Can I Record SkyTV/SkyHD Through My Pc ?

W

WiLDBiLLuk

Guest
Hi, i currently have normal skytv but will upgrade to skyhd shortly, what i wanted to know is can i record skytv to my pc for archiving . If so what equipment will i need etc

Sorry if this has posted before but i`ve been reading for hours and cant get my head round it all and my eyes are bleeding :)


Thanks Bill
 
Hauppauge TV card wil ldo the trick - connect the SKY box to your PC using S-Video and 2*audio cables.

I dont think its possible to record HD content off your HD box as yet.
 
Yes it is you just need an HD component to firewire interface. It'll cost you a few quid though and you'll need some HD capable software - Premiere Pro 2.0, Avid, etc.

Tim
 
Thanks for the replys

Where can i get a HD component to firewire interface ?

Also what about the copy protection or doesnt this matter ?

Cheers BiLL ;)
 
WiLDBiLLuk said:
Also what about the copy protection or doesnt this matter ?

Cheers BiLL ;)

Currently there is no copy protection on the HD box via component.
However it is rumoured that in the future HD material may be copy protected thus rendering the component outputs as unuseable when viewing HD material.
 
timmorris said:
Yes it is you just need an HD component to firewire interface.

Do you have a link to such a device? I've not found any sensible method of capture from analogue component. The only devices I've found are wildly expensive and output uncompressed HD which a normal PC can't deal with sensibly due to bandwidth and volume,
 
iirc you need for HD a HD component capture card, which again iirc weigh in around £1,000+.......and you need a reasonably powerful PC.....

basically it isnt a viable option atm...lol.....it would be cheaper to buy 3 HD boxes and have 3 HD mirror subs....lol....

however normal SD SkyTV, like any video source, you just need a normal capture card or graphics card with VIVO port and you can record quite happily....
 
I think it's easy to say that copying SKY HD on a PC is possible it's just not practical for the average user:)

There are other ways to obtain copies of HD broadcast movies and other content for use on a PC sourced mainly from North America, you only need a decent broadband supplier and usenet service. There are ethical issues as an individual you will have to face but if you pay SKY for a HD service and can not put a copy of a movie on the shelf (like you can for SD) then are you really cheating anyone out of some money which after all is the crux of anti-piracy legislation.
 
I did say "it'll cost you a few quid though" and by that I'm talking about 4 figures. It's pro level kit - I've got a Canopus Svideo to firewire converter that cost me £139, and a Sony DVCAM recorder that records onto full size DV tapes that I acquired that takes an Svideo input and records it as a full bandwidth DVI recording. I'm pretty sure that Canopus make a component to 1394 converter but it probably costs 10x what I paid for the Svideo converter. This should give you a start:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour...,GGLJ:2006-20,GGLJ:en&q=component+to+firewire

My PC copes with editing HD video, but then it does have an overclocked 4400 X2 and 2Gb of XMS4000 RAM. It is also pretty good at 3D rendering with 2 GTX 7800s, but it wasn't cheap to build at the beginning of the year.

Tim
 
timmorris said:
I did say "it'll cost you a few quid though" and by that I'm talking about 4 figures. It's pro level kit - I've got a Canopus Svideo to firewire converter that cost me £139, and a Sony DVCAM recorder that records onto full size DV tapes that I acquired that takes an Svideo input and records it as a full bandwidth DVI recording. I'm pretty sure that Canopus make a component to 1394 converter but it probably costs 10x what I paid for the Svideo converter. This should give you a start:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour...,GGLJ:2006-20,GGLJ:en&q=component+to+firewire

My PC copes with editing HD video, but then it does have an overclocked 4400 X2 and 2Gb of XMS4000 RAM. It is also pretty good at 3D rendering with 2 GTX 7800s, but it wasn't cheap to build at the beginning of the year.

Tim

Component digitisers are usually SD only. HD capable ones start at about a grand, but only output raw uncompredded HD. I don't belive Canopus make any such product.

There's a world of difference from a computer powerful enough to edit pre-compressed MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 HD to one capable of compressing a raw bitstream on the fly. The sheer volumes of data are extraordinary, and the speed at which they hit the PC is faster than most hard drives can cope with. You'd ned a high speed disk array, and a big one too.
 
Is 4 500Gb discs in Raid 0 what you are thinking about? That's how my PC is set up with backup to tape as and when required (as with Raid 0 you are more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure) Canopus do make an HD Component to firewire converter but only as an add on to their EDIUS Pro editing suite. I haven't used it so can't comment further. It is possible with today's techology (at a price) and that price will only drop.

I put this PC together for a number of purposes one of which is video editing. It is actually faster than the system that is used by the pro-editor next door using Final-cut Pro. The hardware cost around a grand for the base, plus £600 for the disc array. The DV recorder was a freebie when a friendly production company upgraded their platforms to be HD capable. I'd love to add a component converter to the list but it is going to have to wait. I have a self imposed spending moratorium on anything vaguely AV related as I've spent a fortune getting myself ready for HD.

Tim
 
timmorris said:
Is 4 500Gb discs in Raid 0 what you are thinking about?

No, way more than that. I say again, these cards output HD uncompressed, no MPEG-4 or MPEG-2 or anything like that to bing iot down to the managable size your PC handles. Your 2TB array would only record an hour and a half, even if it could cope with writing the data fast enough.

Canopus do make an HD Component to firewire converter but only as an add on to their EDIUS Pro editing suite. I haven't used it so can't comment further.

The one listed on their website outputs component, but not inputs.
 
I don't know what you are trying to prove now but the argument is largely academic. I've just checked with a friend who edits DV for a living. 1080i/24 has a datarate in the order of 90MBps which a four disc SATAII array can cope with on a sustained basis and takes up 300Gb per hour which gives over 6 hours of storage - a whole lot more than the few minutes you put in your original post. Pros work with raw data but there is nothing to stop anyone wanting to edit Sky from using an off-board HD component to 1394 converter and then using a hardware capture card in the PC which would compress it to MPEG4 on the fly. Both are available. If you use Google you'd have found this out for yourself.

As I said in my original post - it is perfectly possible just expensive, There is an add-on to EDIUS that allows for capture of uncompressed HD just like there's an add-on to Final-cut pro that does the same. I'm by no means an expert but I have lived next door to a TV production company for four years and run their IT for them. They were involved in speccing my PC and it was them that gave me the Sony DVCAM recorder which retails for £1,500 and allows me to store up to 3 hours of uncompressed SD on a single tape. Pros will tend to use the HD equivalent to store their footage, which will have analogue and digital HD inputs, some of which can compress to MPEG4 on the fly on their IEEE1394 outputs. They are however beyond the pockets of most consumers.

I'll say it again - it can be done, but it will cost and you'll need bleeding edge hardware. My PC is capable of doing it, but I don't intend to shell out for the interface at current prices. The driving force behind upgrading was to build an editing platform - it just happens to be a stonking games machine too.

I mainly use it for making DVD archives of the 6 Nations Rugby matches using Premiere Pro to perform simple editing. I'd love to do the same in HD but I don't have acouple of grand spare.

Tim
 
You can capture from Sky directly into a PC with a DVB-S card.
See here but I don't think it will work with HD.
 
TheCrow said:
You can capture from Sky directly into a PC with a DVB-S card.
See here but I don't think it will work with HD.

It won't... you'd need a DVB-S2 card.
 
timmorris said:
there is nothing to stop anyone wanting to edit Sky from using an off-board HD component to 1394 converter and then using a hardware capture card in the PC which would compress it to MPEG4 on the fly. Both are available. If you use Google you'd have found this out for yourself.

I've done a lot of Googling in fact, as I'd really like to be able to do this.

The only devices I've managed to find that capture analogue component output over HD-SDI, which has a bandwidth of 1.5Gb/s for HD (way more than 1394 can handle).

I've not been able to find any MPEG-4 cards for a PC which support HD.

I've you've found something, please do let me know!
 
Hmmm all very intresting..

But how does the skyhd box record to a 160gb hdd ? that doesnt have a raid array 2gb of ram dual pci-e graphics cards etc etc

And is there no way of ripping the files from the hdd and decoding them ?
 
WiLDBiLLuk said:
Hmmm all very intresting..

But how does the skyhd box record to a 160gb hdd ? that doesnt have a raid array 2gb of ram dual pci-e graphics cards etc etc

And is there no way of ripping the files from the hdd and decoding them ?

The transmission from Sky and hence the recording is heaverly compressed using MPEG4, but if you play it out and try to capture it it will nolonger be compressed and hence a much higher bitrate and size on disc.
 
Has anyone ever tried getting the recorded files from the hdd and removing the copy protection ?

Pretty much every dvd protection can be removed... surely SKYTV can be decoded ?

BiLL ;)
 
WiLDBiLLuk said:
Has anyone ever tried getting the recorded files from the hdd and removing the copy protection ?

Pretty much every dvd protection can be removed... surely SKYTV can be decoded ?

BiLL ;)



The encryption used on DVD was weak to begin with and of course having the keys left in the open to back engineer didn't help the long term security of the format:)

SKY D using a variant of NDS Videoguard has remained unhacked (as in clone cards and out and out brute force) since the day it was launched, so far the only practical way to watch SKY stuff not on a SKY STB is to use a suitable CAM and genuine SKY smartcard with a valid subscription and then it has to be kept alive.
 
Just wondered if anybody had found any reliable and cheaper ways to record SkyHD in HiDef?

A £10k PC or Mac with a £5k Bluefish HD-fury SDI HD capture card and a £1k component to SDI Rossgear is the cheapest I can find on google!

Edit: Now found the AJA Xena LH card which is only £1.45k
 
sanderton said:
I've done a lot of Googling in fact, as I'd really like to be able to do this.

The only devices I've managed to find that capture analogue component output over HD-SDI, which has a bandwidth of 1.5Gb/s for HD (way more than 1394 can handle).

I've not been able to find any MPEG-4 cards for a PC which support HD.

I've you've found something, please do let me know!

Promax.com do external 8 drive SATA arrays that do 450MB/sec and are selling a system for use with a bluefish for $20k.
 

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