# Sky Movies asks for a PIN?



## Lysander (Sep 18, 2003)

Hi there,

I have NTL, with Sky Movies. Yesterday when Tivo tried to record a movie during the day it was faced with "Sky Movies may now show 12 and 15 movies before 8pm, please press the red button and enter your PIN".

Is that it for Tivo recording on Sky Movies then? I assume Sky+ is unaffected by this....?

Thanks,

James


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## BrianHughes (Jan 21, 2001)

It's only for Sky Movies 9 & 10 - I've deselected these from "Channels you watch". You are correct in you assumption about Sky+


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Sky+ users are also effected (and HD ones) As everytime you want to watch a movie with more than a normal rating you have to enter your pin to play it back 

As chn 9 & 10 are the HD channels its worse as these are the only channels normally watched recorded.

Automan.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Another script perhaps? AutoPin?

Not sure how reliable the pin request stuff is though.. IIRC it has a habit of coming up sometimes but not others.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

It isn't predictable. It only comes up when the film is being broadcast before the time that it's certificate should allow. i.e If they show a 15-rated film at 2pm.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

iankb said:


> It isn't predictable. It only comes up when the film is being broadcast before the time that it's certificate should allow. i.e If they show a 15-rated film at 2pm.


Surely that wouldn't make it impossible?

I've just had a look on the grid tivoweb module at war of the worlds and is shows the rating of the film.

Bearing in mind I don't know any tcl, couldn't there be a test like if ((newchannel ==movies9) && (rating =>15) && ( time < 9pm)) then ...

Or are there no clearly defined rules regarding at what time certain ratings will require a pin?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

According to the description of the informational segments called "Pin Protection on Sky Movies" on Sky Movies 9 & 10


> Sky Movies are now showing more grown-up films during the day. Movies with a certificate of 12 or 15 will be PIN protected when they're screened before 8pm.


It's very annoying as, to avoid clashes, some of the showings prior to 8pm on these channels turn out to be mandatory.

I have therefore resorted to manually checking the TDL for movies with these ratings on these channels starting before 8pm, removing them and attempting to manually schedule alternative recordings 

Didn't somebody say that Sky was going to make this "feature" optional? It's possible to access some of the FTA (but IMHO adult content) channels 24x7 without a PIN.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Isn't the answer not to subscribe to any Sky pay movie channels?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I don't, normally, but tend to add them for a month at Xmas to hoover up a bunch of films in a short time


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> I don't, normally, but tend to add them for a month at Xmas to hoover up a bunch of films in a short time


Just subbed myself for £15 worth of Knowledge and News mix for one month to get two weeks of Paris-Dakar rally on Eurosport and also pick up any air crash programs I haven't seen on National Geographic, Discovery Wings et al (Helios and SilkAir are two I haven't seen before).

Doesn't seem worth paying £37 or whatever for Sky Movies when I already have a load of non pay movies sitting on the Tivo awaiting time for me to watch them. And that's along with episodes of things like Dr Who and Life on Mars that I haven't quite got round to fnding time for as yet. All of the second series of the Apprentice that I had been meaning to watch but not ever mustered the enthusiasm for pressing Play on bit the dust the other day apart from the first and last episodes.

To be honest I spend far too much time on the internet and in these forums and its really cutting into my tv viewing time.  

Also Film 4 makes the need for every paying for movies less and less unless you must watch ones that only came out 9 months ago rather than 2 or 3 years ago.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Well, for the extra £18 I'll pay for Sky Movies for one month, my TDL now contains the following 19 entries (plus others of less note):-
The Constant Gardener
Pride & Prejudice
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Phantom of the Opera
The Princess Diaries 2
Kingdom of Heaven
Bride & Prejudice
King Kong
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
In Her Shoes
Before Sunset
The Merchant of Venice
Meet the Fockers
The Passion of the Christ
Finding Neverland
A Very Long Engagement
Sideways
Broken Flowers​That's less than £1 per movie :up:


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

An autoscript to enter the pin could also have problems with padding.

If you change to the channel before the movie start time it may not ask for the pin till about the time the movie starts. Sometimes later.

Thus if tivo selected chn 309 and then entered the pin. It may or not be asking for the pin and thus you could end up one the channel the equals the first three digits of your pin.

I suppose making the first three digits of your pin equal a channel that did not exist would help.

Automan.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

The timing of the pin request seems to be automatic. 

I have a recording of Stealing Beauty (cert 15) from Sky Movies 7 the other night that was scheduled to start at 3.30am and finish at 5:35am and appeared to be running on time. Exactly 5 minutes before the end at 5:30 the screen went blank and the pin request dialog appeared. As it happened, all that was missed was the end of the credits so I wasn't too unhappy, but this indicates that there is some kind of automated rule that enforces a pin between 5:30am and 8pm on rated material. If it was being done manually then it woudn't have appeared just for the last 5 minutes of the credits, surely? 

So hopefully, we could be fairly sure that a start time within the pin required period would trigger the pin request. For those that I've seen, the pin is requested immediately after the channel change (when the channel changes), so a script to output the pin under the right circumstances 10 seconds or so after the channel change should work. I guess, as you say, it would be better to turn off pre-padding to avoid the complication of having to delay the pin until the actual start of the programme. 

Where a programme straddled the start of the pin-request period as in my example above, I suspect we would be somewhat snookered, but for most instances where the start of the programme was before the end of the pin-request period, a script would be OK.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

I've seen it the other way, when a box left on the pin request switched the movie on automatically at 8pm. It seems to be entirely automatic.

The other suggestion of setting your pin to eg. 9999 and sending it anyway would work also. If there was no pin request the channel 999 request would fail and the extra 9 would timeout in a minute anyway.. no harm done. Saves having to interrogate the database for the movie rating.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Isn't channel 999 Sky customer services or some such? I wonder if a pin of 0000 is valid?


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## Regor (Feb 24, 2003)

I had this problem on film4 also, Resident Evil was on before 10pm and it asked for a pin. Very annoying


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

blindlemon said:


> Isn't channel 999 Sky customer services or some such? I wonder if a pin of 0000 is valid?


The is of course the problem that you can't change the pin any more.. they seem to have blocked it. All I get is 'call 08702 404040'. WTF is that all about? edit: You need to plug something into the phone socket. It doesn't make a call, it just won't let you change the pin otherwise.

0000 would be an ideal pin - if you enter that as a channel number is just comes up with invalid channel and goes away in about a second or two.

edit2: Knocked up a script to do this.. seems to work OK. There's the risk of missing the first minute of the film but it's better than missing the entire film I guess...


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## mccg (Jun 18, 2002)

My PIN is 0000, so it is definitely valid.
Since I live alone, I just chose the simplest number to enter.


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