Moving To America - What to do with Sky Equipment?

qtzar

Hi,

I'm in the process of moving to America and I'm wondering what I should do with my Sky equipment.

I have a Sky+ box and a standard Sky box and, obviously, a mini-dish.

I'll probably just leave the dish on the house but what about the boxes? Is it possible to sell them and if so how?

Thanks.

Tony

Ebay

watty

Put them in the FS forum and /or ebay etc.

You own the box, dish lnb, Sky/NDS owns the card. Which if Irish only decodes Sky3 without a sub.

Some TVs will work on 60Hz 110V and NTSC. Most won't.

All my PCs and laptop PSU work 60Hz /110V as well as here.

DC recordplayer will work, but a mains motor record player goes 6/5 fast.

Ulsterman 1690

Or you could try bringing the Sky box to America and while youre over there get a VERY BIG dish

But seriously If i were you Id either sell it or give it away to some family member. Do you have any family on the UK mainland who would like to get Irish TV ?

qtzar

If I was going to sell then what would be a reasonable price for the two boxes ?

watty

Depends how old they are. Google and see prices.

You can't sell them here in ICDG, go the FS forum on Boards. But anyone interested can of course PM you now

netwhizkid

You could probably arrange with some Irish person in the or on the Continent to keep paying the Subscription to Sky and have them pay you for it. Just send them off the Box and Card and you'd be right. The amount of Irish expats and 2nd generation that want to watch our TV is unreal. There are threads several times a week on Digital Spy looking for info on how to obtain RTE in the UK.

digiking

Go on take them with you to america. Get very large dish. Irish Tv. Handy for rugby etc.

thesteve

Put them on www.toytownmunich.com there's loads of ex-pats that end up paying a fortune for boxes to get Sky here in Germany. The normal box will go for around 50 and the Sky+ about 200 I think, could be wrong though...

KdjaCL

Bring it with you serisouly, any pub would kill for those and pay a large hefty price.

Where are you going? I know a pub owner who would kill pay lots for them, he has a bar in the Bronx.


kdjac

thesteve

But you'd need a savage sized dish to pick up Sky from the states right? I had to get a 90cm dish for Germany...

byte

It's not feasible to get a Sky UK+IRL system to work in USA. For the same reasons it's not feasibly possible to receive Dish Network or DirecTV here from USA.

Advertise it in local classifieds, buyandsell.net and the For Sale section of Boards.ie somebody somewhere will buy them.

Mossy Monk

are people serious about setting up Sky Digital in the states?

lol, is it even possible?

L1011

thesteve wrote:

But you'd need a savage sized dish to pick up Sky from the states right? I had to get a 90cm dish for Germany...

Somewhere in the region of a 15 metre dish in Greenland and a LOT of cable -might- just do it

byte

MYOB wrote:

Somewhere in the region of a 15 metre dish in Greenland and a LOT of cable -might- just do it

LOL

netwhizkid

It is actually possible to view Sky in America. However it would be costly. You could set-up the Sky box here and stream it over the web to either a PC or another sky box. I read one time on Digital Spy how an American was doing it to watch American TV in Britain. Costly but worth it having experienced American TV myself. It would nearly pay for itself if you are a GAA fan as you could be charged up to $20 to see a match in a setanta pub over there. Anyone else ever see it done?

Sky are already looking at Triple Play see here so you might be able to get it without all the hassle that I mentioned. I guess their service would be similar to the Magnet service in Dublin.

KdjaCL

Its possible on the east cost with a massive dish, any further inland and it wont happen.

I lived in Middleton NY for a while and there was a mountain blocking the signal of all the places to put a mountain

But when i stayed int he bronx i helped a guy set it up, breakdown of exact cost.

Massive dish: $129 in WalMart
Sky Box: $ 299 off ebay
Sky Subscription full package: $250 a month off someone in ireland (nice profit eh?)

Had a sat installer guy with us who was very interested in Sky subs, worth a few blips to him.

kdjac

L1011

Was this in the analogue days? Astra 1 is kind-of available in the Americas, but the dish would be more in the $12,999 range (see Tele-Satellite about the guy in Brazil, or that place in Ghana), but there is not a hope in hell of getting a digital (Astra2/EB1) picture, particularly not on a consumer level dish - a $129 dish won't get you signal anywhere beyond the middle of France...

Zaphod

That's impressive considering that the elevation for Astra 28E is -16 degrees from NY.


I must get one of those $129 Walmart dishes.


And a shovel.

bk

If you have family or friends still in Ireland, you could use it to stream Irish Shows to the US. What you need is:

1) Sky sub and dish in Ireland
2) Broadband in Ireland with decent upload speed
3) Slingbox
4) BB in the US.

Basically the Slingbox takes the output from the Sky box, encodes it and ends it over the BB connection. Nice if you want to keep up with what is going on in Ireland.

thesteve

That sounds pretty cool, but how would you change channel?! Ring home?

Sin e an Fear

Seriously though, folks, what you need to watch Sky in the US, is the Slingbox, which although NTSC only can be made to work with PAL - other people are doing it already

Somebody in Germany is planning to do this commercially using the Slingbox, charging US$100-250 for US TV.

The HAVA, which will support PAL, should be out next month.

IPTV set top boxes may be blocked, so probably not viable at this stage.

Blaster99

You can watch RTE news on RTE's site. Much anything else is surely available on bittorrent? Most people I know in foreign lands without satellite download everything they want to watch.

RTE should really look into a satellite service the world over, considering the amount of Irish people around the place. This would require an uncharacteristic level of having to do something on their part, but still. Swedish TV does it. You can subscribe to it nearly anywhere on the planet. I think you have to pay the TV license plus a premium to get the service outside of Sweden. It would be extremely easy, technically, for RTE to do it in Britain, surely the biggest market. Yes I'm aware of the rights issues and no I'm not interested in another debate about that and yes with a small bit of ability these things can be sorted out.

To the original poster, there's a market for the dish too. A Sky dish + LNB is about £10 + shipping on ebay.co.uk but they're probably about €30 in Ireland because of the shipping. The other bits I would stick up on ebay.co.uk. There's a brisk trade in this stuff.

watty

I can watch my Sat remotely on Internet and change channel remotely. In theory. 6Mbit/s upload needed

If you re-encode in MPEG4 at 1/4 TV resolution (384x 288) then about 500Kbps is possible.

Sin e an Fear

watty wrote:

I can watch my Sat remotely on Internet and change channel remotely. In theory. 6Mbit/s upload needed

If you re-encode in MPEG4 at 1/4 TV resolution (384x 288) then about 500Kbps is possible.

Using what? In practice, a Slingbox works with a bog standard ADSL or cable connection, and you can change channels remotely. As does TV2Me, but the US$4750 price tag is twenty times that of the Slingbox or the HAVA.

watty

PC with Satellite card at one end and a Laptop or Xbox360 at other. No special HW is need. The Free Windows media ENCODER 9 will do as good a job of compression and streaming as as anything if your PC is fast enough.

Nothing can stream the satellite channel at ORIGINAL quality without re-compression or incredible upload as satellite MPEG2 is over 5Mbps at times. Streaming a satellite channel directly is easy if you have the bandwidth, and even ALL the channels on a transponder is technically possible.

Remote control is trivial by several methods.

These "packaged up" solutions aren't "magic" nor cheap, nor good value. In terms of Internet bandwidth, you can't get something for nothing and even for 1/4 resolution reduced quality at least 512k upload bandwidth is needed at your home Internet end.

Ye canna break the laws of Physics Capn!

Keyzer

qtzar wrote:

Hi,

I'm in the process of moving to America....

Off topic but are you Irish immigrating to US and if so did you win the diversity lottery? pm me the details please, im interested in heading to the states.

bk

thesteve wrote:

That sounds pretty cool, but how would you change channel?! Ring home?

The Slingbox has an IR blaster, which allows you to change the channel remotely via a PC interface.

Basically on your PC in the US, you have a virtual remote control interface, say you select channel 102, the software sends the command to the Slingbox in Ireland and the Slingbox sends the IR signal for "102" to the Sky box, thus changing the channel.

It wouldn't be the best interface, and as Watty said, the picture quality will be highly compressed depending on your upload speed. I wouldn't use it for all my TV viewing, but nice to catch the odd Irish TV show, GAA, Late Late Show, etc.

BTW You could probably also make this work with Sky+. It might be an idea to wait until the European PAL version of the Slingbox launches, it is currently being beta tested and will likely work more easily with Sky.

Sin e an Fear

PC-based solutions like Orb and Televiewer are free, but they're only good for terrestrial television, because they depend on a TV tuner card - you can view satellite and cable channels, but you have to get somebody at the other end to change the channel.

People are prepared to pay extra for convenience. What that company in Germany plans to do may seem expensive, but so is getting someone in the US to set it up for you and maintain it. They're probably using a leased line over there, not any old DSL or cable connection, so nobody's suggesting breaking the laws of physics.

Using an Xbox360 to receive the stream is a good idea - none of the hardware manufacturers have factored in that many people want to watch TV on a TV set without a PC or laptop.

bk wrote:

It might be an idea to wait until the European PAL version of the Slingbox launches, it is currently being beta tested and will likely work more easily with Sky.

HAVA should be available next month, with PAL compatibility as standard. But then again, the PAL Slingbox was supposed to have been launched last autumn.

bk

Sin e an Fear wrote:

HAVA should be available next month, with PAL compatibility as standard. But then again, the PAL Slingbox was supposed to have been launched last autumn.

The Beta testing was launched, unfortunately I just missed out on getting into it

BTW You could also use WMC, MythTV or even a TiVo with an IR blaster, but you would need a high upload speed to get it to work. The beauty of Slingbox and similar devices is that it rencodes on the fly to optimise for whatever BB connection you have.

Of course you could also WMC, MythTV, TiVo to record a show and then copy the file off, but not in real time.

watty

If you have a 3GHz PC you can re-encode on fly with free Windows Media Encoder 9.

ProgDVB has builtin and 3rd party network streaming plugins. Even a separate PC on LAN could re-encode on fly for BB.

You don't need WMC, it has almost nothing not available free from MS for XP or better free or cheap from 3rd parties.

The main issue is the same for ISPs wanting to do IPTV. At 500k bps the quality is low. At "original quality" even using MPEG4 the bit rate is 2 to 3 Bps and a circuit with low packet loss and low latency jitter (actual latency can be satellite sized) needed. Unfortunately you introduce artifacts if the original MPEG2 source transcoded to MPEG4 is not the highest quality (about 5Mbps).

Decent MPEG2, from Satellite or DTT directly is too high a bit rate. The TIVO bitrate is lower and if set to lowest quality could be nearly streamable at 2Mbps upload ...

Sin e an Fear

Great, but most people still prefer plug and play!:D

However, I read that Pinnacle's PCTV that may overcome the problem associated with changing channels on satellite.

Picture quality is going to be important to IPTV providers, because they're competing against cable and satellite, but if you're that keen on watching TV from the other side of the world, it's of secondary importance to content quality.

davork

bk wrote:

2) Broadband in Ireland with decent upload speed
3) Slingbox
4) BB in the US.

I'd be very careful with the BB in ireland - those darned low upload quotas could make your friend in ireland your ex-friend if Eirznooze charge their 20c/ MB overage fee...

As for Eirznooze, my BB connection from them has no such quota limit and I can't get it changed as their system won't let them... said system says the line can't have broadband, but it does, so... only in Comwreck land eh?

qmacker

I have successfully done this. I live in San Francisco, and watch Irish TV over here (and BBC, UTV, etc.). There is a little mis-informatiuon out there - let me clear things up a bit:

1) There is no PAL Slingbox yet: WRONG! This is not really true. Forgetting the "Beta Test" versions of the "PAL Slingbox", the existing, supposedly NTSC only U.S. version of the Slingbox WILL accept a PAL signal, and it will automatically adjust and recognise it. When you go into the SlingPlayer Properties, it will show up as PAL Signal. It does work, believe me. There might be a TINY bit of cut-off (10%) at the bottom of the screen with the PAL signal, but for all useful purposes, it works just fine. That is the least of your problems - read on...

2) Voltage: You don't need to worry about this either. The clever folks at Sling Media, designed a power supply that is auto sensing and accepts 110v/60Hz or 220/240v/50Hz. It's not unlike the power supply on most laptops. All you need is an adapter for the plug on the end to make it work in Ireland. In fact, the lead that goes from the plug in the wall into the Slingbox transformer, uses a standard connector - you know the ones that plug into radio cassette players and the like? So you can just buy another cord. Again, not a biggie. The "big problem" is next - read on!

3) Changing Channels/Controlling a "Tuner" Device: This is going to be your big problem. Let me explain a bit more about how it works. As mentioned briefly above, in order to CHANGE CHANNELS the Slingbox has to be hooked up to a device, such as a cable box, a VCR, a DVR - something that has a TUNER in it. There are IR (Infra-red) emitters that come out of the back of the slingbox. You hang these down in front of the IR receiver port on the front of your VCR (using a VCR as an example). These "emitters" take the place of your remote control. Obviously, if you're sitting in your living room in California, you do not want to be calling home every time you want to change channels!

3 - Continued) The problem is this: The Slingbox is currently only available in the U.S. It comes pre-programmed with a bunch of device codes, ALL FOR U.S. DEVICES! When you first setup your Slingbox, it walks you through a setup routine. You take your Video and Audio signals from the back of your VCR, and you plug them into the Video/Audio Input ports on your Slingbox. You take your IR emitters, and you place them in front of your IR receiver on your VCR (the place that normally picks up the signal from your remote control). You then go to your computer, and install the SlingPlayer. It will then detect your Slingbox on your internal Local Area Network (LAN). You MUST have a router/internal network in the place where you are setting up the Slingbox. Let me start a new paragraph here...!

4) Setup: Once the Slingbox is detected and working properly on your network, the next question you get asked is: "What kind of device are you using?" This is your problem. If you are in Ireland, none of the devices will be Irish VCRs, cable boxes, or DVD recorders. You'll see a list of hundreds, thousands even, of choices, but none of them are likely to be your device. Normally, what happens, in the U.S., is you choose your device from a list, then each time you fire up the SlingPlayer on your computer, you have a "virtual" remote control on the screen that looks exactly like the remote control for your device back in your living room in Ireland.

5) Workaround: The way you will have to get around this, is you are going to have to "make your own" remote control for your particular device. You will need to download a program called JP1 and/or another program called Remote Master. There are forums dedicated to this, but you'll have to search around. It's too detailed to go into here, but this is a good place to start: http://www.slingcommunity.com/article/10580/

6) Summary: I was able to make a rudimentary virtual remote control for my Sharp VC-MH705 VCR in Ireland. It's not the prettiest thing to look at on the computer screen, but it does the job and allows me to access the Play, FF, Rewind, and Record functions, and most importantly it allows me to change the channels on my VCR back in my parents house in Dublin.

A Few Other Things: If you're doing this, you'll need:

A) A decent broadband connection in Ireland. You MUST have a good Upload speed. 256Kbps will work, but 512Kbps will look great!

Unless your family back in Ireland are very tech savvy, you'll probably want to set it up somewhere in the house where people won't fiddle with it. Like me, you might be 5,000+ miles away, and you don't want anyone to break it! I got a coaxial/cable distribution/booster box, and split the cable signal coming into my parents house. One branch goes off to their TV as normal (they watch whatever they want to on their TV). The other coax line goes off to another room where the computer and router are. The Slingbox and VCR are in a little cabinet on their own. The router is nearby, and a network cable also goes into the little cabinet. The family is under strict instructions to LEAVE IT ALONE! "You must never touch this, unless I tell you!"

C) You might also want to stop by Radio Shack in the U.S. before you set off for Ireland. Pick up a few US/Euro Coaxial converter plug adapters They will only cost you a few bucks. Ireland seems to be migrating to the US screw-in types, but for the most part, this is not the case. Depending on your hook-up, these can come in handy, and they are very hard to find in Ireland.

D) Local Access to the Slingbox: If you set up everything properly, your little "broadcast world" should hum away nicely and you won't have any problems. It is possible (rarely) that something could go wrong. Usually, having someone power cycle the Slingbox (unplug it from the wall, and plug it back in) will fix the problem. However, there MIGHT be times where you need to access the Slingbox from the LOCAL network. To do this, you'll need to have some way of accessing a computer back in your house in Ireland. You might want to setup a VPN for this, and use something like VNC or pcAnywhere. Again, you'll need to research this yourself, as it's too detailed to go into here.

E) That reminds me...don't worry about "finding" your Slingbox when you are away from Ireland, even if you have a dynamic IP address in Ireland. Sling Media have a "finder service" (a bit like DynDNS) so you can always find the box.

THAT'S IT! I didn't intend this to be so long. Hopefully it will help someone though. I had to find out all this myself. I would have been glad to have found something like this back then.

Slainte!

L1011

qmacker wrote:

C) You might also want to stop by Radio Shack in the U.S. before you set off for Ireland. Pick up a few US/Euro Coaxial converter plug adapters They will only cost you a few bucks. Ireland seems to be migrating to the US screw-in types, but for the most part, this is not the case. Depending on your hook-up, these can come in handy, and they are very hard to find in Ireland.

We use them for all satellite and all properly done cable installs with decoders use them. They are very much not hard to find - you just have to assemble them yourself. One Belling Lee, one F-connector, a few inches of cable. If B&Q sell them, they're not hard to find

Sin e an Fear

The people I mentioned who are offering a hosted Slingbox service are using an OC-12 pipe, which is 622 Mb/s - 750kb/s per subscriber. Going by what they're charging for US cable $100 + a month, they could probably work out something for Ireland and the UK for about the same, factoring in the cost of the Sky subscription, the TV licence, and the broadband connection, plus the cost of the Slingbox.

The estimate below is based on eircom broadband home professional with a 384 'unlimited' upload.

2/4/6 Sky Mixes €21.50/€26.00/€30.50 +
TV Licence €13.00 +
broadband €54.45 =
TOTAL €88.95/€93.45/€97.95


They're holding out for a PAL Slingbox, but if you can convince them to do it without one, then so much the better.

bk

qmacker, that is a great description of how to get a Slingbox working in Ireland.

You are right, a "PAL" Slingbox is a misnomer, most computer TV devices work with PAL and NTSC no problem, for instance I have a hacked US "NTSC" TiVo working with PAL in Ireland with no problems.

What a PAL Slingbox will likely give you is:

1) A PAL tuner, so that you can tune into OTA and analogue cable transmissions without any of the external tuner/IR business.

2) Built in support for the IR codes for satellite, cable, VCR and DVD players commonly found in Europe. Hopefully both Sky and NTL:Ireland boxes will be included.

It should just make things a little easier.

I'm curios, what size monitor do you watch the streams and how is the quality?

netwhizkid

Excellent description there qmacker, also welcome to boards! Very Interesting that, I knew that such a set-up should be possible I guess the higher the upload speed of the broadband the better also. I wonder are you using Sky or a cable service like NTL - Chorus as your feed here? Sky would suit alot of people in the USA as if you subscribed to Sky+ you could use it to delay things like the 6.01 News on RTE and your other favourite programmes. Then again a PVR would also do the trick if you were using a cable TV provider. The Sky+ rig looks easier as there wouldn't be a much fumbling with the controls.

Another problem that some people run into is, Well I find myself is that I have to re-boot my sky digibox about once a week, This is no biggie as you could ring/text or send an email home for relatives to reboot it, Reading this article gave me ideas if it would be possible to remotely switch off the power on the wall to re-boot the Sky digibox, Slingbox or Broadband Modem. It wouldn't be a problem for most people here, but some people may have no relatives or may have the entire set-up in an empty house etc.

I wonder what would the view of RTE and the authorities be for Instance if you subscribed to sky and got Broadband for the Slign box set-up and got it working, Would you still have to pay a TV license if you had no TV and considering you wouldn't be watching any programmes here. ? Would they be able to prosecute for not having one? :eek:

Anyway very interesting Article any by you qmacker, I am sure it will help others it the same situation as yourself. I may have to do this next year as some relatives of mine maybe leaving New York and coming home either for good or else long summers, Considering they are ESPN Addicts and fond of American TV, Such a set-up may have to be done for them to watch Time-Warner cable direct from New York. Considering they have FTTH in New York & are quite wealthy, I can see myself in consultant position

Slingbox FTW !

qmacker

Thanks a mil for all the compliments, folks. You've made me think of a few things, and also a few questions I can answer:

First of all, to MYOB: I didn't mean to insult anyone, or Ireland in particular! I've been out of the country so long (since 1988), that, although I get back fairly regularly, I'm not fully informed on the best places to buy electronic parts. My perception when I go back, is that it SEEMS to be a bit more difficult to find things there...or at least, things are a lot more spread out. My parents live in Foxrock in Dublin. I usually find myself borrowing one of their cars and driving to a lot of different places - Dun Laoghaire, Sallynoggin, Sandyford, Stillorgan, then the City Centre) trying to hunt things down. Invariably, I end up at Peats of Parnell Street which still seems to be the best bet to get hard-to-find items. As you all know, driving in Ireland is not much fun these days. My point really, for someone coming from the States, is that Radio Shack over here is an easy stop-off point to pick things up at before you leave for Ireland. Radio Shack is so ubiquitous here - there's one in almost every town, or neighbourhood in a city. However, if someone can point me to a good electronics store in Ireland, that would be most welcome. You mentioned B&Q - are they a big chain now? (Incidentally, Radio Shack USED to be in Ireland years ago, operating under the name "Tandy" Radio Shack. They had a shop in Georges Street in Dublin, but alas, they have long since vanished - I think. I could be wrong).

Also, MYOB: You referred to "Belling Lee" and "F-connector". Is Belling Lee the name of the old Irish/UK coax connector - the push-in type? And does "F-connector" refer to the screw-in type? (I think so). Is there a long-term plan to migrate everything to F-type, including TVs and DVD/VCRs themselves too? Thanks for your clarification, and no offense meant.

Back to the slingbox...

bk - You're right. I neglected to mention: The US Slingbox has a built-in NTSC tuner. Presumably, the PAL version will have a PAL tuner, and that is going to be the main technical difference. And of course the codes - the codes, the codes, the codes!

bk - As to how I watch it: Usually on my laptop, but sometimes on my actual TV as well! I've got an S-Video out on my laptop, so I hook that up to my TV setup, and set the laptop to "External TV Monitor/Full Screen". The laptop puts out an NTSC signal, so the picture looks fine on my US TV. What's really cool about it is, due to the TV resolution on the television itself (versus a hi-res copmputer screen), the picture actually LOOKS a lot better on a television. And it's a very cool "Wow!" item to show-off to friends over here from Ireland and the UK. People can't believe it - it is amazing!

Now, here's what's pissing me off about it, and this gets to some of netwhizkid's questions and comments - You guys also might be able to help me here:

- The "controller" business is a pain in the arse. My setup is very rudimentary. I can really only change channels, and hit Play, Record, etc. on my VCR. I cannot PROGRAM the VCR to record a program. Even with just hitting Record, you've still got the problem of "forgetting" about it, and the VCR runs out of tape, rewinds, and then ejects the tape and turns itself off! I have the Power button, and can turn it back on remotely, but obviously I can't put the tape back in. I can get a family member to do this, but to be honest, it's still a pain. I don't have that "TV/VCR" select button, so sometimes when it turns back on I get a blue screen. I've got to get a family member to hit the TV/VCR button on the "real" remote, to get it back to TV Mode. This is a big hassle. As you know, most of the stuff worth watching is on in the evenings over there (and we are 8 hours behind you). Also, a big thing I got it for is rugby. The games are usually at 2 or 3PM on a Saturday or Sunday. I am NOT into getting up at 6 or 7AM on weekends!

- What I'd really like is to be able to get another NTL box, that I can fully control from over here. Right now, I've only got the old analog cable channels. My Dad has full digital in the other room with an NTL box. Does anyone know how much they charge for a 2nd box? I'm guessing not that much more, ans it's an add-on. ???

- Another thing, would be a good DVR. Can anybody recommend a RELIABLE one? Do NTL make DVR/Cable combo boxes. That would be the real way to go. Of course, we'd still have the "codes" issue. Presumably though, the NTL boxes are a rebranded version of some major manufacturer? If we could find that out, we could probably find (most of) the codes for it.

Thanks for all your help and kind remarks, folks. BTW - I'll be back in Dublin in about 10 days (for about 10 days).

Let men know if you've any more questions, or answers!

Sin e an Fear

If you were watching TV from the US via Slingbox on a laptop in Ireland, then that probably wouldn't constitute watching TV as the law stands. (This might change as IPTV develops.) However, watching Irish TV via Slingbox would involve paying a TV licence. Even if you don't live in that jurisdiction, you're uploading the TV signal from it, and whoever lives on the premises will have to pay the licence fee - unless you were watching it via satellite in the Netherlands, which has scrapped it.

I haven't been able to find any information on the cost of cable TV on ntl Ireland (which is now ntl in name only), which is why I used Sky Mixes in my estimate. Telewest in the UK charge between £5 and £15 for digital on top of broadband, but they don't yet have a PVR, and their Teleport Replay service is limited to BBC and Living TV, and then only some programmes.

This has some more useful information on adapting Slingbox for Europe, including logos for UK and Irish channels.

watty

No it would consitute watching. TV.

Oddly IN UK if you can prove you can't / don't watch ANY TV intended for UK, then you used to be able to get a licence exemption. This may have changed.

In Ireland ability to watch ANY Live TV by any method requires a licence. If you watched archived shows via net and had no tuners then maybe you would not need a licence.

Cable TV is live Digital TV via a wire. Magent IPTV is TV delivered over Internet and requires TV licence. You don't have to be getting it from an aerial or dish.

Sin e an Fear

IPTV services like Magnet (or Homechoice in the UK) are different from watching streams over the internet, because they are offering a service identical to cable operators (who don't use IPTV at all) .

I never suggested that cable TV was exempt from the licence fee - in fact it would be even less exempt than satellite as cable operators in Europe are required to carry terrestrial channels. There were a few court cases in the UK over people who said they didn't need a licence because they only watched Sky, but with the BBC terrestrial channels all on satellite, that no longer holds water.

Perhaps one reason why the Irish law is different is that people were watching BBC and UTV in the State before Teilifís Éireann (now RTÉ) started in 1961. There was (and is) a greater competitive threat.

Before I got a TV, I could watch BBC World and BBC domestic bulletins live online, but the licensing goons never sent me threatening letters. I didn't require a tuner card to view them, just as I wouldn't to receive a live video stream like Slingbox or Orb. But in any event, I wouldn't abandon conventional TV completely, at least not in the UK, so I'd continue paying the licence fee as required by law.

watty

Yes they discussed bringing an TV licence even before RTE started! In the UK now you do require a licence to watch Live TV via Internet stream but not archived material. As to how they could ever hope to police that is anyone's guess. Either they will insist on a Video licence per address if you can view anything or abolish it in the future. Or just ignore people who have no TV and stream live TV. Dunno.

bk

qmacker wrote:

- What I'd really like is to be able to get another NTL box, that I can fully control from over here. Right now, I've only got the old analog cable channels. My Dad has full digital in the other room with an NTL box. Does anyone know how much they charge for a 2nd box? I'm guessing not that much more, ans it's an add-on. ???

Yes, it is called a mirror sub and it costs only €5 per month. You will get whatever channels you dad has on the primary box, so for instance if he has sports and movie packages, then you would also get them and for only €5.

Of course you will need to make the NTL box IR work.

qmacker wrote:

- Another thing, would be a good DVR. Can anybody recommend a RELIABLE one? Do NTL make DVR/Cable combo boxes. That would be the real way to go. Of course, we'd still have the "codes" issue. Presumably though, the NTL boxes are a rebranded version of some major manufacturer? If we could find that out, we could probably find (most of) the codes for it.

Unfortunately NTL don't sell a PVR yet. But there are some options.

There are many PVR/DVD recorders for sale on the market. However there are two problems with them.

1) They usually don't have an EPG, so you will need to set recordings via date and time, like on a VCR.

2) While they have a PAL tuner to record from NTL analogue, if you want it to record from NTL Digital then you will need to get a PVR with it's own IR emitter, so it can change the channel on NTL Digital, this wouldn't be very pretty.

Slingbox emitter changes channel on PVR, PVR uses it's IR emitter to change channel on NTL Digital box, ick!!.

There are other alternatives you could get a TiVo from the UK or US to record from NTL, it will also need to use an emitter to change the channel on the NTL box, but at least you could have an EPG. I use a hacked TiVo from the US in this way, but it takes a lot of effort to hack to get it to work. A Uk TiVo would be easier to setup.

Alternatively you could setup a PC with Windows Media Centre.

BTW about the NTL box, unfortunately it is a very uncommon model, I've already searched extensively for the IR codes for it, to use with my TiVo, but I couldn't find them. I ended up having to make the TiVo learn the IR codes, that was an incredibly painful experience!

watty

I wrote an IR analyser. Must point the NTL handset I have at it. (No NTL here).

Even without Media Center the PC software is cheap or free and easy to setup. Some cards don't work a 100% as well with the MS Media Center SW as they do with free 3rd party SW. Make sure any tuner or satellite card is a new model with MS Media Centre compatible drivers or else just use 3rd party SW.

qmacker

Hey Watty -

If you could find out those codes, that would be, well....grrrreat!