Capturing tv programs and getting programs from sky on to pc

[Gavin]

ive just got me one of these

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_hvr1300.html

and wondered what you guys do and how you go about getting programs from sky using the s vid in etc and then converting them.

As obviously ill need a lead to go from my sky box into the tv card one that carries sound as well as video then something to capture the input.....

Is there any third party software better than the hauppage stuff?

What leads and connections are the best?

Cheers guys hopefully you can help me?

i have sky + so its ok to discuss recording programs for my own use i guess?

 

[Andeh]

The first app I would suggest for viewing (and possibly recording) TV footage is DScaler (google it)
It's simply awesome for watching TV on your computer, and it required no drivers for the TV-card to run.

As for recording, you can give DScaler a try as it has built in recording capabilities. They used to be absolutely appauling, but they've since improved them a crap load. The very best app I would recommend for recording TV footage, is iuVCR (google for it) it's primarily a TV recording app and allows you to preset recording times (much like a regular VCR)
Then theres Virtualdub of course, has great recording capabilities, and also allows you to apply filters to recorded videos and it will encode them to things like Divx.

There are many others too, but those are what I like to use the most.

 

[Gavin]

Thanks ill try descaler for a start then

 

[Gavin]

Well ive managed to get it sort of working but its very clunky.........



Whats best scart lead from the sky box that goes to s video and two phonos for sound? or s video to svideo and a separate phono to phono for audio?

 

[MadMatty]

if the box offers a s-video out port then that will be best option to hook upto a capture card.

sound will usualy go via the line in on your sound card or a passthrough on the capture card. this is usually a minij jack so if the sky box does have phono ports then 2 phono to mini jack should do the trick.

 

[Gavin]

Well ive ordered a 10m s - video to s - video lead and ill see how i get on with that!


Anyone know how dual monitor spaning works and if its possible ? so id have like a 40" screen?

 

[Bubo]

If it was me I'd just get a dvd recorder and either edit them on the pc with a dvd authoring tool or convert to avi. Doing this you cut out the potential quality loss by doing the capture via an s-video lead.