On sky digital you can now record live tv on the actual sytem itself and replay it again and again. Anybody know if its possible to put the recordings from the sky digital system on a c.d. or on some sort of other media?

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up tipperary!!!!

 

There's no direct access to the HDD, you can only play the program out the SCART sockets and record it on a VCR or DVD recorder - if your DVD recorder has RGB inputs (most don't) then use the TV SCART rather than the VCR SCART.

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Also it's worth noting that the format Sky use for storing data on the hard drive hasn't been published (to my knowledge anyway - anyone who can correct me on that and I'll see what I can write). If you replace the drive with a brand new (say 250Gb Maxtor/Quantum) and turn the box on - it just works....

The hard disk internally formats on the fly, and doesn't even have a PC compatible partition or anything. Anyone who knows how to read the video data off one of these disks - and I'll show you how to fit an external caddy to the thing and stream it to a PC!

I have spent hours dumping stuff to a DVD recorder (even though I've got 250Gb internally) and would dearly lve to find an easier way to do it. There is an expansion port in the back of the Sky+ box, and prototypes of a PC interface card were sopposedly in the pipeline but....I never saw one, just heard about them.

 

It doesn't format 'on the fly', there's an option on the service menu to format the drive - if you don't do that a replacement drive won't work.

All the drives I've tested have been perfectly readable in a PC, it appears to use a standard formatting - just that there doesn't appear to be a PC program that can do anything with the data?.

As far as I'm aware the data on the drive is just the incoming encrypted data stream from the satellite, so would need decrypting as well as reading!.

__________________
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Prior to fitting my drive, I read the section on installing an upgraded drive halfway down the page at

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/page18.htm

It may be a little out of date now, but I'm just quoting what I read prior to installing my drive, bought brand new from eBuyer. Must have just been a fluke that I didn't need to format it. You do need to perform a "full system reset", but on my box (Pace V1), that took about three minutes - not long enough to format a 250Gb drive. Are you referring to a V2 box (I'll have a look at one tomorrow) or something else.

I'll whip the disk out tomorrow and stick it back in the PC again. It didn't show anything other than an unknown partition type on my machine, but I'll check again.

Encrypted programs are stored in an encrypted form, but according to this the non-encrypted programs are just MPEG2 streams. Macrovision is generally straightforward to remove,depending on the version, but not the Videoguard encryption. But anyway, the file/directory structure isn't PC compatible as such.

 

'Full system reset' formats the drive, that's what it does - as you say it's faster than a PC does it, but it's probably not error checked as much?. However, all the ones I've done have taken longer than 3 minutes, even for the standard 40Gb drives.

Next time I fit one I'll time it and see! - I'm now stocking 80Gb drives as standard for replacements, as 40's have dried up. (This is obviously for repair purposes, and not upgrades - I've fitted larger drives as upgrades as well).

Incidently, I've got two v1 Pace Sky+ boxes sat doing nothing!.

I've read lots of them, and (as I said before) I even have a machine setup with the side off and a 'dangling' IDE lead to pop the drives on to test.

The Maxtor test program even allows you to low level format the drives, and I have recovered some using that, which have given extra life to the drives.

Apparently the usual fault with them is bearing wear?, and that doesn't respond to a low level format.

There's no Macrovision on a digital signal, the Macrovision is purely an analogue system - it's added internally in the digibox, presumably in response to a flag in the digital data.

As I said before, the disk is perfectly readable in a PC, and consists of a number of large files in the root directory - obviously depending whats on the drive.

I wonder if perhaps the v1 used a different file system?, almost all the boxes I've done have been v2, with the crappy Maxtor drives - I've only changed the Quantum drives in a fairly small number of v1 boxes (including the two I have), and have never bothered testing them as they were out of the three year warranty.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk