compatability with virgin tv

A

Amber2009

New Member
Hi all
I'm a newbie. I've searched the forums and although I've seen references to Virgin I don't think anyone has answered this specific question, so apologies if I've missed it.

I've got a Virgin box ( 2-3 years old) in the living room. I want to get a Hummy for its recording facility, as I don't want to pay out to Virgin for a Tivo or similar which won't let me transfer the recordings to usb. Is there a way I can run the Virgin cable signal through a Hummy so I can record the cable channels (as well as the free to air ones already on Hummy freeview)?

many thanks
Amber
 
I'm afraid not, all Humax boxes will only record from their built in Freeview tuners. You may be able to do what you want using a DVD/HDD Recorder.
 
thanks Brian. the problem is that the recorded programme is then on the hard drive of the recorder, usually without a way of getting it on to usb without burning to a dvd-rw then ripping on to a computer, which is time consuming and a pain. I travel and like to have tv to watch on my laptop that I've recorded. I use get_iplayer to record the bbc programmes, but can't find a similar way to record C4 and cable
 
What about using a video capture card/USB device to record the programmes from your Virgin box directly onto your laptop.
 
Ooh, now there's a thought. How would I set this up? I presume I'd need the device attached to the laptop, but how would I get the Virgin signal to the device.? I've got an old pc that I use for basic tasks, so I could presumably get a usb or scsi card to sit in one of the bays, but I wonder if there is a minimum speed / power for the processor (I'm thinking an older processor might not have enough power to run video smoothly). I'm trying to do this on a budget, as well...
 
You would probably be able to get the Virgin output via a Scart socket, or composite video and audio phono sockets if it has them.
 
Here's an idea for you: I have a couple of analogue PVRs and I have not been averse to opening up and connecting the hard drive straight to a PC (I use a USB adapter) to rip recordings out of them. Unlike the current DVB PVRs, they have analogue front-ends so they can digitise a standard video signal straight to disk, normally in a format directly compatible with DVD. I used to think I would have no use for them after DSO, but actually they plug a gap when it comes to analogue video.

The point is that one of these could probably be picked up second hand pretty cheaply, could record the SCART output from your Virgin box on a timer schedule without tying up a PC, and if you are an adept tinkerer could be bodged to make the hard drive easily accessible (or even unpluggable) to copy the recording to wherever you want it.

If you want to know what to look out for, I'll have to reacquaint myself with the model numbers but one is a Liteon and the other is a re-packaged Liteon re-badged Yamada. Actually they both have DVD writers in them, but it would be time I don't have at the moment to get them working properly.
 
Black Hole
Many thanks. This is a bit beyond my bodging capacity at the moment, but an interesting learning project for the future....

Amber
 
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