How do you connect a sky plus box to your computer?

Question

How do you connect a sky plus box to your computer?

Answer 1

There are a few ways to connect from your Sky box to a PC TV card:

Aerial: The most straightforward way is to take a feed from one of the Sky box RF output aerial feeds and use standard aerial co-ax cable to connect to the input of a TV card. Note that you'll need a TV card that supports an 'analogue' input, as this is what's sent from the Sky box aerial socket. Some PC TV receivers are digital (DVB-T) only, so won't work. Analogue cards are getting more rare, so consider looking for a dual digital and analogue card, such as one from the Hauppauge HVR range - we recommend either the Hauppauge HVR1100 (PCI card) or Win-TV HVR900 (USB).

S-Video: If you're looking for slightly better quality than using the modulated output of a Sky box and aerial cable, then you can consider using S-video. Look for a TV card with an S-Video input. If you need S-Video cables, or a SCART-to-Svideo converter. Note that an S-video connect only handles video, so you'll need to connect an audio feed too (from the phono outputs on your Sky box to your PC soundcard).

Video sender: If you don't fancy the cable run, consider getting a video-sender to send output wirelessly. AV senders are available from Argos and Maplin. Note that these normally transmit to a SCART socket, so you may need a RF modulator to convert an AV Sender's output from SCART to co-ax aerial input