How to record from Sky+ to your PC

ma11achy

Hi all,

I spent a few hours last week looking around the different forums on good ways to transfer the recorded programmes from my SKy+ box onto my PC and retain the original or near to the original quality as possible. As there wasn't much in the way of info on this topic, I decided to go and research it myself.

Here's what I did for any of you who may be thinking of doing the same thing.

Gear
===
Sky+ box (obviously!)
Pinnacle Studio 10 (base version) + Dazzle DVC130 Capture Device (external USB) - €130 from Maplin
2 Meter S-Video Cable €14 from Currys
1 Meter Composite Video and Audio Phono Cable - €10 from Currys
A semi-decent PC/laptop (mine: 3GHz Athlon dual core, 3GB RAM, GEForce 9600GT(512MB))

Rough Guide
1) Install the Pinnacle Studio software
2) Connect the Dazzle capture device to your PC/laptop
3) Connect the S-Video cable between the Sky+ box and the Dazzle capture device (don't use the composite video phono cable, S-Video transfers much better colour resolution)
4) Connect the Audio phono cables between the L-R audio out on the Sky+ box and the Dazzle capture device.
5) Start the Pinnacle Studio software and select Capture mode. You should see the selected channel on the Sky+ box playing in the capture window of Pinnacle Studio, if all your connections went well.
6) Go into your Sky+ planner, find a recorded programme and select "Copy".
7) Tell Pinnacle Studio to begin capturing data
8) The Sky+ box should being playing the recorded programme on your TV and at the same time outputting it to your Capture device.

Thats about the size of it.

Some of you may have a much better setup than this, by all means, please post if you have - I'd love to hear it so I can improve my own setup.

Finally, I could have gone down the route of something a lot cheaper on Slackware Linux with Cinerella or Blender, but the Pinnacle Studio and Dazzle device was an impulse buy in Maplin, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

All the best.
Mac

Umiq88

easy cap on ebay is aroun €10 quaility is very good

sink

I went the far more complicated route of installing a DVB-S2 and CAM module so my pc satellite tuner card can decode and record sky channels. Only disadvantage is it I can only watch or record I can't do both at the same time, and it cost me roughly €250, and it was a bitch to set up. But now I can record programs in HD and burn them to dvd with zero loss in quality, i can even control it from another pc such as at work using remote access.

butts

For most people the easiest way is to connect the sky+ box to a DVD recorder, then rip the video from the dvd disc to the harddisk on your computer.