Setting up old Sky Digibox to All In One PC Help?

[jjmamm]

Hi,

I hope someone can help or point me in the right direction with this query?

I have an old Sky digibox in my daughters bedroom, which is used just for free channels. I have just brought her her first ever computer for her birthday and as her room is small, went for an all-in one. The idea was to take her tv out to give to her younger sister and link the sky box, via the hybrid built in tv tuner, into the PC.

I have spent hours and hours on this, but cannot get it to work. I go through Windows Media Center on Windows 7 and have gone through trying to set up by analogue, satellite and cable, all to no avail. I have had an engineer out to replace the tv tuner and rang Sky, all no good.

All I am doing is running a single 'live' channel instead of through a tv, into the Pc instead - surely that is not impossible to do? My main concern now is, if it is due to the fact the digibox is so old (about 1998 - old Panasonic).

Can anyone give me any tips/advice on what I could try? Sky settings are for PAL - should I change it to RGB? What option should work via Media Center? Do I need to go, via a different connection (scart from tv into Y/R/W cable into PC - sorry, not a techie).

I've wasted a day off work for an engineer to turn up and now reinstalled the pc, back to factory settings, without success.

Any help would be much appreciated and get into my daughters good books again

Many Thanks

 

[Broadz]

You need an analogue tuner TV card in the PC - if it is a Windows 7 PC its almost certainly a digital tuner card (for picking up Freeview). Sky doesn't output a digital signal via RF, analogue only.

The outputs on a standard Sky digibox are analogue RF, scart and s-video (along with RCA stereo). Does your Windows Media PC support any of these as input - or can you buy a TV card which will allow any of these to act as input? If not, you can't use the Sky box with this computer, and you will need to use a real TV which still has either scart or analogue RF inputs. Alternatively, if the Windows Media PC supports HDMI input, replace the Sky box she is currently using with a Sky HD box, which has HDMI out as a further output.

 

[jjmamm]

Thanks for your reply Broadz.

Looking at my documentation, my Tuner card should be able to do the following:-

Analog TV from antenna or cable
DMB-TH digital TV from antenna
ATSE digital tv from antenna
Clear QAM from cable
DVB-T digital tv from antenna
ISBD-T digital TV from antenna

Does the top option suggest it should work. As I say, I only want the feed of one channel (SKY) being displayed on the PC, instead of through a TV. Do not need to utilise channel changing on PC or the TV Guide or even storage of recorded programmes. Just need to view the single output image through the PC.

When I look on media center, no Sky digibox appears as an option to choose. Tried Panasonic but no joy. Any idea what options I should be selecting from Media Center? By memory, there was Analogue, Satellite, Cable. There was also an option for Composite.

I was selecting satellite but the pc guide said I should be selecting cable??! - Did not work anyway!

Any further advice appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Broadz]

Looking at my documentation, my Tuner card should be able to do the following:-

Analog TV from antenna or cable
Does the top option suggest it should work.

Yes, the top option suggests it should work.

When I look on media center, no Sky digibox appears as an option to choose.

It won't - the Media centre has no idea that it has a Sky box connected to it. It needs to think it has a TV aerial connected to it. That is what the analogue RF output on the Sky box duplicates - an analogue terrestrial TV signal from your TV aerial.

Any idea what options I should be selecting from Media Center? By memory, there was Analogue, Satellite, Cable.

Analogue at a guess.

I was selecting satellite but the pc guide said I should be selecting cable??! - Did not work anyway!

Certainly neither satellite nor cable. You haven't got a satellite dish connected to your media centre, you haven't got cable TV connected to your media centre.

 

[jjmamm]

Thanks once again. Will give it another go later today.

Do you know if I need to change any settings on the digibox itself (eg changing from PAL to RGB)?Also, what should be the expected outcome - one output channel found on Windows Media Center? Do I need to do anything to create this channel? Sorry if it is a daft question - this is all new to me. Thinking from a TV perspective when you tune either to an AV channel or Ch36?

 

[Broadz]

Thanks once again. Will give it another go later today.

Do you know if I need to change any settings on the digibox itself (eg changing from PAL to RGB)?

PAL/RGB are only related to scart output - not RF.

Thinking from a TV perspective when you tune either to an AV channel or Ch36?

Whichever channel the old TV was tuned to (frequency actually, not channel, but Sky box calls it channel) is what you need to set the analogue tuner on the media centre to - either by doing an autotune, in which case it should be the only channel it finds, or by manually inputting it.

 

[logiciel]

To summarise - you need to set the analogue tuner to receive channel 68, or whatever channel the Sky machine is set to output on its RF2 Out socket - you could check that by connecting it back direct into a TV.#
What was the purpose of "I have had an engineer out to replace the tv tuner" and what exactly did he do?

 

[jjmamm]

Thanks logiciel.

The reason I had someone out is that it was new last week, rang their support line and after running some diagnostics, they said that the TV Tuner card needed replacing.

It was only after doing that, that the same issue occurred. At one stage, I was not able to see all the options for setting up in Media Center, such as selecting a set top box, 2/3 or 4 digit channels etc. A restore sorted that - but same issue.

I have just tried setting up, via analogue option. Wanted to know what type of installation - went for one channel. Said it needed to update MediaReady? but within a second of selecting this, says install is incomplete. Tried about 30 times, without success.

Can't believe how long this is taking, from what looks like a simple process. So any further ideas, welcome.

 

[Broadz]

You might do better asking somebody who knows about Windows Media Player - must admit, it's not something I've ever been interested in and I don't actually know anybody who has such a thing. So, whilst we can all tell you what Sky is or isn't capable of, whether anyone can tell you what Windows Media Player is capable of is a different matter.

 

[logiciel]

Good service from your computer supplier.
I don't use WMC either, but the analogue tuner card should find the Sky machine's RF output without any problem.
Do check what channel that is on, as I suggested in the previous post.
Alernatively you could simply input from audio/video output phonos to the computer's audio input and a video card.