Hi,

is anyone else using an Analog capture card to record sky channels? Do you use the little red IR buds to change channel?

If so, do you find it reliable? I know when I was back on MCE05, it wasn't too bad, but on Win7, having just been forced by $ky to go back to their STB, I'm now finding that even if I manually setup each number during the TV setup, the channel changes are really really poor - for example to change to Sky1, entering the value 106 will generally result in the STB receiving 06, trying FX on channel 164, will often get 14 - its so hit and miss!

Anyone else seeing these problems?

If only I could get my Sky controller working again!

Tony

I remember that back in the bad ol' days I bought a device that plugged in the aerial socket on the back of the sky box that then plugged into the remote control unit allowing channel switching via the aerial socket rather than the IR thingy. This improved the accuracy of channel changes greatly.

I haven't received my white sky card yet. Does it prevent viewing of all the encrypted sky channels eg Sky One, Discovery or just the premium channels like sports and movies?

Sky suck. If that is the case and it cannot be fixed with a Predator firmware update or even a new CAM then sky will NOT be getting any of my money anymore.

Don't you find it odd that us legitimate paying subscribers are going to miss out, yet the card sharing, pirating lot are not effected.

Hi Gary,

yep thats my sky controller that you're talking about - even thats having problems - but I suspect thats also due to the channel changing codes.

If you're talking about using the floppydtv with the sky card, then the card is no longer being detected correctly, the CI software just reports unknown.

So basically it turns your device into a freesat card.

Tony

oh crap

Hopefully a different cam will be able to read the card, or maybe even a firmware uprgade on your current cam... I've got feelers out in several other forums to see if we can find a way round.

If I find anything, I'll report back as I'm already fed up with my analog card, and its only been in 'use' for the past 3-4 days

Tony

Hi Gary,

well, I'm currently having fun with firestb and the sky controller - unfortunately firestb doesn't know which tuner is actually being used - I have 2 analog capture cards in my pc, one is used, the other isn't.

Unfortunately my sky controller is a single input/output model, and has worked fine in the past, however I only had the one tuner back then.... now I have 2 analog cards, and its picking them up in the wrong order - ie unused one being the tuner it wants to use, but the channel/program details appear under the second tuner!  I'm going to try a dual input controller and see if that makes any difference.  Unfortunately at the moment, if I try and make tuner 2 the Sky STB, and remove from tuner 1, close the window, and open it back up again, and the settings have reverted back :-(

Oh well, its either the dual controller works, or I get rid of Sky - the IR blasters are giving me no joy at all!

hey ho, life continues!

Tony

Hi Guys, I've also been waiting in dread for the new white card to show up. Closest I've found to a solution is in this thread http://www.avforums.com/forums/9858473-post5.html I'm going to give that a try when my card arrives but if not then I'll be ditching Sky. Funny how the EU Commission drags MS across the coals for IE then turns a blind eye to Murdoch restricting hardware choice :sigh: Perhaps some upstanding EU citizens should report this ;)

Hopefully someone that already has the cam programmer and loader card can very that this solution works correctly :-)

Tony

Well, I now have MC working with FireSTB, but its flakey to say the least, and I wouldn't trust the software to remember its settings, but for now its working.

Hopefully though, someone can find a solution so that i can resurrect our floppydtv card!

Tony

Tony - if you're still having the "two tuners but only one connected" problem - you know you can either go through each channel in edit channels, and deselect the card that has no signal in Edit Sources? Alternately, you can run Autoselect which scans through all channel sources, and deselects the sources with no signal.

Hi,

thanks for that - I've already done that, unfortunately its the firestb software that thinks I'm using 2 tuners, one hasn't even been set up for use in MC - but I guess the firestb sofware was written well before homegenous tuners were even thought of - while it is flakey, it is working, so for once, I ain't gonna fiddle :-D

Tony