Windows Media Center Advice (Win7)

[pritchardavid]

Hi guys

 

Ok im fedup paying a lot of money for my virgin tv service, with an extremlly slow v+ box, just gets on my nerves.

 

 

What im thinking, that I would like to do:

 

1) Get a basic sky tv service with all 6 mixes (price split with my step dad) and connect stright in a satalite tv card in my pc, to use with windows media centre.

 

Only problem with that, I can see a tv card where you can slot your sky card in. I dont really want to use another box to use, want the pc to be able to play, record live tv plus be able to play some games, and large storage for mkvs movies.

 

2) Use normal arial and just recieve free to air channels and connect to windows media centre directlly

 

3) Use sky satlite and sky freesat card to recieve freesat channels and connect to windows media centre directlly (but again, you need a card, witch will cause problems) Sky free sat is meant to give you more channel than normal free sat

 

4) Use sky satlite to recieve freesat channels and connect to windows media centre directlly

 

 

 

What you think guys, would prefere option 1 if possible

[sted]

you cant record sky on anything but a sky+/hd box as you need the decoder card and they use their own algorithms etc (there was at one point a firewire box that did it i believe but i think it stopped after some sky update). You can quite easily shove a freeview (and presumably when available freeview hd) card in a pc and record free ota channels but you cant get the top up tv / other encrypted ones. Freesat is basically the same. The only way to record sky to a pc as far as im aware is use the scart out to a video capture card (it may be possible to use hdmi and defeat the copy protection but i wouldnt lay odds)

 

so 1 no. 2 yes. 3 as long as you buy an appropriate freesat/freesat hd card not a problem but you will only get the fta channels. 4 doable but not with mce and probably lousy quality more hassle than its worth

[Arthur]

You can't record Sky on anything but a Sky+/hd box

You can record Sky programmes on your PC if you have a modified Sky+ box and an SDI capture card though. The best thing about this is the capture process is lossless so you don't lose any quality.

 

To record from a Sky+ HD box, it's even easier. All you need is a HD Fury III HDMI to component converter (which also strips HDCP) and a Hauppauge HD-PVR (or similar capture device). Apparently you can also use a WinTV Nova-HD-S2 card along with some PVR software and a SmartCard reader.

Edited August 7, 2010 by Arthur