The wife has got herself Sky + for Christmas and is going on about recording stuff to show the kids at school.

Can you copy stuff off the hard drive of a Sky + box using a DVD recorder?

You can back things up with Sky+, but it does it in real time and I think it'll only do it via an analogue connection(?)

I'm assuming that "the wife" is a teacher, in which case the school would need the license to show stuff that's been recorded - at least we do as a college

Yes you can record stuff from sky+ to a dvd recorder or vhs. there is a copy function in the programme planner menu. You can do it at any point after you have recorded a programme before it gets deleted.

As above.

However i believe if you use the copy function to get films from any of the sky movies channel it comes out unwatchable.( unless that has been changed. )

I have accidentally found a way to overcome the decryption from sky movies to record to DVD.

There's no problem recording from SKY+ to a DVD recorder. If you mark the programme with 'record' it will automatically start your DVD/video recorder recording when you playback the sky+ recording. I've never had a problem with encryption on the movie channels or the cough.. adult channels but it might be an issue on certain box office films.

If you want to record in RGB then you need to connect scart 1 to the DVD recorder which isn't ideal because it's designed to connect to the tv. If you do this then the 'automatic recording start' function above won't work. Also bear in mind that you lose the digital surround sound tracks of movies too unless your DVD recorder has an optical audio input that you can hook up to the sky+ box output.