Sky TV on HTPC (legally!) without a STB

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Sky TV on HTPC (legally!) without a STB

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ... | 28

24 posts

Geek

#130123 12-May-2008 00:50

shanek: NewCAMD is the one that works from what i understand

Thanks!

Being thats its Mothers day I haveseen this just before I go off to bed, so I will have a play this week after work.

Cheers

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

idkpmiller

24 posts

Geek

#135068 2-Jun-2008 22:21

Here is an update to hopefully assist others

1. There are more than 1 type of "Blue" Sky sub smartcard out there, the one that starts NZ17xxx doesnt work in the dreambox, I dont know about DVB-S cards as I dont have one.

2. "Losing" the card and paying 30 bucks for a replacement does not gaurentee you a non NZ17xx card :-(

So I am not sure what you need to do to get a non NZ17xxx card but it doesnt seem to be just a new card/account relationship, perhaps its a certain type or decoder you need?

Cheers

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#140037 23-Jun-2008 20:32

Sorry to drag this old one out of the woodwork, but I finally got around to having a play:

Satch - this is what you need!!!

I have a working setup using:

Vista MCE - does what it normally does
DVBSBridge - interface between MCE and ProgDVB - acts as a DVB-T tuner in MCE.
ProgDVB - Interface to soft CAM
Blue Card
A bit of stuff from Jaycar

In effect using the MCE beta this gives fully functional PVR including OTA guide ie completely hands off once setup.

Picture quality is as good as you will ever get from our pay TV provider. Records perfectly, channel changes are under 2 seconds ie just like normal. Once setup its completely transparent to the Vista MCE interface.

Its only a single tuner solution at this stage, but it works with the multi tuner components of the MCE beta.

Makes me wonder why I didn't get this working ages ago. Cost just under $70 to do.

No more S-Video nightmares... Doesn't improve the content though :)

eXDee

4032 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#140068 23-Jun-2008 23:14

That's awesome.
Any chance it could be made to work on mediaportal at all? I know the devs dont like soft cams but apparently you can use em.

richms

27906 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#140080 24-Jun-2008 00:56

I recall that a few years back the trick to do to get free PPV was to remove the phoneline, and then "lose" the card. I think thats why they started charging so much more for the card. But they dont seem to charge if it just stops working properly.

Richard rich.ms

Satch

1985 posts

Uber Geek

#140085 24-Jun-2008 05:45

RustyGonad: Sorry to drag this old one out of the woodwork, but I finally got around to having a play:

Satch - this is what you need!!!

Mate! Mate! Mate! I NEED more details!!!

I'm currently in Chicago on business at present, but will certainly talk to you more when I am back next week.

Do you have any documented instructions on how to get this going? Any idea if it will work with Sky HD?

shanek

20 posts

Geek

#140088 24-Jun-2008 07:48

rusty can you give a bit more detail on the Jaycar part, was it just the cardreader kit they sell ? I was going to get a USB card reader shipped from UK for $140 but of the jaycar kit does it i will go with that.

Thanks

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#140090 24-Jun-2008 08:25

eXDee: That's awesome.
Any chance it could be made to work on mediaportal at all? I know the devs dont like soft cams but apparently you can use em.

Media Portal supposedly supports MDAPI out of the box - so it should work. Spent a couple of hours trying with no sucess.

Same card + reader + s/CAM works with GBPVR, DVBViewer and a bunch of others using the inbuilt MDAPI support. I tried the others listed, all had problems during channel changes (locking etc), and dropping sound on various channels.

The MCE solution doesn't seem to suffer the same fate, it only uses the ProgDVB engine for the soft CAM engine as such. The streams are then passed directly the the Stream Buffer Engine. Channel changing is nearly as fast as with a native Freeview solution.

Satch - Once you get your head around the concept this is easy. Easier than doing the reg mods for MCE that for sure! No intructions at the moment, but the hardest part was building the card reader.

Shanek - yep thats the one. Cost under $70 including a motherboard serial cable.

In no way shape or form will this get you free Sky - it will only read the channels your card is subscribed to. I still haven't figured out how to send the Parental control PIN through - so you can't watch PIN protected channels. If anyone knows how please tell.

I still can't believe how well this works...

Satch

1985 posts

Uber Geek

#140096 24-Jun-2008 09:04

I'll need some sort of instructions on what to buy and how to put it all together.

Does it work under the existing version of Vista Media Centre?

Any ideas if it will work for Sky HD?

BarTender

3585 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#140098 24-Jun-2008 09:17

RustyGonad: In no way shape or form will this get you free Sky - it will only read the channels your card is subscribed to. I still haven't figured out how to send the Parental control PIN through - so you can't watch PIN protected channels. If anyone knows how please tell.

Put the sky card back into your regular STB, then change the parental limit to it's maximum (18+) then you won't be prompted for the Pin which means you should be able to watch all your dodgy tv ;).

The only way to get Sky HD is to order MySky HD get it installed (that way your smartcard is sub'ed to it) then try it out on your PC.... Should work... In theory.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#140108 24-Jun-2008 09:55

Satch: I'll need some sort of instructions on what to buy and how to put it all together.

Does it work under the existing version of Vista Media Centre?

Any ideas if it will work for Sky HD?

It works under the standard version - but you need to use Bladerunner for the guide. If you use the Fiji update - it will do over the air guide (highly recommended). It also has better facilities for rearranging the channels etc etc etc. PM me when your back.

Thanks for the tip Bartender!

Satch

1985 posts

Uber Geek

#140118 24-Jun-2008 10:20

I'm going to hold off on Fiji until MS release it officially, I'm having a rough enough time with the existing version of VMC in terms of my partner whinging about it...

I will definitely PM you when I get back. I'm keen as Larry to get this working. Did you say multi tuner type support (for Sky) will work under Fiji and not the existing version?

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#140137 24-Jun-2008 11:50

Satch: I'm going to hold off on Fiji until MS release it officially, I'm having a rough enough time with the existing version of VMC in terms of my partner whinging about it...

I will definitely PM you when I get back. I'm keen as Larry to get this working. Did you say multi tuner type support (for Sky) will work under Fiji and not the existing version?

At the moment you'll only have 1 tuner for Sky. Fiji will allow multiple tuners to be used - but the additional tuners will be will be Freeview only. There may be a workaround for this - I'll have a play over the next couple of days. Remember this is a SoftCAM based solution. If anyone has a hardware based CAM/CI working under Vista this would get around all of this.

Under the current version, any additional tuners will have to be added via the reg mods.

BarTender

3585 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#140180 24-Jun-2008 15:03

RustyGonad: If anyone has a hardware based CAM/CI working under Vista this would get around all of this.

I don't think any legit CAM/CI exists for NDS, I did see in my travels that someone made a dodgy version of one of the Dragon CAM's (Reloaded??) tha work work with the Sky boxes in the UK... who knows that may work. But still with a CI, you would need a PCI DVB-S card which would have a CI slot in it, so you would plug Smartcard -> CAM -> DVB-S CI Slot. So you would need a valid subscription card per Tuner.

eXDee

4032 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#140210 24-Jun-2008 16:45

Regard Mediaportal and MPDAPI =(
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mediaportal-1-talk-45/mdapi-softcam-support-again-12620/

All i can say is laaaame.

However this has a bit about getting it to work with tv server:
http://www.eurocardsharing.com/f102/howto-gbox-mediaportal-rc1-53784

Would it be possible for you to try this out?

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ... | 28