs or out into my shop, find my cell phone, turn it on, find my dining room light bulb management app, change the light bulb setting, repeatedly holler up to my wife "HOW'S THAT?" until it's OK, and walk back to the dining room.
Surely they jest ... especially considering that even my ViP 612 does everything I ask of it on 250 channels.
KISS!