How to get video from MySky to laptop?

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chaucolai

16 posts

Geek

#61092 8-May-2010 20:05

Hi everyone,
I'm trying to get recorded programs from our new MySky HDi recorder to my laptop.
I'm the teenage geek daughter in the house, so not allowed to pull it apart..
We also have a Phillips HDD recorder and I have a QBack backup drive, which includes a case-changing thing for a smaller, laptop size HDD.
Movies/shows will be going on an iPod touch, so brilliant quality isn't needed...

Any idea on how to do it?

sbiddle

29119 posts

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Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#328023 8-May-2010 20:13

Buy a TV capture card for your laptop and hook it up to the MySky - the best you will probably be able to use is the composite connection. You can then playback the recordings on the MySky and record them to your PC.

chaucolai

16 posts

Geek

#328035 8-May-2010 20:36

Would I be able to record to the Philips HDD one and record to DVD, then rip from DVD to the computer? Would a DVD-R work? We have a Philips DVDR3455H.

Also, how much would a capture card cost and where to buy it from?

EDIT: Would this http://www.trademe.co.nz/Electronics-photography/DVD-players-VCRs/Other/auction-288133779.htm work?
I obviously don't care about the HD quality, just want to be able to watch on my iPod.

dasimpsonsrule

94 posts

Master Geek

#328038 8-May-2010 20:48

One of those easycap things you linked to work well, they can just be a pain to find drivers for if your using anything other than windows xp. Most video editing programs will support recording from it, as it just shows up like a webcam on the system.

chaucolai

16 posts

Geek

#328040 8-May-2010 20:53

We have one very old Windows XP home desktop (Presario 6030AN if memory serves me well) as well as a Vista Home Basic newer laptop (Compaq CQ-61).
Would that work with the EasyCAP, do you know?

EDIT: Forgot, we also have several work laptops, two old and crappy laptops (Toshiba and Acer, so slow they don't work on a server) as well as a newer Presario 6730b or something that all run XP Professional.

SECOND EDIT: All three work laptops don't have Admin privileges so can't install additional programs or drivers.

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#328070 8-May-2010 22:23

I'd try recording onto the Philips HDD recorder. It probably won't work due to Macrovision protection, but there's no harm in trying it anyway.

Macrovision protection is a signal that's encoded with the analog video. VCR's (and I presume DVD recorders) are meant to have a chip inside that stops them from recording any video with that signal. I think MySky HDi outputs that signal on its analog video outputs, but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how video capture cards such as the EasyCAP respond to Macrovision protection. It might work, or else you might need to buy a hardware Macrovision stripper (which are hard to find and can be expensive).

As for the hardware requirements, I'm really not sure. I'd say anything around a P3 1Ghz + would be capable of encoding SD analog video.

Don't bother thinking about taking the MySky HDi apart. As far as I know, the video on the drive is encrypted so won't do you any good.

Even if this works, the quality won't be great as you're doing a digital to analog to digital conversion, followed by a re-encode for the iPod Touch.

The alternative is to set up an HTPC that can accept your Sky card and record the incoming satellite signal. There's some info on doing that in these forums.

wiredr

203 posts

Master Geek

#328113 9-May-2010 07:03

i have recorded from misky to a sony hdd/dvd recorder via the s video output .
sky flag some of the content with "copy " which prevents transferring to dvd . usually movies or premium shows ie master chef etc come with the flag activated,
with the right settings on the recorder the dvd picture of a sd program will look much the same as the original.

Niel

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#328125 9-May-2010 09:29

I would also recommend using s-video rather than composite, because native processing is usually based on the s-video signals (i.e. chrominance and luminance) and not RGB. I suspect HD and DVD is processed with (4) component video (not composite), but not sure. However for analogue recording of SD I would definitely stick with s-video. It is not worth the overhead of processing all the other signals, and s-video will also filter out some of the Sky digital artefacts.

You can never have enough Volvos!

chaucolai

16 posts

Geek

#328162 9-May-2010 14:06

I have just started recording a recorded episode of Blackadder the Third to the Philips HDD recorder. Seems to be no problems with recording so far but haven't tried with any movies I have recorded, so don't know about luck there. Also wondering whether Doctor Who will go over right :/ but it's worth a shot for now.
We are getting the Easycap thing (even if it won't work with the MySky, we still have an old Hi8 video recorder that has videos needing to be digitized) so I'll let everyone know how that goes.

JimmyH

2681 posts

Uber Geek

#328722 10-May-2010 22:43

Macrovision is fairly easily defeated with a fairly inexpensive signal stabiliser that you can put between the MySky box and the DVD recorder. I had to do this a while ago when migrating my video collection (which I had spent quite a bit on over the years) to DVD. It has been a few years since I did it, but from memory it was called "Dr Video" or similar, and I got it from eithet Jaycar or Dick Smith for about $80. I can have a look if needed - always assuming I can find whereabouts in the garage I will have stowed it - no real need once the project was finished.