[vdr] SKY and VDR

Hi everyone,

I'm building a HTPC using xbmc and planning to use VDR to record and stream TV.

I'd like to use VDR to record from SKY using an existing subscription. I'm based in NZ if that makes a difference.

Is it possible to do this without encoding the source using an analogue encoder?

What I'd like to do is get the stream straight to disk, preferably including HD streams. Can I do this using a DVB-S card and a dragon (or similar) cam with VDR?

If not, can someone clarify what the sky-plugin does? I'm not sure if it works with a tv-card re-encodes the stream or if it just copies the stream directly to disk.

Any thoughts on what hardware or software I'd need to make this happen (if it's even possible) would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Alex