How to record sky+ to a computer

[knobbynonuts]

Hi there and happy new year to you all,I need the help of a few of you out there.
I have recently had a sky+ box installed with a 80gb hard drive what I need to know is there a way that I can transfer the recordings to an external portable hard drive.
I have not bought the hard drive yet as was not sure if this was possible, I have tried hooking up my laptop to the sky box via the boxes usb connection and my laptop does not seem to reconize it am not sure if its the usb to usb lead as its a fairly old one,have any of you tried doing this with sucsses and also if it does work can you somehow send the recordings direct to the portable hard drive or would you have to transfer the recordings to a computer first and then from the computer to your external hard drive.
Thanks for looking good luck and happy bidding (whoops sorry wrong site) CHEERS................

[vehelpfulguy]

This is discussed here

http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t =18782

Seems you cannot.

The image on the sky+ hard disk is still encrypted and uses your Sky card to decode it while it plays.

If you move the file from the sky+ box to an external hard disk it would stil be encrypted.

You could ask on here

http://www.avforums.com/

This is where all the TV experts hang out.

One option, you could record the program off Sky+ on to a DVD (if you have a DVD recorder), then put the DVD in the computer and extract the program that way.

[knobbynonuts]

Thanks for that v.h.g. you indeed live up to your alias i know now that the usb port on the sky box only contains a current and nothing else and anyway the programes are encrypted
(scusse spelling) and the sky box unscrambles them should have known that, looks like I will have to do it the hard old fashioned way as you said put them on dvd to watch on holidays, or put them on dvd and then copy to hard drive oh god how old fashioned innit...
But just thought if you record the stuff on sky then it must be already descrambeled to put it on the hard drive as you can put it on dvd so realy the only prob here is the usb port bloody sky why cant they try to make things more easier
Cheers vhg............

[skyguy13]

Here you go:
http://copyplus.artisswebdesign.co.uk/
Hope that helps.

[knobbynonuts]

Cheers for that skyguy looks promosing will try soon.