sky digibox with pvr-150?

[chorscroft]

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[brewston]

Hi

Up until a month ago (I've now moved to a dual tuner PVR500) I had a very similar rig. You can take the SCART output from the Digibox and convert to composite to input into the PVR150 ( I bought an adapter from Maplins for that) The audio is done by taking the red/white RCA outputs from the digibox into the 3.5" jack on the PVR 150.

Then comes the tricky bit.. getting the PC to change the Sky channels. The PVR 150 comes with an IR blaster to send remote signals to the digibox. Throw away the CD you get with the pvr150 and get the latest drivers/applications from Hauppauge's website as the early IR blaster didn't work with digiboxes. Its also *very* senstive to where the eye is placed on the front of the box

I found the IR blaster too unreliable and found a link to this product :

http://www.heenan.me.uk/control-sky-from-pc/

I followed the instructions linked too on that website and its worked fine since day 1

Since Sage doesn't have EPG data for the UK, you will need an XMLTV data source (I'm using RadioTimes although its broken at the moment) I recommend Stephane's XMLTV importer (Search the forum for the thread on it)

My PC has a faster CPU and more RAM than you're suggesting but I've never once found those to be a bottleneck. You will want to add an external HDD as once you start recording TV you can soon fill 80GB (And if you decide to rip your DVD collection, it will build up even quicker!)

Hope that helps, you're probably better off asking Sky specific questions on the UK sub-forum

Good luck

Tim

ps - the Sky remote becomes redundant, you control Sage through the Hauppauge remote that comes with the PVR150

[chorscroft]

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[chorscroft]

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[brewston]

I think the PVR150 would be fine, I've never noticed a memory deficit with dual tuners but if you do, dropping another 512MB in there isn't going to be much. The purpose of the XMLTV import is to get the EPG data into Sage, so yes it works perfectly (When the Radio Times xml feed isn't down) Have a read of the sticky thread on the UK forum to get the hang of it

Finally, I would't order a card from the US, get one from the UK. My first PVR500 was dead and I had to return it, much easier to a UK site ! I used www.scan.co.uk and they swapped it with no quibbling and collected it so I didn't have to pay return postage. Also, Im pretty sure the analogue signal coming out of the back of the Sky box is still PAL, so I wouldnt risk an NTSC card (Although I'm no expert in these matters)

Getting it all together can be pretty daunting, it might be easier to use an old aerial connection into the PVR150 to get your terrestrial channels working before hooking up the Sky box. Thats how I did it and it helped me learn stuff in stages

Cheers

Tim

[chorscroft]

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[brewston]

Sorry for the slight delay. I know what you mean by both of those connectors (and no, I don't know their names either)

Firstly, neither has anything to do with hooking to the Sky digibox. Recall that you need composite/s-video out of the SCART socket for that (You can't just plug the co-ax cable from your disk into a PVR150 - you know that right ?)

OK, hopefully I have cleared that up. Both my PVR150 and PVR500 have the type 2 connection (The one without a screw thread) Don't always trust the pics you find on the web as they can be from anywhere

Personally, I think the MCE remote is a little nicer than the Hauppauge one. getting the power button on the MCE to put Sage to sleep (by default it puts the PC to sleep) took and extra piece of software (Stephane's MCE keymapper ) There is some software floating around for the IR blaster that comes with the MCE remote but Sage supports the Hauppauge one natively (Personally, I didn't think the IR blaster worked that well) If you don't want to pick up the Joseph Heenan SKY changer that I have, then search the forums for USB-UIIRT - lots of people use them and have good things to say about them