Sky+ to PC

wafmoo

I have recorded a program on Sky+ that features an interview with my wife and children. It is unavailable on BBC iPlayer as was a regional show, but would like to have a copy to show parents etc.

I have been told that I can get a cable with scart/phono at one end and USB at the other so I can transfer the recording to my laptop

Has anyone any experience of this, and are they any good?

What format would the video be in on laptop, and could it be transferred to a dvd?

googler

Borrow or buy a DVD recorder, connect it to the SCART on the Sky Box and transfer it direct to DVD.

almillar

Above is a good suggestion, and much simpler than installing all those drivers and dealing with the software on the PC. Once you get it onto DVD, you can make copies, or 'rip' it onto your PC, at which point you can do anything you like with it!

A.Penny.Saved

wafmoo wrote: »

I have recorded a program on Sky+ that features an interview with my wife and children. It is unavailable on BBC iPlayer as was a regional show, but would like to have a copy to show parents etc.

I have been told that I can get a cable with scart/phono at one end and USB at the other so I can transfer the recording to my laptop

Has anyone any experience of this, and are they any good?

What format would the video be in on laptop, and could it be transferred to a dvd?

The format doesn't matter because it could easily be converted to a DVD using freeware such as freemake or many others.

It's the quality that matters most when doing this type of thing. A RGB Scart connection is the best analogue TV format so would be the best method of doing it. A DVD recorder as already mentioned should be able to do this.

A phono connection would most likely be a composite video connection and those are not very high quality.

The very best method is to transfer the video from the sky hard drive directly using Extract+. However this would mean removing the hard drive from the Sky box, connecting it to a PC or using some form of hard drive IDE and optional SATA, caddy with a USB connection. Those can be purchased for around £20. This would only work for Free to Air channels.

While doing this you could take copies of other FTA video if you wanted.

http://www.skycopyplus.co.uk/

A decent IDE & SATA 3.5" hard drive caddy for £13.99
With this one you can just plug the drive into the caddy and it doesn't need to be screwed into the caddy so is less of a hassle. It could be useful if you ever need to rescue your laptop hard drive. This one can use 2.5" or 3.5" drives. It's £16.23.

There are others for less than £10.

The advantage of doing it this way is that the video remains in digital format so the quality is as it was broadcast and for most standard def broadcasts it should be in the correct format to create a DVD from.

jannowretired

A few years ago my husband tried archiving films from a Sky box.

He bought bits for his computer, software and cables and spent hours recording the stuff on his computer.

Then he lost interest as he couldn't do anything else on his computer while doing this.

So he bought a recordable DVD player and now it is so simple.

Set the Sky box to play, start the DVD player on record and go to bed.

Yes, he does all the transferring during the night.

And it is a lot easier to copy a DVD than to make one.

Sometimes the simplest ways are the best.

He's got hundreds of films on DVD all from Sky yet he never watches then again, he just likes having a copy in case he might.