[mythtvnz] Extracting EPG from sky

[Corrin Lakeland]

On 2/02/2006, at 9:16 PM, Nick Rout wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Feb 2006 18:56:19 +1300
> Corrin Lakeland <lakeland@go.org.nz> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Short of buying a DVB card and splitting my digital signal, is there
>> any way to get the EPG data out of my sky box?  I currently have it
>> plugged into my PVR500.
>>
>> Corrin
>
> bittorrent - a waste of time for this amount of data. the mechanics of
> downloading the .torrent file every day, then firing up a bittorrent
> client to get a 1/2 M data (compressed) is too much bother compared to
> good old wget or curl.


You're probably right.  I was thinking wget on the .torrent followed  
by btlaunchheadless, but at 500k it would make a very small amount of  
data to distribute.  My concern is that the generous source providing  
this data might not be so willing if hundreds are taking advantage of  
it.  I know I'm downloading it twice since for some stupid reason  
squid is refusing to cache it (I checked the modified header, I'm  
pretty sure the fault is at my end, I promise I'll sort it out soon).

> I don't think Sky will be giving this away for any affordable price.
> Use the existing internet sources is my advice.

Okay, how about going back to my first suggestion and buying a cheap  
DVB-S card coupled with a PVR150.  The DVB card can then extract FTA  
channels as well as EPG data, while a PVR150 can pick up the sky  
channels (via composite and an IR blaster).  A budget DVB-S card is  
$160 or less, a PVR150 is $150, while a PVR500 is $270, so you're  
barely paying more.  Any chance of sky choosing to encrypt the FTA  
channels or their EPG data?

PS: Something that might amuse people here, after a lot of  
comparisons I finally decided which remote I thought would be best  
for controlling my mythtv box.  It has "Microsoft" written in large  
letters on it...  Next think y'know, I'll be installing MCE2k5!

Corrin