I want to dump SKY+ and change to FREESAT with a HD recorder. I have a no. of cycling recordings I want to keep, does anyone know how, if its possible, to copy to my Mac laptop. Does anyone have any experience of Freesat?

My parents got a freesat ready HD telly just before Xmas and had the dish fitted this week. I haven’t seen it yet but they’re happy with it and get the HD broadcast progs OK. Does what it says on the tin.

i do not think you can take anything off a sky plus hard drive.

You will still have the Sky+ box after you cancel
I think you should still be able to view stuff that you previously recorded

no, you will not be able to view stuff on hard drive once you have cancelled

So I take it you can’t can’t view anything if you lose sat comms?

you can view what is free to air.

A friend has Sky+ and records stuff to DVD after he’s recorded a complete series. He has a DVD recorder designed for recording TV programmes, so I assume he just plays them from Sky* to the TV via the DVD recorder.

he must be still subscribing to sky tho mike??

What I’m trying to figure out is if you were to lose your sat signal [dish blown down etc.] would you then not be able to view anything you have previously recorded until the dish has been repaired? – presuming you are a Sky+ subscriber
If you can still view recordings in the above scenario, what’s to stop the OP pulling the sat feed and the phone line before cancelling their subs?
Just really looking at it from their dilemma

I’ve spent the best part of the last 25 years in the satcomms business but never really bothered with Sky – mainly just VSAT stuff so I’m not really up on what can & can’t be done with a Sky system.
If you can’t do what I suggested – I guess the box still needs to have some sort of constant verification over the air which is a bit of a bugger for anyone who has a dish fault

It looks a bit of a faff, but if you look for Sky+ video extraction you’ll find links like this. And looks like you need a valid viewing card to do the decoding.

Probably easiest thing (but will lose some quality) is to just record them to DVD then rip that to your Mac before you cancel the contract.

in theory you should be able to watch it.
it is only if you cancel down your subscription, because sky put a block on your card.

Ah.. OK so as long as they can’t ‘talk’ to the card they can’t de-activate it

I guess it will de-activate itself though if it goes x days without the signal

You can usse a stand alone PVR to record from a Sky box but you will have to be tuned to the sky input for the duration of the program. Sky+ is only operational whilst you are paying a subscription to Sky. The box will cease to record once you cancel your subscription and you will be unable to watch previously recorded programs, thus turning it into a standard sky box.

In summary, Freesat + PVR is doable but annnoying and a bit of a faff.

>In summary, Freesat + PVR is doable but annnoying and a bit of a faff.

Why annoying ?

I’ve got freesat with a humax pvr. Whats not to like, it’s free has high def and you can add on an external hard drive so you can save an extra terrabyte of programmes if you want.

Freesat vs Sky????? Freesat wins hands down. No subs and free HD. We had sky cancelled about 3 years agoand so were left with free to view. Now time to but a new TV with Freesat built in. already paid the slight extra with it built in the TV.No more to pay. That means it will plug straight to the existing cable and we have Freesat with HD…
So, to record, you buy an extra freesat PVR by Humax, that way you can rec 2 different programmes while watching another…

Sorted!

I recorded a movie from Sky Movies to the sky+ box. After I cancelled my subscription to the movies, I was no longer able to view that recording.

Cheers, didn’t think it would be simple! I’m convinced about the Freesat, just wanted to save/keep stuff on the Sky+ box before cancelling. My Mac laptop has a DVD burner so I was hoping it would be as simple as connecting that and using as a recorder.