Help required for a solution to rip from a sky+ box

dtokez

dtokez

dtokez

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10 Jan 2009
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Hi all, well to cut a long story short, I moved out of my parents a few years ago and left my sky connection behind. I'm in a flat and the tv reception is rubbish but me & my mrs don't want to sign up for a year to sky because we don't think we will be there for a year.

I still go to my parents quite often - what I want to do is find a way that I can rip things from my sky box, onto an external hdd and take home with me.

I hooked up a spare PC with windows media centre on it, and tried to use the sky box as the tuner for recording but I could not get the infra red dongle thing to control the box properly so I think Ill stick with using the sky+ for recordings.

The PC has AV inputs so thats not a problem, but I don't know what software if any would encode the video coming in and make it a decent size? I would like this process to be as easy as possible, and fast ;) as I don't want to be messing around in my old bedroom, I don't mind manually recording the programs to the PC though, but it would be nice if they were a sensible size - windows media centre makes a 1 hour program about 2 gb!!

any advice would be excellent :p
 
thanks bud, I will take a look at that link, mainly documentaries etc from discovery channel and some motor racing so I guess they will be encrypted..

not thought about tuners for the pc, I guess you would put the viewing card in one somehow? or they only free to air?

cheers mate
 
There is no legal way to decrypt sky tv on your pc.
The only legal way to do this is to record the output from your sky box in an analogue manner using your video in on the pc. This would be a nightmare in the real world as you could only record in realtime - ie you record as you watch. The quality will also be worse than the original and scheduling will be a pain in the backside. Not worth the effort.

There are ways to connect a sky viewing card to a pc but these are against sky's terms of service and you would have to keep putting the card back in a skybox or it will deactivate.
 
Hi Luke,

Recording in real time does not bother me really, I can just stick it on and go and do something for an hour.

I have a card with composite inputs, but I need to find some easy to use ripping software that will make the files a reasonable size without further processing :(
 
wonder_lander said:
Check out my TV setup in my blog (see sig).
Click to expand...

Nice setup! You are restricted to the freesat channels though right?

danrogers - There is nothing stopping you from re-processing the files you get with something like handbrake to make them smaller. Its a cruddy solution though as you are making an analogue copy of a standard definition signal and then recompressing it again. Its a very slow and low quality way to do it.
 
You're only options are going to be:

1. Directly record the bit stream using a Satellite card and a CAM to decrypt the channels. Breaks ToS as others have said but is ultimately the best method.

2. Extract the recordings the Skybox HDD (clade's link). Will exclude encrypted channels which will be most of them.

3. Use a component input device to record what you watch (same as you'd use a VCR). Time consuming as you can only record what you're watching then and then and you'll may need to re-encode the recording to a more versatile format.
 
Can't you just use sky player on your PC? It asks for the username and password for the account, but I watch loads of stuff on my PC here without going anywhere near the box downstairs. Only problem is you're limited to what they have on demand, or live.

Not ideal but maybe ok to watch a few of the more popular shows.
 
My HTPC records realtime off my Sky box in great quality and without using a satellite card in the PC this is about the only decent solution.
In the PC I use an Analog card (E.g. hauppauge PVR150 or HVR2200) that has an svideo/RCAaudio input. This can record directly from a Sky box with svideo out (e.g. Sky+ and some older digiboxes) or via a (good) SCART to svideo converter. Using an IR blaster and good PVR software the PC can record Sky programs automatically. The quality is as good as watching via SCART/HDMI.
HD quality cannot be recorded but it will record the HD programs (via SCART) in SD quality and all channels you can get with your subscription can be recorded the same.
 
wonder_lander said:
Nope, I've got the full Sky package available, did you not watch the videos in my blog post?
Click to expand...

Interesting - I didn't watch the videos but I did read the blog. can you outline the steps used to get this to work? I played with this using acamd and dvbviewer a while back but I kept getting problems when changing channels. What card reading hardware \ software are you using? Does it work very reliably?
 
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masterluke said:
Interesting - I didn't watch the videos but I did read the blog. can you outline the steps used to get this to work? I played with this using acamd and dvbviewer a while back but I kept getting problems when changing channels. What card reading hardware \ software are you using? Does it work very reliably?
Click to expand...

There is a massive 3 part thread over on AVForums which helped me set everything up.

I'm using acamd and dvblogic's TV Source in my solution.

It's so much better to record the digital stream rather than an analogue input.
 
overlooked some of these replies lol

I don't have wired net access at my flat so watching online is a problem. I just need something that will rip via the composite inputs on a capture card but they need to be sensible sized with minimal time spent re-encoding and messing about :/
 
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