recording from sky+

[TEAK36]

Is there any way I can transfer what I have saved on my Sky+ HD, onto an external Hard drive? I have a 500GB external hard drive I use with my laptop, and it is one of those media centre ones where I have it conected to my TV so that I can watch my downloads on my TV.

[pug100]

Hi,
I belive that the Sky box records all information on the hard drive in an encoded format so that only the Sky box can play them. They are not media files such as ts vob or avi and cannot be played on a PC. Besides the USB port on the box has apsolutely no function whatsoever, the easiest way to copy programmes over to your PC is to use a DVD recorder. There is no way of using the USB port, it is useless.

If you need more storage then usually people opt for a change of the internal HDD.

From Digital Spy

What's the biggest size Hard Disk that I can upgrade my Sky+ with?

The current situation with upgradable HDDs are as follows:

Pace Sky+ V1: The maximum size HD that you can install appears to be 250GB. There were some reports that "older" V1 boxes can only take up to 120GB. The bug introduced in EPG firmware 4.10c, which temporarily meant that this box could not be upgraded, appears to have been corrected with EPG 4.20a. Please check you have EPG 4.20a (or later) before upgrading.

Pace and Amstrad Sky+ V2: The maximum fully compatible size HD that you can install at the moment is 250GB. In fact a 250GB drive is fast becoming the de facto standard for Sky+ upgrades.

All makes of Sky+ V3: Again the maximum fully compatible size HD is 250GB. Please remember that 80GB of this space is still reserved by Sky, which will leave you with 170GB for your personal recordings.

[pug100]

continued....

Drives over 300GB have been tested but do NOT work on any standard definition Sky+ boxes tested so far, unless their capacity is limited using the drive manufacturers tools to around 270GB. This seems to be a fundamental limit of the Full System Reset (FSR) function of Sky+ software. The way around this is to copy over all your recordings from a smaller drive using the Copy+ software and your PC. Use of Copy+ in this way has been tested by a very small number of users and shown to work for drives up to 500GB. However please remember that this workaround is still experimental, and if you ever need to do a FSR in the future the box will not be able to correctly reformat the drive. The only option will be to return the drive to your PC and use Copy+ once again.

Sky HD: The maximum size drive that has been tested appears to be 500GB, and this works correctly, even for a FSR. Please remember that 140GB of this space is still reserved by Sky, which will leave you with 360GB for your personal recordings.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread. php?t=156344

[ACtheTROLL]

if it's a media gizmo ...will it record directly from tv?
you can transfer from sky+ to dvd/video or any other recording device that has either a scart ... or anlog TV tuner (ch68 on my amstrad) so you should be able to

to think laterally ... you could record to your pc via a hybrid usb tv tuner and then transfer to your hdd

or buy a dvd recorder ... and transfer to disc