DVD HDD recording from Sky FreeSat using Sky EPG/AutoView - Advice please

John4742

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I have just joined to get some help please.

I cannot get Terrestrial Freeview where I live so get my service from Sky Freeview; I have a Sky card.

I use a PACE receiver which has two SCART sockets both of which support composite and RGB.

My TV has two SCART sockets (AV1 and AV2); cycling the AV channel shows AV1, AV2 and AV2-S.

I want to buy an HDD DVD recorder, primarily to timeshift using the HDD but also to archive stuff to DVD-R or DVD-RW.

I want to do this using the Sky EPG, using AutoView to wake the DVD recorder out of standby. I therefore need a DVD recorder which supports this function (seems Toshiba and Panasonic do; they call it Satellite Link or External Link).

For it to work properly I believe I need a recorder which wakes up quickly; the Autoview starts the programme about a minute before transmision.

I am also looking for flexible recording to DVD, with variable quality (compression) to fill the disks without unused space.

Has anyone (good or bad) experience of this? Can you offer tips, and can you recommend a current DVD HDD recorder for this?

Based on reading specs it seemed to me that the Toshiba RD-XS25 did what I wanted, but searching this site for RD-XS25 I found a thread started by Toasty. A comment in the thread was that this box only supports RGB on its Output SCART. I do not understand the significance of this. The user manual just says connect the Satellite receiver output to AV2 (Decoder). Can anyone explain?
 
Hello John - Welcome to the forum.

Are you certain that your pace receiver is capable of RGB output from both scarts? I have always been given the information that RGB is only available from the 'TV' scart and composite from the so called VCR scart [ or have they at last moved on? ]

Have a look at posts 2 and 3 of this thread which will give you an idea of the connection issues involved.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=418727


I have heard that there can be problems using Autoview on External link ... especially on consecutive recordings... but that it is an autoview issue - not an issue of the connected device.

I'll see if I can locate the threads there have been about this and post back later.
 
Hello again John... having searched, it turns out ironically to be in the same thread that I linked to above....If you go to page 2 and see posts 17,18,19 etc.
 
Hello John - Welcome to the forum.

Are you certain that your pace receiver is capable of RGB output from both scarts? I have always been given the information that RGB is only available from the 'TV' scart and composite from the so called VCR scart [ or have they at last moved on? ]

Have a look at posts 2 and 3 of this thread which will give you an idea of the connection issues involved.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=418727


I have heard that there can be problems using Autoview on External link ... especially on consecutive recordings... but that it is an autoview issue - not an issue of the connected device.

I'll see if I can locate the threads there have been about this and post back later.
Thanks for your posting. I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to this site as the ops started a database reorg the first time I was using it! So I sent you a reply but am not unconvinced you received it - I can't see any sign of a stored sent-message. Did you receive it? If not I'll type it up again.
 
Here's my first reply retyped and extended.

My PACE Sky receiver is abaout 18 months old, model DS430N; System Details show it as 1.0.47 V 9F0A04. The Specifications page of the user guide says about the rear-panel connectors:
TV SCART: SCART (composite video out; RGB out)
VCR SCART: SCART (composite video in/out; RGB in)

If you wire up as per both PACE/Sky and Toshiba RD-XS25 (DVD recorder) instructions (connect PACE TV SCART to AV1 on the TV, and DVD recorder AV1 (TV) to TV AV2, and PACE VCR SCART to DVD Recorder AV2 (Decoder) then I guess the DVD recorder sees only the composite video output from the PACE box. I'm not clear why the PACE box accepts video (as opposed to control signals) via the SCART lead, unless you can pass-through the PACE box and not connect the DVD recorder to the TV directly.

I am not clear if you really lose anything if the DVD recorder lacks RGB in, as I don't know what MPEG compression works on. I wouldn't be surprised if it's chrom/lum (i.e. effectively composite) in which case wouldn't RGB-in only get converted to composite before compression?

I do see the advantage of using RGB-out, provided the TV accepts that.

I note also that the RD-XS25 instructions make a ref to SCART-pin 8:

• If the external equipment connected to the
AV2(DECODER) socket supplies control voltage to
this unit via Pin 8 of the Scart cable, the display
functions (e.g.P01) of the remote control cannot be
seen on the TV. In this case, turn off the external
equipment to prevent control voltage.

Or cut the pin out!

Many thanks for showing me this thread; I've read it all - and the link to Pin 8 issues!
 
Hi John

If you mean a personal message ... I have received nothing. [ EDIT - Our posts have just crossed over... Let me see and address the above ]

Going back to your original post... and your question about the RGB issue:

If the Toshiba only has an RGB output and not an RGB input, the significance is that you can neither record or pass-through in good quality a signal from your skybox.
 
Here's my first reply retyped and extended.

My PACE Sky receiver is abaout 18 months old, model DS430N; System Details show it as 1.0.47 V 9F0A04. The Specifications page of the user guide says about the rear-panel connectors:
TV SCART: SCART (composite video out; RGB out)
VCR SCART: SCART (composite video in/out; RGB in)

If you wire up as per both PACE/Sky and Toshiba RD-XS25 (DVD recorder) instructions (connect PACE TV SCART to AV1 on the TV, and DVD recorder AV1 (TV) to TV AV2, and PACE VCR SCART to DVD Recorder AV2 (Decoder) then I guess the DVD recorder sees only the composite video output from the PACE box. I'm not clear why the PACE box accepts video (as opposed to control signals) via the SCART lead, unless you can pass-through the PACE box and not connect the DVD recorder to the TV directly.

I am not clear if you really lose anything if the DVD recorder lacks RGB in, as I don't know what MPEG compression works on. I wouldn't be surprised if it's chrom/lum (i.e. effectively composite) in which case wouldn't RGB-in only get converted to composite before compression?

I do see the advantage of using RGB-out, provided the TV accepts that.

I note also that the RD-XS25 instructions make a ref to SCART-pin 8:

• If the external equipment connected to the
AV2(DECODER) socket supplies control voltage to
this unit via Pin 8 of the Scart cable, the display
functions (e.g.P01) of the remote control cannot be
seen on the TV. In this case, turn off the external
equipment to prevent control voltage.

Or cut the pin out!

Many thanks for showing me this thread; I've read it all - and the link to Pin 8 issues!

Hello again.

There is a very distinct and positive benefit in having an RGB in facility in a DVDR ... It means all your recordings will be in a significantly higher quality than would occur using just a composite connection.

It is also a benefit if the DVDR has the facility to pass-through that RGB when it is standby or recording from its internal tuner so that you can watch Sky in high quality whilst the recorder is otherwise occupied.

The problem is that the Scart specification was set many years before this issue of linking equipment for control purposes came to be an issue... and so a compromise solution has been cobbled together.

To provide the control signals from the Skybox to an attached recorder, some of the pins that would otherwise carry the RGB signals were used.
The obvious implication of this is that such a scart link cannot carry Link Control signals AND RGB .... and so those sockets that carry link signals can only output in composite signal format.

Panasonics solution to this problem is to have an alternative External link mode [ referred to as Mode 2 ] which instead of using those control signals, instead detects the presence of video on Pin 19 of the incoming scart.

Whenever video is present... such as when the Skybox comes out of standby as driven by Autoview, the DVDR will automatically record.... and when the skybox switches back to standby at the end of the transmission, the DVDR ceases recording and switches back to Ext Link standby mode.

This means it is possible to use the RGB output[ TV scart] of Skyboxes and record in RGB quality.

All the above are the reasons why the suggested routing in the linked thread are worth adopting.
 
That's very helpful; thank you. So I guess you're pointing me away from any manufacturer that uses the original control mode (based on pin 8), away from Toshiba (as that's how they do it and why they don't support RGB-IN) and towards Panasonic (who support dual RGB, and use pin 19). But are there other manufacturers who do this or something equivalent, and support RGB-IN? I saw a reference to Sony in the thread you pointed me to, but I think they use a different system again, which isn't (as I read it) really supporting Autoview but imposing the Sony EPG on the PACE box via IR?
 
That's very helpful; thank you. So I guess you're pointing me away from any manufacturer that uses the original control mode (based on pin 8), away from Toshiba (as that's how they do it and why they don't support RGB-IN) and towards Panasonic (who support dual RGB, and use pin 19). But are there other manufacturers who do this or something equivalent, and support RGB-IN? I saw a reference to Sony in the thread you pointed me to, but I think they use a different system again, which isn't (as I read it) really supporting Autoview but imposing the Sony EPG on the PACE box via IR?

Indeed that would be another way of achieving your objective... and may be more reliable given the problem issues that some have when using Autoview as a timer controller.

I don't know Sony DVDR's in any detail ... but there are enough threads about them in this forum so I am sure Sony users could help provide with detail of their experiences with this feature.

Sony users please...??
 
John
Please be aware that there seems to be an issue with autoview and RGB that I have seen on 3 different Sky boxes, namely that the box comes out of standby in PAL mode, regardless of the setting specified by the user. On my EX85 this manifests itself as black-screen recordings (with audio). Thus far, I have not found a solution, the only workarounds being to either
1. set Sky box output and DVDR input to PAL or
2. leave Sky box on and set timers independently on the DVDR, which rather negates the point of the Ext Link facility.
 
Thanks. I've now bought a Sony on advice in this thread to get one with RGB-in and that may still be helpful for later on, but I'll follow your advice and stick with PAL as the standard Sky output. With my present TV it makes little difference I think: it does not support RGB-in, so I can't say until I get the DVD recorder.
 

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