DVB-S, Sky's Encrypted Channels, PVR Functions (1 Viewer)

[lloydsmart]

Hello. I've been using mediaportal for about 6 months now, and I love it. The one thing I haven't delved into yet is TV on the PC. What I want, in an ideal world, is to be able to put my Sky subscription card in the pc, and get full Sky+HD functionality for all my subscription channels.

From what I can gather from research, what I need for this is a couple of DVB-S2 cards and a cam to do the decoding. So far so good, but here are my questions:

1. What sort of cam do I need to decrypt sky digital in the UK with SD and HD channels?

2. How do I set up recording one encrypted channel while watching or recording another? I only have one subscription card, and I'd be willing to purchase two cams if necessary, but surely only one will work at a time. I don't really fancy swapping the card over all the time!

3. So far I've been working on the assumption that the most suitable sat card for this job would be a digitaleverywhere floppyDTV-S2 card, but I've also read that you can get any DVB-S2 card and just get a simple card-reading device to read the Sky card, so maybe this would solve the recording decryption problem? Ie the card could be shared between both cams or sat cards. Would this work? I believe this involves something called a softcam, but i'm not sure how legal these are or weather their discussion is allowed on these forums, so until we hear from the mods I guess we'd better keep the discussion purely theoretical for now (no specific program names, etc.) Just for the record, I wouldn't be doing anything illegal with it, just watching my sky channels which I pay good money for.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[lloydsmart]

Nothing on this subject? I'm quite surprised.

 

[miroslav22]

Hi

Unfortunately Sky dont produce a hardware CAM that you can use (unlike most other european satellite providers). Unfortunately they like to tie you in to their hardware and EPG which is annoying as they have had a lot of reliability issues!

There are unofficial hardware CAMS (t-rex and dragon), but as far as I know they cannot yet read the new white Sky card. To use hardware CAM's, I believe you would need 2 smart cards and therefore 2 subscriptions if you wanted to view/record off more than 1 transponder at the same time. Multiroom wouldnt be an option as Sky check that both cards are in official receivers at the same location through your phone line.

The only other way is a software CAM like you say. I have this working with Sky HD on my setup, but this is completely unnofficial and I had to heavily modify MediaPortals directshow filters to get it working reliably.

 

[lloydsmart]

Hmmm... there is an added complication with the sad news that digitaleverywhere have stopped producing floppy and fire dtv. miroslav22, is there any other hardware product you would recommend instead, and would you be willing to share your work on Mediaportal that got the software CAMs working? Like I said, I don't mind paying for a card-reader if that helps make it any more legal. Your solution sounds very promising, and has left me wondering weather I should try and scrape together the money for a couple of floppyDTV-S2's while they're still in stock?

 

[lloydsmart]

Or... is there any other DVB-S2 card should be considering now, assuming that there is no longer a requirement to have a CI?

 

[miroslav22]

The floppy-dvts are very good from what ive read. Personally ive used a pair of the Hauppauge Nova S2 cards. It doesnt really matter as long as the drivers are stable (the earlier hauppauge drivers are not very stable, but most of the problems seem to have gone in recent updates). They do still occasionally crash the PC though, so the floppy-dvt's might be a better idea.

The actual card readers are very cheap. The softcam I use supports pcsc readers (I use the omnikey 3121 - about a fiver from ebay)

There are problems with my code on the latest mediaportal version that I still need to fix. I might consider giving the compiled filters out if I can find a way to guarantee that they couldnt be used illegally (ie It could only connect to a local softcam and smartcard with a paid subscription). The sad thing is that 95% of people would use it illegally, which completely ruins it for the minority who are hard working and just want a really cool HTPC.

 

[doornjoostje]

Please be aware:
MEDIAPORTAL - free media center - Digital Everywhere stops production of fire & floppy-dtv

 

[jsimo01]

The new sky cards also do not work in the Dragon or T-Rex Cam's either, therefore sky on a PC is no longer possible, from discussions on other forums it is unlikely that an update to the Predator firmware to overcome this will be forthcoming. I have moved to a Dreambox.

EDIT- it would be possible using a smargo smartmouse or omnikey 3121 card reader to set up a linux box if you had one using NewCS 1.67 and CCCAM 2.11 (I don't know if I can mention these?) they currently do not work under windows as far as I am aware.

 

[Ragnarok666]

Yes that can work, and does, but you need to look elsewhere.