Which PVR to record Sky Digital in UK

[jdally]

Hi All

I am new to this forum, but I have been into building PCs etc for ages. I actually specialise in high end watercooling for AMD based rigs, so I do have my specialties.

However, I am building a 3rd PC for the house. Its an HTPC that will replace the video and DVD Player.

I have the standard Sky Digital service at home and what I want to do is build a full HTPC based on Window 2005 MCE that can control and record the Sky channels etc. If possible I would like to replace the Sky decoder box.

I am stuck on whihc PVR card to buy. I have been looking at the WinTV cards and have been doing some reading around, but the message isnt consistent.

I understand that it isnt possible to decode the UK Sky digital signal with a PVR DVB-S card at the moment, even if you use the CIM and your Sky card... Is this true?

The way to record UK SKy Digital is to use the S-Video or other analogue output from the digibox and use something like a PVR-150 analogue card. This would mean manually changint the sky channels.

So what I want to do is record Sky Digital and have as much control over it as possible. Preferably using DVB-S type cards, if they are up to the job, and sit all of this on a PC running Win 2005 MCE...

If this is possible, great, which card can do it, if not, whats the best compromise in peoples opinions?


Many thanks


Jon

 

[severnsource]

Sky use propietary encryption and it is only available as part of a Sky box, so there is no way that you can record Sky material directly. You will need to use a sky box and digitise the analogue signals.

If you want the FTA channels only then something like the skystar 2 card will work, but may not interface with MCE.

Bill

 

[jdally]

Thanks for that.

So in terms of a decent card to do the job am I right in thinking that the new PVR-500 MCE is good for the job?


Cheers


Jon

 

[drummerjohn]

PVR150 will do the job. MCE05 will even change the channels for you using the MCE remote and IR blasters that come with it.

 

[Neelix]

drummerjohn, are you saying that the Hauppauge PVR cards (MCE version or not?) will allow you to change the Sky Digital channels from the PC when using MCE2005? I assume you need a MCE remote control but if this is true then this is fantastic news!

 

[creative-av]

Hi all,

Am wanting to do this aswell and from the various posts on the forum, I thought the Sweetspot card was the best one to buy for this job. Is this not correct?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Steve.J.Davies]

Sky use propietary encryption and it is only available as part of a Sky box, so there is no way that you can record Sky material directly. You will need to use a sky box and digitise the analogue signals.
Bill

Wouldn't an SDI modded sky box get him to his destination ?

 

[Neelix]

Hi all,

Am wanting to do this aswell and from the various posts on the forum, I thought the Sweetspot card was the best one to buy for this job. Is this not correct?

Thanks,

Steve

It would appear that the Sweetspot is the best card to display Sky courtesy of the RGB connection and Dscaler, however it does not have a hardware MPEG encoder therefore it cannot act as a PVR. You could use it with software based PVR but this would either encode without compression (huge) or be too slow to use a realtime encoder like DivX. That means you have to use an analogue capture card which has a MPEG encoder on board like the Hauppauge series. There are two issues with this in that they only support composite or s-video and secondly I am not sure if these cards can be used with MCE2005 and control Sky via the PC remote... Drummerjohn hinted that it is possible but I may have misunderstood him.

 

[yoyoman]

The solution I have chosen is as following

Sky RGB out to Svid in on Hauppauge PVR 250 through Maplins RGB to Svid converter.
Sagetv rather than MCE no DRM
PVR 250 remote controls Sagetv
Sagetv controls Sky STB using USB URIT

Live TV is not as clear as direct RGB from the Sky set top box, However recorded TV is far superior to that of VHS.

 

[drummerjohn]

drummerjohn, are you saying that the Hauppauge PVR cards (MCE version or not?) will allow you to change the Sky Digital channels from the PC when using MCE2005? I assume you need a MCE remote control but if this is true then this is fantastic news!

Well I am using the retail PVR150 with MCE05 and the MCE remote and it works.