UK TV Via Slingbox

[james the mechanic]

Hi Guys,
Has anyone got any experience of viewing UK tv in NZ via a Slingbox. (www.slingmedia.com)
If so can you comment on the quality and also does anyone know a way to time-shift the four main UK channels.
That's time-shift in the true sense of the word, (effectively a 12 hour loop) not this pause and rewind live tv marketing crap.
I'd also be interested in any other low cost soulutions you may have.
James

[renew]

another option is if you have a spare pc and decent TV aerial would be set it up with a digital TV card ( or more than 1) and then access it remotely to program what u want to record. Then set the PC as an PTP server and you should be good to go. Well at least until the computer hangs.....

good luck

[james the mechanic]

How do I do the 12 hour loop bit, i.e. UK tv +12?

[renew]

It may be difficult to do what i think you are aiming for which is to watch UK tv 12 hours behind as streaming a tv picture is hard to do in terms of bandwidth unless you sacrificed quality. You may also find that the UK isp would resrict your usage due to the volume of data. You might be more successfull with just recording & downloading specific programs, that way you can download programs whilst you sleep.

[Dom]

I currently use sky tv in the UK with a media pc for recording.

Would this still work in NZ assuming the place I went to had a sky dish already installed or would I have to get a new sky box and card ?

cheers

[renew]

I currently use sky tv in the UK with a media pc for recording.

Would this still work in NZ assuming the place I went to had a sky dish already installed or would I have to get a new sky box and card ?

cheers

hi dom,
your PC would be unaffected in when in NZ. Only problem would be that the DVD drive that you have currently would be set to UK/europe at the moment. You could set it the NZ region but then you would not be able to play yur UK titles you can only usually change the region 4 or 5 times so be carefull. Or you could do google search to make it region free;-)
Not sure about yur sky box but i am sure that someone else can answer.

[Dom]

hi dom,
your PC would be unaffected in when in NZ. Only problem would be that the DVD drive that you have currently would be set to UK/europe at the moment. You could set it the NZ region but then you would not be able to play yur UK titles you can only usually change the region 4 or 5 times so be carefull. Or you could do google search to make it region free;-)
Not sure about yur sky box but i am sure that someone else can answer.

Aye, cheers for that - I use AnyDvd anyway so it removes all this stupid restriction on what you can play ! Thanks for the tip though !

[IanW99]

I currently use sky tv in the UK with a media pc for recording.

Would this still work in NZ assuming the place I went to had a sky dish already installed or would I have to get a new sky box and card ?

cheers

Some answers:-

Sky boxes from the UK are not compatible with NZ.

Many houses in NZ will already have Sky installed or you can get it installed relatively cheaply.

How are you connecting your sky box to your media PC, if its via composite or scart then you will have no problems. If it is via RF (tuner) then NZ broadcasts in PAL B/G so you will need to be able to cope with this format (it is PAL I in the UK).

Also check out My Sky (called Sky+ in the UK)

Ian

[Dom]

Some answers:-

Sky boxes from the UK are not compatible with NZ.

Many houses in NZ will already have Sky installed or you can get it installed relatively cheaply.

How are you connecting your sky box to your media PC, if its via composite or scart then you will have no problems. If it is via RF (tuner) then NZ broadcasts in PAL B/G so you will need to be able to cope with this format (it is PAL I in the UK).

Also check out My Sky (called Sky+ in the UK)

Ian

its by s-video but I can connect via composite as well although as you probably know it won't be as good quality.

cheers

[IanW99]

Yep, s-video is technically better than composite.

Just a point on connectors in NZ, generally Video devices e.g. TVs do NOT have scart connectors on them (scart is a european connector) but for Sky boxes they do, so your current setup should be just fine (NZ sky box of course).

Ian