I decided to resurrect my HTPC and attempt to get SKY going into that. There where 4 major requirements for this

1. Has to be able to play content – I pay a silly amount a month just for 3 HD channels (BBC, Discovery and History) :: This meant that a DVB-S2 receiver was required

2. Has to be able to decode pay for channels – I pay a subscription to them, I’ll be damned if I don’t get my channels! :: This meant that either a SoftCAM or a CI slot and CAM were required

3. Has to be local to the machine, I want a raw MEPG2/h264 stream going to the media pc, and not any additional transcoding, also one less set of CPUs is a good thing ™ – This isnt a poke at a specific Linux Based satellite receiver at all :: This meant internal cards or locally attached devices (USB2/Firewire)

4. The HTPC must be running software that can play my videos – I don’t want to have my popcorn hour AND a HTPC to do my video. :: This meant using a Media Centre type application, this does however exclude Microsoft’s Windows Media Centre, as it doesn’t play MKVs/OGMs etc

Relatively small requests one would think, but apparently not! I was left with a few choices for Card, however the one that seemed to come out tops was the Digital-Everywhere FloppyDTV/S2. This meets requirements 1&3, by being able to decode DVB-S2 signals, and also is sending data via the Firewire bus.

In order to meet requirement 2 I opted for the “Dragon Cam” (or specifically the T-Rex 4.1). This is a Conditional Access Module, which along with a valid SKY viewing card, preforms the VideoCrypt (NDS) decryption. This does have one, annoying, caveat. The smartcard must go into a SKY box every 4->6 weeks to have a “new installation” done, as the CAM will not rewrite the new decryption codes to the card.

The Shopping list at the end of all of this was as follows:

• Digital Everywhere FireDTV S2 External @ £160 (External was chosen for various reasons, including the IR remote support)
• Firewire PCI Card @ £10 
• T-Rex Cam @ £60
• Infinity Unlimited USB Card Programmer @ £60 – This was required to do the initial loading of the T-Rex CAM, however can be returned / resold / similar as its a once off requirement

So all in all £220 to view/record on a media pc. This is for a single tuner only, as I don’t have access to multiple drops from the buildings satellite distribution system (which is rather amusing, as these are “executive” flats, built in the last 3 years, and yet all flats only have a single drop for satellite). Multi Drops can be done using a SoftCAM, where the CAM is replaced with a USB Smartcard programmer, but only one is required, meaning that the first channel would be £220, but each after that would be £160 (or £130 if an internal was to be used). Of course the Legality of using a SoftCAM is extremely questionable, where as a non official sky receiver is only marginally.

I’ll be documenting more on the setup soon