Xbox One will let you record live TV – if you have an external hard drive

Microsoft clarifies how their DVR functionality actually works after being announced at this month’s Gamescom

Microsoft took to the stage at gamescom 2015 in Cologne on Tuesday and announced their plans to introduce DVR for Over-the-Air TV to the Xbox One.

Today they have announced a slight catch to what they claim was one of their most requested features for the Xbox One based on fan feedback – it can only record to an external hard drive.

Coming days after Microsoft’s announcement that it has formed a partnership with Seagate to produce a bespoke 2TB external drive for Xbox One and Xbox 360, Microsoft claims that the necessity of an external hard drive for the DVR feature is because they do not want to affect the gaming experience.

“You need an external hard-drive specifically for DVR because we want to keep the [storage] paths optimized between playing games and watching TV,” Xbox One’s dashboard redesign project lead Richard Irving explained to Gamespot. “We don’t want them to interact with each other.”

DVR for over-the-air TV on Xbox One has been designed so that users can casually switch to playing games or stepping away from the system without missing out on any programming they might wish to record.

The feature will allow for the streaming of recorded shows via the Xbox app on Windows 10 devices and through the Xbox Smartglass app on iOS and Android. Users of these devices will also be able to set recording schedules from their devices when on the move.

As well as an external hard drive, the DVR feature will also require the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner which was released last year.