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If you have saved your Smart TV recordings on an external hard drive or a USB stick, it is unfortunately very difficult to play them on a PC. There are several reasons for this, but there are also ways to solve the problem.
Playing Smart TV recordings on a PC
- The problem here, however, is not transferring the files from the TV to the PC, but playing them back on the PC. For legal reasons, TV manufacturers are required to encrypt the recordings.
- Note: The tool used here has not been updated for several years. This is probably due, amongst other things, to the fact that TV manufacturers are encrypting the recordings more and more effectively.
- The following instructions can no longer be followed, particularly on newer devices. Some older devices have been given stronger encryption via an update.
- For this reason, the success rate has now become very low. If you’d still like to try your luck, you’ll find detailed instructions in the following paragraph.
Instructions: Transferring recordings from a USB stick or external hard drive
These instructions are provided as an example for Samsung Smart TVs. Recordings from TV sets made by other manufacturers may not be transferable using this method. Devices from the ES series are not supported at all. If you have installed a software update for an older Samsung TV, this may also prevent the process from working.
- If the recordings are on a USB stick or an external hard drive, you cannot simply drag the file onto your computer. Windows will not allow this. However, it is possible under Ubuntu or Linux.
- Download and install the VMware Player programme. This allows you to install Ubuntu as a virtual machine. You can download Ubuntu here.
- Alternatively, you can boot your computer using a Linux CD. To do this, download Knoppix and burn it to a CD. Restart your computer using the CD, and a Linux system will be available to you.
- Connect the external hard drive or USB stick to your computer and open the drive. Unlike in Windows, you now have access to the recording. Drag all files from the storage device to another storage device or your hard drive.
- Now return to Windows. All you need now is the DeSTRoi tool. This can be used to decrypt the recording.
- Launch the DeSTRoi.exe file. Click the ‘Open’ button and navigate to the location of the recording. Open the file with the SRF extension.
- Click the ‘Select’ button on the right to specify the location. Clicking the ‘Decrypt’ button will do just that.
- The decrypted file is then saved in TS format. It can be opened, for example, using Windows Media Player.
- Note: If the file cannot be decrypted, select a different ‘Key Entry’ option at the top.
- If you wish to convert the file to a more common format such as AVI or WMV, we recommend using Freemake Video Converter for the conversion.
