Thinking of dumping Sky..

[dangel]

So, i've been a loyal (stupid) sky subscriber for many years - currently I have Sky+ (which i love for the functionality it provides) but i'm thinking that maybe I can get most of what I want from Freeview - am I right?

Has anyone got a box with two tuners, the ability to record two channels and watch a pre-recorded program at the same time?

I'm thinking I don't really watch Sky movies (I rent DVDs more often than not) and I dont have Sports now (don't want it) so I reckon I'd get by with just Freeview alone. 40 odd quid a month is a lot all of sudden..

[dave87]

I must admit I have managed without freeview until now (only Spooks on BBC3 that tempted me).

Re: twin tuner box - it definately is possible, just if you are recording into any sort of compressed format then it will need to be pretty beefy to do two at once & play something you've recorded before.

[b0redom]

Hi,
I'm looking at the same thing. The two ones being recommended to me are the Humax 9200T and Topfield 5800. Having been considering sky for a while - just moved house - I really can't see any advantage.

Sky 1 is almost all repeats of StarTrek, Buffy, Simpsons etc, and there's very little else watching if you're not into sport (I'm not). All the movies are out on DVD long before they're on Sky, so it seems to me that Freeview and a Tesco's unlimited DVD rental @ 15 quid is the way forward....

Willing to be corrected though....

Tom

[pak000]

i wouldn't have thought recording two streams while playing another would be too taxing on many systems. digital is broadcast as mpeg2, so there is no transcoding needed when receiving the signal, it just needs to be written to disc

[MdSalih]

I currently have an MCE setup with 2 tuners, that does just about everything I need and more. It isn't even taxing on the system.

The hard drive I record to doesn't take a hit at all... while recording 2 programs to it, i can watch a 3rd TV program which has already been recorded... or simply browse the hard drive without any delay. Copying hard drives from the hard drive to another however can be quite slow however.

I can record a program and watch another using the second tuner without a problem. Can also be browsing/checking mail and such at the same time without the system breaking a sweat.

I've found MCE quite impressive in the way it handles things, personally would have expected there to be a glitch in the recording if I'm doing something very resorce intensive (compiling a program), however that doesn't seem to happen.

However, I've had a few instances when MCE has crashed on me during a recording, that has happened to me a total of 3 times in the past year.. that can be quite aggrivating, however its a small price to pay.

MdSalih

[dave87]

It will only be taxing if you are transcoding the mpeg-2 stream to anything like xvid or the like. Otherwise, as you say, it should be perfectly able to do it all

[dangel]

Thanks for all the feedback!!!!

Well Sky+ cheats by dumping the raw signal to disk - it's only uncompressed when playing back.

Realtime encoding/decoding can all be done with dedicated chips no doubt (or even compressed when idle).

I love the idea of MCE but i think i'd rather have a dedicated box (and it's cheaper) at the moment as it's one less PC in the house (I have 5 already) - maybe later when I'm richer and bored!

Looking up those boxes bOrdom! Thanks

[dangel]

http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/products/pvr-9200t.asp Humax one

[MSIC]

My mate has the Humax 9200T and he loves it. Mind you, he hasnt just come from Sky+ (which I have at home) and I can tell you that whilst on paper it works just as well, it's not quite as polished / finished as Sky is. But it's technically as good (at least) and my mate raves about it. If i was going to switch, i'd get one. My girlfriend loves Most Haunted too much though...

[dangel]

Sky+ I have been through highs and lows with tbh - initially it was deeply unstable (beta software methinks) and even now it sometimes crashes (although infrequently). I'm not used to 'perfection' so perhaps I can live with the odd niggle (it's somewhat inevitable) - particularly if it's not costing me 480quid a year in rental..

[chrestomanci]

Thanks for all the feedback!!!!

Well Sky+ cheats by dumping the raw signal to disk - it's only uncompressed when playing back.

I would not say it is a cheat. I think it is the sensible thing to do as otherwise you will get more compresson artifacts from the pictures getting compressed twice.

What the sky box actualy does is decrypt the signal, and then apply a different encyption before the file is written to disc, but the mpeg2 compresson underneath is not touched.

[dangel]

I would not say it is a cheat. I think it is the sensible thing to do as otherwise you will get more compresson artifacts from the pictures getting compressed twice.

What the sky box actualy does is decrypt the signal, and then apply a different encyption before the file is written to disc, but the mpeg2 compresson underneath is not touched.

Ok bad choice of words - I meant it doesn't need to encode. AFAIK it just dumps the raw data to disc without decryption (which makes more sense than the method you describe - no offence intended) and playback decrypts and decompresses in the normal way for live playback.

[MdSalih]

It will only be taxing if you are transcoding the mpeg-2 stream to anything like xvid or the like. Otherwise, as you say, it should be perfectly able to do it all

Actually, transcoding it doesn't cause any problems to the recoding of the shows - it'll make the system a lot more sluggish and add around 50% to the normal time taken in transcoding the file, but the box is still usable to do basic things like read mail and browse the net.

I only used to do that when I first set up the MCE box, now I simply have a batch process going overnight on my server box to transcode the recordings I want to actually keep - it works out a lot better.

Dangel - yup your right, if you were to go the MCE route, you'd need to have a dedicated PC (with a half decent spec) to handle it and there's probably cheaper options out there to setup such a system.

MdSalih

[MSIC]

The Humax 9200T is £189 at amazon. There is of course no way that you could build a workable MCE box for that sort of money (although of course an MCE box would do alot more).
The Humax is also nice and quiet, and is completely fine in the living room / bedroom.

[chrestomanci]

So, i've been a loyal (stupid) sky subscriber for many years - currently I have Sky+ (which i love for the functionality it provides) but i'm thinking that maybe I can get most of what I want from Freeview - am I right?

Has anyone got a box with two tuners, the ability to record two channels and watch a pre-recorded program at the same time?

I have a Topfield
TF5800. It cost me about 280 pounds a year ago.

It has two tunners so it will record two shows at once while watching a recording, Also you can watch a third live show if the life show is on the same mux as one of the ones you are recording. (There are 6 muxes, and they tend to go by TV companies, for example BBC1 and 2 are on the same mux).

The box is also nicely hackable. You can get third party software mods that give you extra features, such as showing two channels at once, a better program guide, or setting up timmed recordings remotely via a mobile phone.

The Box has a USB port on the back. This can be used to access the filesystem, and copy recordings between the box and your PC. I use it to take copies of films and TV shows, and copy them to DVD. You can also copy your mp3s in the other direction and use the box as a music jutebox. The box cannot pull the files on your PC, and use it as a media server though.

Overall I am very happy and would recommend it to anyone who can afford one. If I thought my wife would stand it, I would buy a second for the bedroom TV.

There is an enthusiast website where all the mods etc are covered at http://www.toppy.org.uk/

I'm thinking I don't really watch Sky movies (I rent DVDs more often than not) and I dont have Sports now (don't want it) so I reckon I'd get by with just Freeview alone. 40 odd quid a month is a lot all of sudden..

If you don't watch any premum services there is definately no point in keeping Sky just to get Sky+

The Topfield box has a common interface slot that you can used for Top-Up TV services like eurosport or UK gold, but unfortunately no sky channels.

[chrestomanci]

Ok bad choice of words - I meant it doesn't need to encode. AFAIK it just dumps the raw data to disc without decryption (which makes more sense than the method you describe - no offence intended) and playback decrypts and decompresses in the normal way for live playback.

I used to work for Sky on set top box design.

The broadcast from the satellite has to be decrypted immediately, because the encryption is timing dependent. If you record a show starting at 6pm, and then watch a live show finishing at 8pm, the viewing card will not let you decrypt the show broadcast at 6pm because it knows it is at least 8pm, and will not allow you to go back in time, in order to get around this, the broadcast must be decrypted as it is received.

Sky are not willing for shows to be recorded to hard disc in the clear, as otherwise it would be to easy for someone to remove the hard drive from a box and read it with a PC. Instead the recording is re-encrypted using an RSA cypher using a key tied to the viewing card, this also discourages people from exchanging recordings of shows by swapping boxes.