Capture Sky Using BGT3620 (1 Viewer)

[MrTechno]

Has anybody used the Blackgold card to capture programmes from Sky?

I've got the original Sky+ HD box (the Thomson one) but my current capture device (Archos gen6 DVR) doesn't display a picture. The best I've managed so far is composite capture which is watchable on a 7 inch screen but looks terrible on anything larger.

 

[funkstar]

You are never going to get a decent capture from a sky box. To get HD, you would need to capture the HDMI output, not something that can be done easily, and certainly not inside MediaPortal.

The other way of doing it is to take the SkyHD box out of the equasion and get a DVB-S2 card, like the BGT3590. But then you also have a problem with most of the channels (other than the Freesat ones) being encrypted. There is currently no hardware decoders for the new white Sky cards, so getting the channels decoded is not an easy thing to do. We can't discuss how you would go about it here (and I'm not really sure how it is done) but I know that some people haven done it.

 

[MrTechno]

Ah sorry I should have been clearer with my requirements.

I only have Sky because I thought there was no Freeview in my area but it turns out you can pick it up so I'm about to cancel. As such capturing output from the box is not an ongoing, it's a one time thing for migrating content I've already recorded (about sixty SD programmes from CBeebies). My failure with the Archos DVR got me wondering whether there's any copy protection going on that would defeat all consumer kit or whether it's just me not doing it right.

The other solution is to wait for the inevitable repeats and make a new recording using DVB-T2

 

[funkstar]

Well CBeebies won't be broadcast in HD anyway, so DVB-T2 would make no difference in that respect. There are only 4 HD channels on Freeivew, one from each of the terrestrial broadcasters, and it's unlikely there will be more, at least for a long long time.

What programs are they? Are they available on DVD? I picked up a bunch of TV series for my little one used from Amazon, only a couple of quid each

The only copy protection on the analogue outputs might be Macrovision, but that isn't used in this situation. You might jsut be suffering from generational loss. Broadcast and recorded in digital, output to the DVR in analogue, converted back to digital for storage, then converted to analogue again for sending to the TV. Something else to think about, what resolution does the Archos record at? Is it full TV 720x576 or is it lower at 640x480 or something similar? This will degrade quality some what as well.