Episode Storage

[Light of the Bay]

I own a Sky+ HD box so I will check whether it has a USB port.

[Light of the Bay]

I checked and it does indeed have a USB port! So you just stick it in and then once you transfer the files you can view them on whatever?

[Dan F]

I'm not too familiar with Sky boxes, but I do know they're sadly not known for their accessibility in archiving recordings.

From a quick read on the internet it seems the USB port is non-functional (i.e. it's for engineering purposes or suchlike) and the only way to extract recordings is to record them in real-time using the video output (i.e. on a DVD recorder or PC capture card) - or by the techy-savvy way of removing the Sky box hard drive (possibly voiding any warranty) and connecting it up using specialist cables and software. A quick Google of "Sky + HD Transfer Recordings" brings up many discussions on the net from people wanting to do the same who may be able to help further.

[John]

For a time I stored episodes on my Beyonwiz PVR in .ts format. My PVR is networkable so I can transfer files stored on it onto my PC and then on to my bank of Archive external drives. My stored files are in HD so are about 1.3 GB per episode.

These days I store directly to my PC and then I can play them across the network through my PVR which will play MPEG4 files.

Back ups are an issue I haven't solved yet as I have 2 x 1TB drives full and just starting on a 2 Tb drive.

I have all the Early years episodes up to the current one being shown on 7 two and the current episodes from the start of 2008.

[James Martin]

What an interesting discussion.

First of all... Dan - on the "piracy" warning; where does the land lie in me asking does anyone know a good proxy server based in Australia? Because I'm interested in Australian-based proxies, of course.

In all seriousness... my conundrum is this. I have all the broadcast episodes shows from the first week of From Day One on the V+ box downstairs (it's an old-style V+ box, not the new-style TiVO ones) with no DVD recorder to transfer them to. I also notice there's an ethernet port on the back of the Virgin box. If I were to plug my PC into it, or hook it up to the house's LAN, would I be able to get into the HD via a PC in any way?

Which leaves the pesky issue of the third episodes!

[Dan F]

Trying not to turn this thread into a technical support thread, though I guess some discussion to help people with archiving their copies of old episodes (for their own personal use of course) is useful.

That said I don't think there can be much help given for the PVR's provided by the big telecom companies (Sky, BT, Virgin etc.) Again whilst I'm not familiar with Virgin boxes, it seems the ethernet is, again, non-operational and the only way is recording in real-time via the SCART connection to a DVD recorder, capture card or other recording device - haven't yet seen a similar way of removing the hard drive and slaving it to the PC (which again would be a touchy subject with regards warranty). I can only recommend people in a similar situation to try places such as avforums.com, or again Google the name of said box along with 'transfer recordings' or suchlike.

As regards proxies....it's not really on-topic so we won't go into that (though your general interest in them is no business of ours if no reasons are mentioned!), but I imagine you may get better answers elsewhere on a more technical forum (I for one don't use them).

[James Martin]

Thanks Dan.

Had a look on those forums.

If you want to store electronically, this bad boy costs less than £30. You could then of course burn those to DVD if you wished to watch them on a television, or hook up your PC if your set has a VGA socket (most flatscreens do.)