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Recording from SKY Q Miniboxes to computer / DVD recorder
Hi there
The engineers from SKY unsurprisingly know as little about their products as a 4 year old !!! so forget what they tell you --if you want to record to external devices with SKY Q products (not the old SKY + box which has an inbuilt copy function) then here's how to do it.
SKY Q is great(when it works) but there's a big feature missing -- there's no facility to record to external devices such as a DVD recorder.
It IS possible (in spite of what SKY TV say) but you need a bit of trickery to get it to work (and currently only 1080p -- I haven't found any video capture devices that work with the UHD 4K sky Q streams - totally different set of DRM protection).
Quick note here -- SKY Q works on internal 5GHZ mesh network which the main Silver Q box and the minis use - often you'll see it as something like SKYCF2D4 - however it needs your broadband to "glue" this mesh together and transmit controls between the various boxes so DO NOT DISABLE either the 2.4 GHZ or 5 GHZ settings on the boxes.
1) on the main SKY Q box plug an Ethernet cable into the box from your router -- SKY say it's better to use wifi - but that's "just a load of little round objects" or plain Bollocks in Her Majesty's English !!. When you add the devices explained later you'll probably get "connection problems" if you keep the main box as wifi.
2) You need to go into the engineers menu -- on the handset select settings and from settings press 0,0,1 select quickly and then from the menu enable ETHERNET. If you don't do this although using the ADVANCED setting seems to allow you to use Ethernet it won't connect !!! (not surprisingly since by default ETHERNET is disabled).
3) connect the sky Q silver (main box) to the internet -- that should work fine.
Note here on the SKY Q miniboxes you can mix Ethernet and wifi -- if you don't want to record from the minibox leave as wifi.
If you do want to record from a SKY Q minibox you really need to use ETHERNET -- you can use a wifi bridge if you haven't got LAN by the minibox - that works fine too --plug the Ethernet cable into one of the WIFI bridge router's LAN ports --there's usually 4 of them and this method provides a much better throughput than Wifi.
4) on the Sky Q minibox go into the engineers menu (0,0,1 select) as per step 2 and enable wifi.
5) connect to the internet using Ethernet option -- you may have to go to your main SKY Q box to "join" the minibox.
6) now you need an HDMI spltter -- the NEET one works together with it's cables. If the cables aren't exact you probably will get "Broadband connectivity" messages on the screen or even no signal. However the NEET splitter (2 way) works just fine --remember 1080p is max resolution .
7) connect TV to one HDMI output and connect second one either to an HDMI-->SCART if you are using a DVD recorder - I don't think there are any yet that do HDMI input for recording unfortunately -- or connect to a very nice little 1080p capture device from Star Tech -- software included - runs on Windows.
You don't need another HDMI connector for the as the output from the capture device is seen on the computer by the USB input. This capture device also can capture in stand alone mode to an SD card or stream directly. !! without needing a computer at all.
I'm still waiting for something that can capture and split the UHD 4K signal - but remember the SKY Q miniboxes can only do 1080p max so I prefer to set up the recording devices with those while still enjoying UHD 4K sports etc.
I'm reasonably impressed with SKY W -- needs a bit more development before the "average joe" can muck around with it --but OH dear -- the "installers" just seem hopeless -- even saying you can't use Ethernet - it won't work !!!!!
Not only does it work it most certainly works BETTER and have had ZERO connectivity issues. !!!!
Cheers
jimbo
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