Sky+ hd box

Poppa_G

Hi.

The other day my Sky Box froze so I unplugged from the mains and wiped the viewing card. Everything is fine & dandy, but whilst putting the viewing card back, I noticed a USB connector. Can anyone tell me what this is for?

Can I insert a usb stick, and take programmes from my planner so that I could watch any such programmes on my TV upstairs, which has a usb port?

debitcardmayhem

No but you can use it to charge your phone

Avoriaz

That USB connection isn't functional and not all of them provide power.

The Sky box was designed with a USB connector for a portable Sky player under development that was subsequently dropped.

More here.

Even if you could extract programmes via that USB port, you would not be able to watch them on a non Sky+ device as they are encrypted (with the exception of some unencrypted channels such as BBC and C4).

You can extract those unencrypted programmes and watch them on something else, but you need to physically remove the hard drive (not that easy on the current 890 and 895 boxes) and use a programme called ExPVR to extract recordings to your PC. I do that with some music programmes. For example I will record "Later with Jools Holland", extract the whole recording, edit out the music I want to keep and discard the rest. I can then play the video on my media player. That means that I don't have a Sky+ box full of one hour long programmes with only 5 minutes of music that I want to keep.

Poppa_G

Thanks Avoriaz, most helpful