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[IanG]

I've just been asked if it's possible to take a Skyplus recording and make a DVD from it, complete with 5.1 AC-3 audio.  Can it be done, and if so, how?

Ian G.

[jleerigby]

From http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/page18.htm:

The data recorded to the Sky+ hard disk is essentially the live MPEG2 datastream from the digital satellite feed. There are 3 problems with attempting to read this data directly from the disk.
1. The disk data format (directory and file structures) is not compatible with any commercial (PC) operating system.

2. For all channels except the truly free ones (such as Sky News) the raw datastream is encrypted (scrambled) using the Videoguard encryption system. To decrypt this stream you would need a Videoguard decryption module, only available inside of a Sky Digibox. This would presumably also need a valid Sky card.

3. Many programmes, especially movie channels further add Macrovision protection to the videostream to prevent cross- recording to videotape.

Pace (the manufacturers of Sky+) have demonstrated a firewire interface that could slot into the PCMCIA slot behind the rear panel of the Sky+. There are currently no plans to market or sell this device- it was demonstrated to show the potential expansion capabilities of the system. Even if you found a unit lying in a Pace dustbin, it would be useless to you as it would need the software support in the operating system of the Sky+. Should such a device come on the market, then in theory you could stream "permitted" content (i.e. neither encyrypted nor protected) to a firewire-capable PC

Your only solution would be to stream the analogue video content (ideally from the SVHS or RGB outputs, as these provide better video quality) from the Sky+ to a suitable video capture card or device on your PC, and then re-compress the data into MPEG form suitable for viewing with your favourite viewer. Although there yould be a loss of quality because of the digital-analoge-video conversion, this should not be especially noticable on a normal TV, if the video capture card is of sufficiently good quality. Sky+ facilitates this process easilly, using the "dump to video" option on recorded programmes, so if you have enough PC harddisk space you can stream a number of programmes, one after the other.

I have heard of a people also feeding the analogue signal to a suitable input on (selected!) Digital Video (DV) cameras and then streaming that via firewire to their PC. This is essentially the same as above, with the potential advantage that the firewire interface and supporting software are better suited to handle, format, compress, and potentially edit the incoming stream.

Of course, a more convenient solution might be to feed the videostream to a DVD-recorder for permanent offline digital storage on DVD-RW. Unless you already have a reasonable high-end PC suitable for video stream recording, editing abnd playback, this would be a cheaper and more resilient option.

[IanG]

Thanks for that - I'll pass the info on.

Ian G.

[PhilG]

Better solutions do exist.

It is possible, although not cheap, to get a Sky+ box modified to output a digital picture in SDI format (go to http://www.cellarcinemas.com/cgi-bin/store/sdi.html for a description of SDI), but, as always, there are some complications.

First off, only v1 Sky+ boxes (Pace 3000) can be modified, not the current v2 boxes (Pace 3100), and getting hold of these is difficult.

Second, the modification costs about £300.  Places I'm aware of that do the mod are http://www.pluggedin.tv and http://www.pjhifi.co.uk.

Thirdly, you need a card for your PCI with SDI inputs.  I can think of three - the SweetSpot SDI (about £150), the Silk-200 (about £320) and the Immersive Holo3DGraph II (about £510).

And finally, software support - all of the above cards are designed to be used with DScaler, and don't have general-purpose WDM drivers - so won't work with Media Center.  There is a reason for this - DScaler includes excellent deinterlacing and scaling capabilities which significantly improve the picture quality, and if you're prepared to spend £500+ on mods and cards you're probably going to want to see the benefits; using MC as a viewer wouldn't really achieve this.

I'm speculating here, but it's probably possible to use the above to capture the digital stream from a Sky+ box, and then use MC to view the stuff if you wanted to, but you'd be losing a chunk of the benefit.