Rip Sky HD to NAS

Ok, so I have been meaning to get this started for quite a while, so here we go!

I am originally a XMBP user on the trusty xbox1, and when XBMC came out I was totally blown away and loved it ever since. So time passes and the world of HD streaming arrives, bt8 the poor little xbox1 gets left behind due to processing power (it is possible to get .mkv into xbox1, that’s another blog....!)

Anyhoo, the good old boy in XBMC release a multi-platform version of XBMC, finally we can harness the power of PC's for XBMC - love it!

Now, I still use XBMC and always will, but of recent I have had the urge to get an all in one platform for all my needs:

- Sky HD in 1080p (upscaled)

- 5.1 with all the audio codecs

- ability to stream HD video stored on NAS

- access to all music & pics ect....

no, XBMC does nearly all of this perfect, EXCEPT for the live TV part. So this blog will split between XBMC and W7MC. For now we will concentrate on getting W7MC up & running with all the bells & whistles - its excellent setup.

Since I have a Sky HD+ Subscription. I always wanted to rip the HD movies with 5.1 sound to my own storage as I hates paying Sky all that case, well there is a way - praise the lord. This was my original goal, but then morphed into creating the best Home theatre PC setup possible - IMO.

So hwo does one rip Sky HD+ content & keep full quality? with one of these bad boys:

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

Hauppauge HD PVR

I have a Thompson Sky HD box, so it had hdmi & component out - both outputs send video simultaneously , handy, so I can use the HDMI piped to my LCD and then use the component to connect to the HD PVR - handy out.

So managed to pull one of these off eBay 2nd hand, perfect condition.

My Initial impressions were VERY good, I am extremely impressed with the quality that HD PVR can rip at. the max nit rate goes up to 13.5mbps keeping full 5.1

It comes packed with Total Media Extreme, which is a little shite looking, but does the job if your ripping from Sky HD+

I didn’t bother with the scheduling application or any IR stuff with the HD PVR as my experience with these & other Hauppauge software is not great, very flaky - not to say they don’t work though, I just have no need for them.

Ok, the drivers are also bit flaky, 1.5.6 is the latest but it does the job, I'll go into depth on my PC setup later, this is EXTERMELY important for a stable HD PVR setup.

Ok, so now I am recording movies on Sky HD+ and ripping them to my HD when I have spare time, each movie is around 10 to 13 gigs and the choice of codecs are .m2ts / .ts / .achvd (?) - I’m sticking with .m2ts as it’s the same file ect as Blu-ray rips and will play nice with my other media streamers including PS3

So, now that I got that fully up & running, it dawned on me, surely there is a way to pipe Sky HD into media centre & retain full HD quality?

I have an old Hauppauge PVR350, which I had hooked up to W7MC just for fun, but quickly fell in love with the EPG & navigation in W7MC - it really is very impressive. however I was only piping a scar analogue connection into it so this was a little disappointing as I am using a 52" 1080p !

see top for a pic of recordings I did on the old PVR350 (4:3 format....)

So how do we get Sky HD into Media Center?

read next post........