Advice on transferring Sky Plus to PC DVD recorder

sayireland

Just got Sky Plus recently and no surprise the hard disc fills up quite quickly.

Am thinking on upgrading computer to allow me to transfer from the plus box to PC to record onto DVD?

Any advice on what sort of basic hardware is best?

watty

Can't be sensibly done

1) Sky hard disk is extra encryption

2) Sky pay channels are recorded "as is", relying on the videoguard CAM decoder plus valid viewing card to decrypt playback.


So basically any PC setup that does Analog Recording "properly" will work.

Options from poorest to best (overall):

USB 1.x Analog capture. Rubbish. Will only do 1/4 resolution

USB 2.0 Analog capture. needs very powerfull PC

Win TV analog card via composite or, better RGB to S-Video adaptor, using MJPEG codec. Needs powerfull PC

Win TV analog card as above but using free Huffy Codec (needs very fast large disks). Hard to not drop frames, but highest quality if achieved.

Analog Video Editing card with true DSP chip for hardware MJPEG compression. i.e. Miro or Pinnacle DC10.

Analog to DV bridge using real time Firewire file transfer. Or some mini DV camcorders can do S-Video or Composite Video in REALTIME without tape recording to Firewire out.


I recommend IU Labs VCR software (free demo, full life time updates version about $45) for Analog recording with Win TV cards OR Firewire transfer with camera control and FULL SCREEN live preview.

Then you need an MPEG2 encoder to change the captured or transferred video from Huffy, MJPEG or DV format (forget MPEG1 or MPEG2 real time capture, results are rubbish) to DVD compliant MPEG2 at 720 x 576 @ 25 fps PAL. Then you need an authoring SW.

Tmpgenc is really excellent MPEG2 encoder.

Sonic MyDVD is horrid.

Nero is good for burning, but you need a separate Author tool to map the MPEG2 files to DVD compliant VOB files for Nero to burn.

Or buy a home DVD video recorder, put blank in and press "record". €450


If you want to put Satellite recordings onto DVD without going via Analog out and Analog Capture you can only do either FTA (with FTA satellite PVR or PC with Satellite card) or a non-Sky pay package on a PC or PVR with a CAM and viewing card.

Sky encrypted channels can only be recorded direct digitally on Sky+

There is no digital method of transfer Sky+ to DVD without significant quality loss compared with Direct transfer. (Some channels use non-DVD resolutions and need re-encoded anyway).

It *CAN* be done with a PC by enthousist with time to learn and good spec, but a home DVD recorder is easier to get good results with and can be used without massive learning curve.

BTW, I do have both WinTV analog card, Analog MJPEG HW capture edit card, PC "high end" Satellite card and also have done Analog DV bridge using Sony MiniDV camera to PC and Laptop IEEE1394/iLink/Firewire.

It's a pain. And the number of out of sync sound SVCD and DVDs is amazing! Or even beer mats.

Now I can usually do it right first time. But time consuming. Mostly I record direct to Disk from Satellite on PC Satellite card and playback from PC (The Satellite card has real TV and audio and Digital audio outputs built in, and built in MPEG2 decoder, the cheap cards need the PC to do everything).

watty

Two basic flavors of home "DVD" recorder.

1) DVD RAM is like Sky+, the DVD RAM is not really DVD at all, it is like a video version of mini-disk, it is very flexible to use and is like ejectable Hard Disk. But hardly any PC DVDs will read it and almost no home players. Panasonic is main brand.

2) DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW etc are mostly compatible with many PCs and many home DVD players. Possibly +R and +RW has the edge at minute. I use +RW for temporary stuff (i.e. TV programs) and +R for my Camcorder edits. I have Iomega Quad format DVD writer in PC. A few DVD writers for PC, inc next higher up Iomega model do DVD RAM also. The "home" standalone recorders tend to be -Format OR +Format writing, not both. Early Philips DVD Recorders had terrible problems (EUR 800 then). Almost all the sub EUR 500 inc Philips *seem* OK now, but I haven't personally used them.


There are some PVRs with hard Disk and DVD player. No use really for Sky+

A very few new models of home recorder do:

RGB in
S-Video
Composite
Firewire in
Ethernet

Hard Disk and DVD recorder / player.

---

For BEST digibox or Sky+ to "home record" you need to buy a RGB to S-Video adaptor, else detail has colour crawl and large saturated colour areas have luminance patterning. A very few Digibox do have S-Video. I can't remeber if any Sky+ has S-Video.

Very, very few Home Digital recorders / PVRs take RGB in.

Mostly the non-Sky Satellite PVR make Sky+ look dated, but SW is still flakey (as it is on Sky+) as these are newish products.

The Tivo is very old and is basic analog capture to hard disk. Any of the sub EUR 500 new products on market will record Analog from Sky+ or Digibox better, and many make DVDs that play in something else (Tivo is like an analog in version of Sky+, it needs a "recording rental" to go)

The Sky+ is inordinately restrictive (artifically for marketing reasons, and for Sky pay TV they have a monopoly of direct satellite to hard disk) as PVRs fall in price and become common, I expect the recording rental to be abolished and other restrictions too. I.e. it should work free, for FTA and simply at normal subscription price for pay TV.

Zaphod

Originally posted by sayireland
Just got Sky Plus recently and no surprise the hard disc fills up quite quickly.

Am thinking on upgrading computer to allow me to transfer from the plus box to PC to record onto DVD?

Any advice on what sort of basic hardware is best?

I've used an Aver-TV Stereo PCI card (was on special offer in Maplins at Xmas) for realtime, fullscreen capture to MPEG2 from VHS tapes. Used the UltraTV software available from the Aver site. Results were excellent on a Athlon 2100XP, 512MB machine. No pixellation/frame loss even when the onscreen activity was high. Can also capture to MPEG4 (DivX).

I also find TMPGDvdAuthor to be the best for authoring DVD. Similarly for MPEG2 streams from a DVB card. Can use it for burning too.

watty

TMPGDvdAuthor to be the best for authoring DVD. Similarly for MPEG2 streams from a DVB card. Can use it for burning too.

Yes. I must buy it. Worked better than "more expensive" packages during demo. No problem with custom menus etc.

For MPEG2 streams I find PVAstrumento good (free). It recalculates headers based on real content and fixes any "broken bits" (Perhaps a Rook pecking the LNB?).

Zaphod

That's my experience too. Tried 4 other programs: InterVideo WinDVD Creator, Cyberlink neoDVD, Ulead DVD Moviefactory, Sonic MyDVD. Ulead would typically get to 99% and then crash after spending 3+ hours processing. TMPGDVDAuthor would successfully complete the same thing in under 20 minutes. Sonic MyDVD looks to have loads of options, but would take a long time to get familiar with. neoDVD is useless.

Recording direct to .mpg, rather than .pva is asking for trouble. Computers don't like MPEG2 transport streams (as opposed to MPEG2 program streams). As LurkingIcon mentions, use PVAstrumento to convert the .pva to .mpg and correct the headers. Available here:
http://www.offeryn.de/dv.htm

watty

The latest version of the www.technotrend.de "highend" or "premium" TV software I'm using on my old Hauppauge WinTV DVBs PCI card seems now to do a good job of on the fly (933MHz Dell 220) translation to MPEG2. The files playback on WinDVD etc. I don't record PVA files anymore.

Sonic MyDVD always seems to want to re-encode and is very inflexible (even after you figure it out) compared with the TmpDVDAuthor product.

With even on the fly MPEG stream conversion to program files, the header is never right, so PVAstrumento still needed. It takes a bit of trail & error to understand what all settings get the sound in sync in the output file as it demultiplexes and re-multiplexes the audio when fixing any transmission errors in the stream.

WinDVD etc on PC will cope with transmission errors. But your home player doesn't expect that kind of problem in a DVD file and simply hangs! PVAstruemento fixes it.

I also got a 3rd party DVD player that plays real DVDs back through the Satellite Card TV out (the built in application will play any resolution of DVD or SVCD MPEG2 file, but it MUST be a MPEG2 file, not the VOB on a authored DVD). Unfortunately it won't play copyrighted/encrypted/regioned whatever DVDs, only home made ones. Possibly there is some way to get it to use the WinDVD libraries that allow the the decryption or whatever, but I couldn't figure it. It's a German freeware, documented and menus in German!

WinDVD, Intervideo and all the others only playback satellite fiiles or DVDs on the PC graphics card, not on the excellent TV and Audio and Digital Audio out of the Satellite Card (which gives better video than Digibox).

Wallacebiy

I'd be interested in just digitally backing up the Sky + , I don't mind having to transfer stuff back onto it later to watch , Just that there's lots of Kids stuff on there I could Back up somewhere , to leave a bit more space .

Anybody know of any solutions for that that don't involve opening the box ?

John mac

Hook up a dvd recorder to the sky box. . easiest way to do it..


to do it digitaly you need to use copy+, but this will require opening the sky box..



a 2274 day old thread . is that a record??

Wallacebiy

John mac wrote: »

Hook up a dvd recorder to the sky box. . easiest way to do it..


to do it digitaly you need to use copy+, but this will require opening the sky box..



a 2274 day old thread . is that a record??

Seems like that'll be the way so , although I won't need copy+ , I've a Mac , I can just DD the thing