You can transfer programs to an external drive, but they can only be played back thru the dvr. The external drive si formatted by the dvr and cannot be played on any other device. Once you pay the 1 time fee you can use as many drives as you want, but only one at a time.
You can move programs from the DVR to and EHD (archiving).The DVR has to be an HD VIP series....622/722/722K/612. A$40.00 activation fee is necessary for the function.