I was wondering the same thing with my new Pace with Bresnan. I looked up the user guide and it says "for future use" regarding the ethernet port. It also says the usb and firewire are for SATA harddrives, and the dvr will automatically choose which drive to save to, but I could see disconnecting a hardrive and checking to see if the mp4 files are accessible on a computer. They could be viewed with VLC.

I can't transfer shows to a regular dvd recorder. It comes up as protected content and the shows record fine when recorded direct from the tv cable. Only when they come from the dvr does it say protected content. This is a new problem because it used to work just fine. help??????