There is no further compression with Sky+ that with the original signal as there is no further processing. However, UK shops are notoriously bad at demonstrating digital TV in any form.
Almost without exception, they all use the UHF feed into the TV and then turn all the TVs noise processing (sharpness) controls on, resulting in a diabolical picture.
Given that we have had RGB feeds as standard on TVs and standard cables (SCART) for well over ten years, it is appalling.
Sky already offer a box to do this. The Sky+ box records the digital satellite feed directly to hard disk. With it's twin feeds, it can record one channel while you pause/rewind another.
And it's ease of use beats any PC ever made.
FWIW I rejected Tivo in favour of Sky+ purely due to quality. (I can watch a widescreen movie played back in the original quality with DD5.1 - Tivo cannot come close)
Sky+ is by far a better system than Tivo. By recording the original digital satellite feed, it gives much better quality pictures and sound than Tivo. Add in the integration with the Sky Satellite Receivers (Sky+ has 2 receivers) making the system incredibly easy to use and Tivo doesn't really stand a chance.
(Beware the FUD surrounding the Sky+ box. It suffers from the corp syndrome, as in anything from Sky must be bad and anything from the little guy -Tivo - must be good. In practice, this is not the case)
Slashdot Mirror
There is no further compression with Sky+ that with the original signal as there is no further processing. However, UK shops are notoriously bad at demonstrating digital TV in any form. Almost without exception, they all use the UHF feed into the TV and then turn all the TVs noise processing (sharpness) controls on, resulting in a diabolical picture. Given that we have had RGB feeds as standard on TVs and standard cables (SCART) for well over ten years, it is appalling.
Sky already offer a box to do this. The Sky+ box records the digital satellite feed directly to hard disk. With it's twin feeds, it can record one channel while you pause/rewind another. And it's ease of use beats any PC ever made. FWIW I rejected Tivo in favour of Sky+ purely due to quality. (I can watch a widescreen movie played back in the original quality with DD5.1 - Tivo cannot come close)
Sky+ is by far a better system than Tivo. By recording the original digital satellite feed, it gives much better quality pictures and sound than Tivo. Add in the integration with the Sky Satellite Receivers (Sky+ has 2 receivers) making the system incredibly easy to use and Tivo doesn't really stand a chance. (Beware the FUD surrounding the Sky+ box. It suffers from the corp syndrome, as in anything from Sky must be bad and anything from the little guy -Tivo - must be good. In practice, this is not the case)