Hard Disc recorder

redzer007

Hi All,

Can anyone tell me a sky plus box will work with a regualr sub. I dont want the record other channels stuff, I just want to essentially use it as a recorder.

If not what other options are people using? Anyone using Windows Media Centre?

Thanks

Redmond

ixtlan

Hi there,

Sky+ will not work with a regular sub. You need at least a few premium channels. I pay about €53 for the movie channels, but apparently you can qualify with a smaller set for about €45.

If you don't have a suitable package, I think it's €15 for the use of Sky+, which means you might as well get the extra channels!

Also, you can only record items on the EPG, you cannot record "other channels".

Obviously a media centre PC would be an option, but you will never get the ease of use of the Sky+ (plus the record one channel/watch another)

Ix.

watty

Sky+ works with ANY sky sub. But they charge 15 Euro a month extra to enable it unless you have a premium channel.

The cheapest Sky package is 2 mix packs at 21 Euro, so minimum is 36 Euro for all the Knowledge and Variety channels for instance.

Forget Media Centre. Load of junk. Ordinary XP with a PCI based Satellite Digital card.

Two kinds:
1) Skystar1, Hauppauge Nexus-s, Premium: Has MPEG2 decoder chip and media bridge to provide true audio & TV out to TV and HiFi. Uses almost no CPU time. About 300 Euro. Built in CAM interface and IR remote with remote.
Will work on NT4.0, Win 9x on P90! Also works XP, 2000 etc (P400, 384M minimum to support the OS!) Can only do HDTV by "pretending" to be the second type card. Poor for HDTV.

2) Skystar2, Hauppauge Nova-s, Basic: Nothing built in, just the Tuner head. The PC does everything, if you want to drive a TV, you need a graphics card with TV out. Needs at least 600MHz CPU, 512M RAM, Recommend 1.8MHz P4 or much faster AMD / Celeron. Will do HDTV on at least P4 1.8GHz. About 80Euro

Recommend Win XP or at least Win2000 with NTFS disk format. Set recording to record in 676M byte file sections though rather than single file. Even dual layer DVD video can't manage a single file of a film.

Use the free PVAstrumento to fix any stream errors if transferring to DVD or you have lip sync problems on playback without DVD authoring.

Note many channels do not use DVD resolutions

HD TV also needs widescreen display of at least 1080 lines! Ideally at least 48" or larger for living room. If you are PC typing distance, then it is impressive on a 17" or 19" PC monitor in 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 1200 resolutions.

Free HDTV on Hotbird and Astra 19, but not on Sky. When Sky HD starts initial channels will need a new type Sky box and be encrypted.

watty

Oh, and the PC can support up to 4 sat cards, but for ease of install buy two different ones. The application with a card will not support this but the free ProgDVB does support at least two cards and pause of live TV, watch a different channel etc.

You must add Dish & LNB of course to the 80 Euro sat card

watty

I have Sat card and Analog TV card in same PC. Both can be viewed at same time. I use IUlabs VCR software for Analog TV capture, which can include video, S-Video or RF in PAL, NTSC or SECAM, from either of my two Sky Digiboxes or the analog box on 5W (secam).

The Digital recording is same as live signal from Dsat, but my S-VHS recorder beats analog TV capture for quality. Also eats a lot more storage as it is MJPEG (or very hungry Huffy if wanting best quality), unlike the Sat card which comes already in MPEG2.

Full resolution MPEG2 capture can't be done with a simple analog tuner, it needs a dedicated on-board MPEG encoder and is still poorer than say DV cam transfer encoded by 2 pass VBR like TMPenc.

watty

There are lots of good DSat PVR non-Sky boxes much better spec than Sky+, esp check German web sites. From 300 Euro.

redzer007

Weighing up options, will update when I decide

R

Edster

There is a website at :

http://pvrguide.no-ip.com/

with guides on how to set up 2 bits of linux software (mythtv and VDR) to do all this for you to record the free channels and some discussion on card types etc