Sky plus box to other media

[runway78]

Hi,
Looking for some advice. I have a number of programmes recorded on my Sky plus box and wish to be able to send them to my brother overseas.
What is the best way to do this?
My computer is upstairs well away from the box, suggestions?

[rebelstar]

I don't think there's an ideal solution to this. Your best bet is to record them with a DVD recorder. A more advanced solution would be to get a TV capture card in your PC and record them to a file that way. But if you're going to do that, he might as well just search for the programmes on BitTorrent...

[ThePassenger]

rebelstar said:

I don't think there's an ideal solution to this. Your best bet is to record them with a DVD recorder. A more advanced solution would be to get a TV capture card in your PC and record them to a file that way. But if you're going to do that, he might as well just search for the programmes on BitTorrent...

I'm afraid that despite having an ethernet port and a HDD inside of it there is no way to get recorded programs off the swine; it's encrypted to hell and back. It's either DVD recorder or PC capture card.

You could post him the whole Sky+ box... with power converters that'd work (I think) but be a bit expensive.

[Ewan Oozarmy]

I thought you could just use the "copy" option in your Sky+ planner and copy the selected recordings to an attached device (VCR, DVDR, PC) and that only recording from Box Office were encrypted?

I could be wrong, mind....

[ThePassenger]

Ewan Oozarmy said:

I thought you could just use the "copy" option in your Sky+ planner and copy the selected recordings to an attached device (VCR, DVDR, PC) and that only recording from Box Office were encrypted?

I could be wrong, mind....

Yes, you can record the playback of the Sky+ box on to anything that can receive a standard input. You can't however scrape the recordings directly so you will loose quality.

[runway78]

Thanks for the tips, DVD recorder it seems to be.
Any tips on a good cheap one?

[goodlife]

He might be able to watch the programs anyway at www.tv-links.co.uk

An excellent site for watching recent TV programs and many of the latest movies (some of rather dubious quality)

[JonRB]

You can't get the recordings off a Sky+ box digitally but you can in analogue. You just connect the Sky+ box to something like a DVD / HDD recorder via either S-Video or RGB scart and copy it in realtime (ie. play on the Sky+ and record on the recorder). There is a small drop in quality but the resulting copy is quite watchable.

Edited by JonRB on Friday 13th April 14:56

[maddog-uk]

Actually you could plug in an SDI card into the sky box and put one in your pc and go digital to digital. www.pluggedin.tv/Products/SDI-Serial-Digital-Interface-HD-SDI-Broadcast has the details. I am thinking about this myself, mainly because i travel a lot and I am desperate for some decent tv for my long haul flights.

But again you can only get the picture off by doing a copy to, or playing it back.

[puggit]

I think Plotloss has suggested some kind of solution for hacking the harddrive on a Sky+ box before

Plotloss

[ThePassenger]

puggit said:

I think Plotloss has suggested some kind of solution for hacking the harddrive on a Sky+ box before

Plotloss

You can upgrade a Sky+ box's HDD to any compatible unit, there is software online which will blind read/write the operating system on to your new unit. However the stuff it's copying isn't viewable on the machine copying the data due to encryption.

You can find guides on how to hack the Sky+ via google. However, T&C's in the Sky contract would have me thinking "wait a year or buy one on fleabay".