HD recording from a Dish DVR

[rasterfarian]

I have a question about Dish Network HD DVR:

I want to preserve my SD and HD recordings that are on the DVR's hard drive, but "customer support" is very sketchy on useful information regarding this.
Will a HD DVD recorder take a HDMI input from the Dish Network DVR and back-up the recordings in HD?
I don't believe this is a copyright issue at all since this will be for my own use and no other reason than simply preseving my HD recordings before I send the DVR back to DishN.
Thanks-