[dayglored]

> The USB is likely formatted to a file system version that windows doesn’t read. Try formatting the USB to FAT32 and copying over the data again.

Maybe, if the Dish DVR did the formatting itself, but I think that is unlikely... but I don't know.

I suspect it's not actually the format of the flash drive (filesystem), but the format of the video files themselves, that is the problem.

[lafroste]

The Dish DVR DOES reformat the flash drive before copying.

[PJBankard]

The issue as stated by the OP is that Windows won’t read the USB, not that it won’t read the files. It is a file system issue.

[Boogieman]

Possibly. I have worked with DVRs for video surveillance that store videos in MP4 but use some special compression algorithms so that you cannot actually view them as regular mp4’s. They require a proprietary viewer software to read the file. It’s possible that regular tv DVRs might be doing something similar.