copying recordings from sky+.......

Jacklin2001

hi,

is there anyway to copy the recorded programs from a sky+ box to a laptop?

all i want is to put some recordings onto dvd.

im sorry if this has been asked before.

any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

Andy

wolfman

There probably is, but they'll be encrypted, 3 or 4 forms of high level encryption actually from what I can remember when being a developer there. And if you can figure out how to decrypt them then you'd never need to bother subscribing anyway, you could just recieve the signal and decrypt it yourself.

It's one of the bad points with Sky+. When you leave the service you lose all of the recordings.

Sheel

wolfman wrote:

It's one of the bad points with Sky+. When you leave the service you lose all of the recordings.

Erm.....no you don't

And if you run out of space, then you can export your favourite recordings to video or DVD if you have a DVD recorder

I've done it myself

Murtle

snap sheel, we record from Sky+ to video and now DVD....anyone for Seinfeld..... :-)

wolfman

Sheel wrote:

Erm.....no you don't

Recordings are stored as bitstream data with encryption. If you recorded something off Sky Movies 1, then you need to have a subscription to that channel in order to playback the recording. Hence if you left the service you'd no longer be able to play the recording. You don't physically lose the recording, you just can't play it. From working at Sky as a developer, that's how I was aware things worked, it may have changed.

Sheel wrote:

And if you run out of space, then you can export your favourite recordings to video or DVD if you have a DVD recorder

I've done it myself

Sorry misunderstanding, I wasn't talking in terms of tv capture. You can capture the recordings from the Sky+ box but you have to play the whole recording back (so are effectively recording it twice). If using the laptop you'll need some sort of tv capture card, and you'll need a reasonably powerful system to do so.

In terms of physically taking the files off the Sky+ hard drive, you can't due to a) they're not stored as your typical computer mpeg's, and b) they're encrypted (Decryption takes place when playing back the recording).