UK TV Skybox to HDD?

[Keygrip]

I love to play with things for little other reason than "because I can".

Was musing recently over the fact that we have access to a "Skybox" on which to record/time shift/view British television....and we do.

Then we watch them back - on our internet connection here in Florida.

Is there a way for us to "dump" the recordings from the Skybox onto our computer hard drive(s) and watch them - or burn them to disc?

Vista, Home Edition with Windows Media Centre.

[Parapunter]

Connect it up to the pc & media centre will (should) discover it & configure it or you. Start media centre, go to tasks/settings/tv/set up tv signal & follow it from there.

Media centre creates a folder called recorded tv, you can decide on the size in mb/gb's & media centre will tell you how many hours that equates to, given the quality settings you tell it to record at. Anything you record via meda centre will be in dvrms format, so if down the line you wish to burn something off, you will need a converter utility, but these are readily available.

[spannersatcx]

Is there a way for us to "dump" the recordings from the Skybox onto our computer hard drive(s) and watch them - or burn them to disc?

No is the answer, due to file type and encryption, the easiest way is to record them to DVD and do it that way.

Have a look here (http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=35)

[Parapunter]

I would have to question that Mr. Spanners, The sky+ box can be used as a signal carrier & media centre will do all the work for recording, storage, replay, pausing rewinding etc. If the question is around existing recordings, then I'm not so sure, but general use is fine. look here. (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/163872.aspx)

[Keygrip]

Para/spanners - thanks for the replies.

Connect it up to the pc is a tricky one as the Sky+ box is in Southern England and the Vista laptop PC is in Florida.

All the viewing of programmes recorded on thje Sky+ box is done over the internet.

I did see, in the link from Para, the suggestion that Windows Movie Maker could be configured to "grab" the internet signal - I'll try to look into that aspect.

Any other thoughts in the meantime?

[Parapunter]

Duct tape & 40,000 usb leads?:eek:

[spannersatcx]

The way I read the question was 'can you get the files off the sky+ HDD onto a PC's HDD and view the, as in 'dump' the files, to that the answer is no.

The only way is to record one way or another to either DVD or media centre, either way it's not quick and you have to play the whole file!

[Keygrip]

Spanners, sorry if I threw you a curve ball - but what I meant was the Skybox is in UK, we "program" it over the net, it records our choices, we then view them back over the net.

What we would like to do is record the output of the Skybox to the locxal laptop in Florida and then either burn to DVD or watch through Media Centre direct from laptop.

We've no problem running real time transfers from UK Skybox to USA laptop (that's what dark nights are for) - the only question is the software set-up to record the media to laptop.

Still looking for answers - just been looking at www.appliant.com (http://www.appliant.com) as I already have Freecorder, A/V Replay and "Converter" purchased from them.

I saw slingbox recorder but have yet to trial it over the net, as opposed to a direct cable connection to the box.

[Bushfiva]

I use Slingbox Recorder, and it does what it says it does reasonably well.

[Keygrip]

Lol, that's handy, Bush - but, errrr, what *does* it say on the box?

[Parapunter]

Keygrip. I'm not certain whether or not vmc can handle what you're asking for, although it is more than capable of streaming content from the internet & comes preloaded with channels in the online media menu - Irritatingly, including Arsenal TV, for example.

I appreciate you wish to take advantage of an existing UK setup, however, this is a bit like driving 300 miles past 50 fillling stations in order to buy petrol! By far and away you're best option would surely be to access a local cable service & have a box that you can watch locally, something like cablecard??

[Keygrip]

Para - we are not trying to avoid having our own cable subscription. Gawd knows we pay top rate for that already.

There are just certain individual programmes that we really miss since moving to the USA and can catch them by shifting the programmes over sktbox and the internet.

One of the problems is disc space, any programme we haven't watched yet is taking up room on the owners DVR. The other problem is that a live video stream loses quite a lot of signal strength, I would rather transfer the file and run it (clean) locally - but likewise still have no problem in running the media in real time and re-recording it at this end.

[Bushfiva]

but, errrr, what *does* it say on the box?

"May or may not work. Instructions may be unintelligible to the average Einstein. If it works, we're as gobsmacked as you are but you don't care anyway 'cos you're happy."

Seriously, I've not kept up to speed on this. I assume you're Slingboxing the video to you. I have an old UK-specific version with a DTV tuner. I use a third-party ETV guide to decide what to record, then have the local Slingbox Recorder record it. There's no link between ETV guide and the recorder, you have to type it in manually. If you want to record 45 programmes this week, then you end up with 45 instances of Slingbox Recorder running. SR understands the encryption used by the firmware in my Slingbox. I don't know if it understands the firmware used in later versions: once I got it working, I adopted the "stand back and never touch it again" approach.

If more recent versions perform differently, then I'm happy to learn of them.

Since you seem to be a tinkerer, try it out. If it works for you, it will absolutely do the job.

If I knew I could record to a remote device and access it as a logical drive, I'd probably use Hamachi to access it and either copy the files across from time to time or stream them remotely.

Ganbatte.

[Parapunter]

I've had a quick poke round the slingbox site & it does look promising for what you would like to do. Whilst I'm a huge fan of Media centre, it is in reality a very glorified version of media player & more of a conduit than an end technology in itself. Could be worth a look.