astro is 1080i, i prefer 720p tho, smoother

Unless you delete most of the stuffs, no. Astro's HD broadcast is around 10Mbps x264 compression, while normal files that you download from torrent are only 2 to 4Mbps, hence the larger file size when recording on Astro. This is to make sure that the picture quality is mantained. Unless you get a capture card and rerecord what you record into your PC, I doubt your HDD can last

Enough, but you can't just plug a HDD and expect it to record.
worse come to worse, Astro --> HDMI Capture card --> record to PC

Astro with its newer Super Pack PLUS to leech more money from us