Capturing Sky HD?

[MacBoobsPro]

Im about to get Sky HD installed and was wondering is there an easy way to capture it to my Mac?

Some people sat EyeTV will do it, others say it wont.

Is there an easy(ish) way of doing it without physically opening the skybox and hooking it up to some superspace generator and adjusting the solar systems planet rotations so they all align at 35 O'clock metric time every 9th day of the week?

 

[P-Worm]

I don't think you will be able to capture Sky HD over EyeTV unless you go through the composite (the yellow, red, white cables) which would make the high definition video standard definition instead.

If you want to capture HD, you might have to get a capture card for you Mac (like the ones used for FCP). This is a sloppy and expensive way to do things, however.

P-Worm

 

[Will_reed]

If you bought like an HDV deck or an XDCAM HD deck you might be able to take it in using component.

 

[cpcarrot]

Simplest way I know is if you have a Mac Pro get one of these:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

And a fast hard drive system. HDMI straight into the intensity card and record, that simple.

Plenty of other solutions if you just want to record SD signal but solutions are few and far between if you want it in HD.

 

[P-Worm]

The problem with the card is that I don't think you can schedule it to record shows weekly and other things like that. That's why I said it was sloppy.

P-Worm

 

[cpcarrot]

Yep, afraid there is nothing I know of that will allow you to do all that, methods of capturing HD from that type of source are fairly few and far between. You COULD (and this is definitely sloppy) use automator to schedule capturing and the Sky HD planner system to ensure it is on the right channel at the right time, but it's not the most user friendly of systems. I was assuming as Sky HD has a built in hard disc you would just use that for the majority of programs you want to record and then just use the capture card to grab the stuff you want to keep off the hard drive (would have to do it in real time capture still though).

 

[dalvin200]

just to bring some life back to this thread if possible..


i have sky HD, but am not too bothered about transferring the HD quality over to my macbook... i'd be happy with it being downgraded to SD.. as the shows I want to transfer are SD anyway (kids programs)...

what is the best way to go around this without having to buy a dvd recorder and then rip that to my mac... ?

thanks

 

[cokeacola]

what is the best way to go around this without having to buy a dvd recorder and then rip that to my mac... ?

i would recommend the EYE 250 plus hooked up thro usb

 

[dalvin200]

what is the best way to go around this without having to buy a dvd recorder and then rip that to my mac... ?

i would recommend the EYE 250 plus hooked up thro usb

i dont think i quite understand.

you're saying get one of the eye250 plus devices right?

but i don't see the connection between that and the sky+ box?

can you explain how to use it please?

Thanks

 

[cokeacola]

record the programme on your sky + box ....then

connect the eye tv device to the sky box(via s -video ) and play the recorded prog and it will record on to your mac ,only downside is that process play back in real-time

then once on your Mac you can edit/store the video file

hope you understand

 

[dalvin200]

record the programme on your sky + box ....then

connect the eye tv device to the sky box(via s -video ) and play the recorded prog and it will record on to your mac ,only downside is that process play back in real-time

then once on your Mac you can edit/store the video file

hope you understand

won't s-video severely downgrade the picture quality? even though it's SD, won't it make it noticeably worse than SD?

 

[cokeacola]

i dont think you can capture HD quality from a sky box , think the best you can do is mpeg2

 

[dalvin200]

i dont think you can capture HD quality from a sky box , think the best you can do is mpeg2

yeah.. i'm not bothered about hd quality... i just want sd quality..

my question was, the sd quality that's already on the sky box.. if that is transferred via s-video using the "eyetv 250 plus" will the SD quality be significantly be reduced when transferred to my mac?

ie, the sd quality that's on the sky box.. when transferred.. will it still be sd quality or would it be "really crappy and choppy sd quality"?

i just want the same SD PQ that's it's been recorded on the sky box..

Also, i was reading on the elgato site, the eyeTV Hybrid also has s-video etc.. like the 250 plus...
only difference is the 250 uses hardware encoding, whereas the hybrid uses the macs hardware..

i'll be using my new 2.4ghz macbook alu to record, so will the hybrid suffice instead of shelling out the extra for the 250? (it's about £70 extra for the 250)

thanks

EDIT:
I've gone for the EyeTV Hybrid usb stick.. will let you know how that works out once received..
Hope I made the right choice

 

[cokeacola]

I've gone for the EyeTV Hybrid usb stick.. will let you know how that works out once received..
Hope I made the right choice

well remember and do because i was going to shell out for the 250 as well but will now await the results from yourself

as i also have a brand new 3.06 intel with 4gb ram

i have been using my windows laptop connected via s-video using a wintv pvr2
to get the progs off sky+ box and was looking on bypassing the laptop in favour of a Mac compatible device

 

[cokeacola]

dalvin 200, any feedback as im away to the apple shop in glasgow at the weekend to purchase ?

 

[dalvin200]

EyeTV Hybrid

Oh yeah.. i forgot.. lol!!

anyway, it all worked a treat..

basically, you connect the usb stick to your mac and on the side of the stick is a port where you connect the included video adapter.
The video adapter has connections for composite/s-video.. so you need a cable .. i had a red/white/yellow connections on both sides cable... plugged one end into the eyetv video adapter and the other end into a scart adapter..

then plugged the scart end into the video out of my skyHD box..

when eyeTV on your mac launches just set A/V inout and whatever is being broadcast through your sky box will appear on your mac!!

so i set about 4 hours to "copy" off my sky planner whilst it recorded into eyeTV software.

came back, it's all there.. just split bits up etc..

ok, the quality is slightly degraded, but like i said before, i can live with that as most of the stuff is kids programs anyway!!

hope this helps, and it's well worth the effort

i have some VHS tapes i need to transfer, but trashed my VHS player many years ago!! lol... will be taking my eyeTV stuff to my sisters house to connect up to their VHS player and transfer...

hope it goes well for you

 

[cokeacola]

thank you for your response mate

i only have the s-video cable will i need audio leads as well to get the audio ?

 

[dalvin200]

thank you for your response mate

i only have the s-video cable will i need audio leads as well to get the audio ?

If your leads have the read & white then that is the audio.
The yellow is for video.

Did you buy it yesterday then?

 

[cokeacola]

i have it up and running now but disappointed with quality of the files when connected via the composite leads to my sky box

do you think the s-video will give out better quality files ?

 

[dalvin200]

i have it up and running now but disappointed with quality of the files when connected via the composite leads to my sky box

do you think the s-video will give out better quality files ?

probably not much better.. but like i previously said, i'm not overly fussed on having excellent video quality.. so it's a good enough solution for me

 

[andybi78]

I understand so far but was wondering from here can the sky recording to eyetv then be put straight to itunes? or will they need to be changed to mp4?