Help with New Cable system on my Ship, yes , Ship!!!

[Nickh82]

To cut a long story short, BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Services) have installed an omni directional Sat to my ship.(Which will remain nameless,but can assure you i am genuine.) This sat signal is converted into DVB-C and in each mess deck we have had installed a Humax Kabel Reciever PR-HD 1000c DTV Reciever. Within this is a Cryptoworks CAM and legitimate viewing card. Obviously they transmit Movies,live sports etc to us,Afghan,Iraq etc. We don't wish to break the law, we just want a PVR so that we can record e.g.match of the day for lads that are on watch or asleep as we are all awake at different times. I have been told by Humax of Germany (as uk market is stitched up by Virgin!) that they manufacture a DVB-C PVR by the name of iCord.Which will be a direct one for one.easy. However its bloody extortianate (?399.99)!! So, knowing all of you Guru's on here, i thought maybe someone would know of an alternative. We sail for a particular Middle eastern area very soon and we have a budget of around ?200.The lads have put money into this themselves for this.As BFPS are not in the business of upgrading things, to be fair, (we are very grateful for what they have given us),we are looking for some sort of advice that will allow us to make a decision. Any help is Truly appreciated.

Nick "Bob" Hoskins
LET (WE)

[SatSearching]

Are you sure they are cable boxes? To do this I would guess the ship has some sort of head end to remodulate the signals from satellite to a cable box?

Anyway, eitherway, if you have a genuine cam module and card, I see no problem to you using a different box with pvr features as long as it has a ci slot. Just need to work out if they are cable or sat boxes you have (tuner frequencys are the issue, and/or the signal conditioning system the ship uses?).

To cut a long story short, BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Services) have installed an omni directional Sat to my ship.(Which will remain nameless,but can assure you i am genuine.) This sat signal is converted into DVB-C and in each mess deck we have had installed a Humax Kabel Reciever PR-HD 1000c DTV Reciever. Within this is a Cryptoworks CAM and legitimate viewing card. Obviously they transmit Movies,live sports etc to us,Afghan,Iraq etc. We don't wish to break the law, we just want a PVR so that we can record e.g.match of the day for lads that are on watch or asleep as we are all awake at different times. I have been told by Humax of Germany (as uk market is stitched up by Virgin!) that they manufacture a DVB-C PVR by the name of iCord.Which will be a direct one for one.easy. However its bloody extortianate (?399.99)!! So, knowing all of you Guru's on here, i thought maybe someone would know of an alternative. We sail for a particular Middle eastern area very soon and we have a budget of around ?200.The lads have put money into this themselves for this.As BFPS are not in the business of upgrading things, to be fair, (we are very grateful for what they have given us),we are looking for some sort of advice that will allow us to make a decision. Any help is Truly appreciated.

Nick "Bob" Hoskins
LET (WE)

[Nickh82]

Yes, they are 100% German Kabel. I took the model number off the front and i have the manual in PDF format even though its in sodding German! ! They are Premiere HD versions manufactured for the German market. an obvious chioce as we all know its sewn up over here. The HD thing is a bit of a red herring, at no point will the MOD be sending us High Def in the future, just think they got hold of X amount at a certain rate. So as long as I have a CI slot, will the Cam do the necessary decoding? The only other issue is the fact that if we pay to order a certain box, and it doesn't work the way we want. Can't really kiss goodbye to the best part of ?200.

[Nickh82]

In addition to my last post, frequency is 59kHz and Signal Rate is 6900, definately a cable box, definately a cable signal. Would post photo's but not allowed to for obvious reasons.

[aftermath]

you could buy a dreambox 600c and fit a hard drive inside for recording to , you should easy get these for under ?200 .. DM600 approx ?120 and a laptop hard drive for under ?80

it has a ci slot as well

[Nickh82]

I have thought about this, however the only thing that i am unsure of is the image. do i need a Cryptoworks virtual cam in order to decode? I had a Linuxsat box before and it was a bloody nightmare. we need something that just plugs in, flashes with relevant firmware and will be fine for 7 months. Once we are away we will have no access to download new images. so if it goes tits, we have no way of experimenting with the firmware. Am considering buying the German Humax PVR with Cam slot as a straight sawp,its all becoming far too complex.AAGHH!

[bigeric]

Bob
Good to see you putting in the effort to sort things out for the lads on board - good on ya.