Sky TV and DVD recorder question?

[dave_mc]

Hi folks,

My aunt and uncle are in the process of buying a DVD recorder. The shop assistant told them that, to be able to record onto DVD from Sky, they'd have to upgrade to Sky+. To me, this sounds like total rubbish, and that the shop assistant was eying up some commission, but I've never used a DVD recorder before and could be wrong, so I was hoping you guys would know if this is correct or not.

I've never had any problems recording from Sky onto a VCR... only think i can think of is maybe the DVD recorder uses either a different recording format, or different connecting leads, which aren't compatible with "normal" Sky? I looked up the Sky website and it didn't mention anything about needing Sky+ to record on DVD... I have also just downloaded a DVD recorder manual as well, and as far as I can tell, it should work fine with "normal" Sky digital. :?

Any help you can give me will be much appreciated, thanks. :)

[horsehead]

It's bull..you can record driect just as if it's a VCR

[Ian Price]

That's the biggest load of tosh I have heard in a while! As Horsehead says it's pretty much the same s recording to a VCR. The only channels you can't record from are the film channels (I think)

[headtheball]

Advice in electronics shops is usually bollocks. it's up to you whether you put it down to ignorance or malevolence.


_{I'm bound to have offended someone there. If you personally work in such a place, or indeed, if a friend/member of your family does so, I'm sure you/they are fantastic, helpful, knowledgeable people.}

[Dmoney]

yo if your DVD has the same connections it should be ok.
i imagine a DVD recorder has a hard disc buffer and records to that prior to burning.
i seem to remember something about certain sky channels being scrambled on certain outputs on the box.
im guessing you get a TV out and a Recorder out from the back of the normal sky box.

you can probably get a humax dsat PVR that will decript sky and record it. then you dont need to bits of kit.

i should actually know all this, given that my job is to code the BBC channels to go on the sky platform!

ooops!

[Dmoney]

id also drop FreeSat at this point.

check it out.
needs some more quality channels but if you have trouble with freeview you might want to read up on freesat before your analog signal gets switched off



this might be worth reading
http://www.avforums.com/forums/dvd-recorders-recording-media/408227-best-dvd-hdd-normal-sky-some-sort-epg.html

also, the digital spy forums.

looks simple but with SKY+ i was reading there is a 'copy' function to move things from the sky+ HDD to a DVD recorder. it only works in real time and apparently some stuff is encrypted.

sky love encryption... haha. allegedly sky caused the downfall of ITV digital by using their own engineers to crack and leak the details on the ITV Digital Encryption. if true... very sneaky!

[dave_mc]

^ wow, that sucks

Thanks for all the replies, guys, i figured it should just be the same as using a VCR. Just didn't want to tell them until I was sure.

:drink:

[38thBeatle]

Mrs 38th and I have just ditched Sky.We got really bored with the 40 odd channels of sh*te.

[Dmoney]

Freesat has even more sh*te but at least you dont pay a subscription, and it scares the pants off Sky! haha

ALSO

did you know if you put your sky box on stand by it doesnt really turn off. it just uses a tiny tiny bit less electricity and carries on working. not very carbon friendly is it!

[dave_mc]

^ yeah. we turn ours off every night, anyway.

^ ^ there's just enough on sky which we watch to make it worth our while, unfortunately. :lol:

i think i've got to the bottom of it now... apparently the sky+ subscription is now free if you sign up for an additional 12 months of sky tv (i'm guessing it's a carrot to try to prevent people ditching sky in the credit crunch). so that's not just so bad, i thought the shop had gipped them into paying a bigger subscription to sky. the shop still told them incorrect information, but at least they weren't totally gipped.

:)

thanks for all your help, everyone.

[MrBump]

Mrs 38th and I have just ditched Sky.We got really bored with the 40 odd channels of sh*te.

I think that we're heading that way.  Just want Freesat to get a few more channels, and the digital recorders to drop to a decent price, then Sky is out.

[Johnny Mac]

If you use Bt Broadband try out Bt Vision. Its very good and comes down the adsl router

[Dmoney]

If you use Bt Broadband try out Bt Vision. Its very good and comes down the adsl router

what is the quality like? i used to work on encoding sky and bbc channels for tiscali TV. that was an IP platform but although i didnt watch it ever as an 'end user' i can say that the quality was lower than SKY for anything taken from SKY and the BBC stuff was a little better, but it was all down to HOW it was done. so BT may be different.

Freesat looks good. i imagine the tuner will come down a lot. freeview cant reach the whole country so freesat will probably have to fill in the gaps once the analog signals go. i dont know how much people know about freesat. to me it seems like it doesnt have a huge add campaign behind it or anything.

everything i hear about sky seems annoying. especially if you're into sports. needing different subscriptions and then pay per view to setanta after you pay for the channels to watch other games. etc. aweful

[Stevepage]

Sorry to hijack the thread but. Does any one have Sky multi room?

We're getting it and wondered if we're going to have wires everywhere or if it's wireless?