# SKY+ HD (new guide an FYI)



## rickynumber18 (Feb 28, 2007)

Hi all. I received the new SKY+ HD guide last night (it's pretty good and you can search for programmes). 

Sky have identified a bug regarding the front panel display. If like me you prefer the wizzy wheel to be turned off rather than distracting you whilst you're watching by going round and round and round and round, right now you can't turn it off even if you alter the setting to 'off'. There is a bug which is keeping the front panel display active and the SKY technical guys are aware.

Anyone else received the upgrade? Any thoughts? SKY have obviously taken some of the TiVo extras on board.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

rickynumber18 said:


> Anyone else received the upgrade? Any thoughts? SKY have obviously taken some of the TiVo extras on board.


I received it sometime last week, but it took me until Sunday to notice the new channel-change banner while catching up on TiVo recordings (which is the primary recording device in my setup).

While it's a vast improvement on the old Sky+ UI I still find the new system a bit fiddly and I don't like the reliance on the coloured buttons and the lack of "are you sure" confirmation prompts when deleting from the "planner" (which seems an incongruous name for what is essentially the list of recordings - at least it is for me - but I guess future recordings are also listed here, in which case it's a merged version of ToDo and Now Showing, which seems odd when used to TiVo). That said, I do like the way recordings are automatically grouped.

Thankfully it still works with TiVo, but to be honest I only access the SkyHD UI when I'm watching HD stuff which is a rarity.

If I get home in time tonight I'll be adding the ITV HD channel for the footie. I also need to check if they fixed the FF/RWD behaviour on Thomson HD boxes with this update - 12x and 30x is no faster than 6x...


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## rickynumber18 (Feb 28, 2007)

Milhouse said:


> If I get home in time tonight I'll be adding the ITV HD channel for the footie. I also need to check if they fixed the FF/RWD behaviour on Thomson HD boxes with this update - 12x and 30x is no faster than 6x...


Hi Milhouse, is ITV HD now available on SKY+ HD? I can't find it in my HD list. I think you're right about fiddly. I've only used it for an hour or so but the total blueness of each and every screen is a bit overwhelming. I've spotted a few good editions though, highlighted recordings in the TV guide etc. Not bad.


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## JudyB (Jan 25, 2006)

rickynumber18 said:


> Hi Milhouse, is ITV HD now available on SKY+ HD? I can't find it in my HD list. I think you're right about fiddly. I've only used it for an hour or so but the total blueness of each and every screen is a bit overwhelming. I've spotted a few good editions though, highlighted recordings in the TV guide etc. Not bad.


The ITV website certainly doesn't think that it is. This is what they say about ITV HD on their website:


> ITV HD is a red-button service available *exclusively to freesat customers*, and select sporting events, movies and dramas are available in HD.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

rickynumber18 said:


> Hi Milhouse, is ITV HD now available on SKY+ HD? I can't find it in my HD list. I think you're right about fiddly. I've only used it for an hour or so but the total blueness of each and every screen is a bit overwhelming. I've spotted a few good editions though, highlighted recordings in the TV guide etc. Not bad.


Its a manual add job and not in the main epg

Add Channels Menu and use the following settings...

11.427
H
2/3
27500

Channel is 10510

The big challenge is finding a program in HD 

Automan.


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## rickynumber18 (Feb 28, 2007)

WOW. That was kept very quiet. Could we not have done that with the old SKY+ HD guide? I have added channels in the past. Any other "goodies" available by manual tuning? Now any chance of SKY adding it properly to an assigned channel no.? 

Does anyone know of a real quick way to watch 10510? I can't add it to my favourites. I presume recording is done via manual record.


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## gazter (Aug 1, 2001)

rickynumber18 said:


> Hi all. I received the new SKY+ HD guide last night (it's pretty good and you can search for programmes).
> 
> Sky have identified a bug regarding the front panel display. If like me you prefer the wizzy wheel to be turned off rather than distracting you whilst you're watching by going round and round and round and round, right now you can't turn it off even if you alter the setting to 'off'. There is a bug which is keeping the front panel display active and the SKY technical guys are aware.
> 
> Anyone else received the upgrade? Any thoughts? SKY have obviously taken some of the TiVo extras on board.


Well, irblast is now non functional, and the way that sky has written the software, pretty much impossible to fix.

I had it setup to use tivo, and when tivo recorded on a hd channel it would send an extra record ir signal to tell the sky box to record.

The new software has a visual prompt when you select a recording, giving you the option of recording a single episode or season. The problem is, this changes, and sometimes you dont get the prompt making irblast unusable (or, any auto recording device).


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## Mark Bennett (Sep 17, 2001)

Milhouse said:


> ...I don't like the reliance on the coloured buttons and the lack of "are you sure" confirmation prompts when deleting from the "planner"


I thought the same, but the guys over on the AVforums mentioned that you can use the "Keep" option (Blue button!) to give a prompt to prevent inadvertent deletion. With the new planner you can mark program to "keep" in advance of it being recorded too, and it works for all episodes in future if using season pass.
Then you get a prompt if you hit the yellow "delete" button. :up:


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## mutant_matt2 (Dec 16, 2008)

rickynumber18 said:


> WOW. That was kept very quiet. Could we not have done that with the old SKY+ HD guide? I have added channels in the past. Any other "goodies" available by manual tuning? Now any chance of SKY adding it properly to an assigned channel no.?
> 
> Does anyone know of a real quick way to watch 10510? I can't add it to my favourites. I presume recording is done via manual record.


No, it's a feature of the new EPG (to be able to add it manually). However, you cannot record it, nor use any of the "trick play" features, like pause live TV etc. Typical Sky TBH...(a good reason for Freesat if you ask me (guess who hasn't got a Sky HD box  ))

Matt


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## rickynumber18 (Feb 28, 2007)

I'm not even sure the ITV HD content is HD. The football match (yawn) tonight was advertised as HD, however my TV kept defaulting to non-HD. Something it only does when HD isn't present.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

Mark Bennett said:


> I thought the same, but the guys over on the AVforums mentioned that you can use the "Keep" option (Blue button!) to give a prompt to prevent inadvertent deletion. With the new planner you can mark program to "keep" in advance of it being recorded too, and it works for all episodes in future if using season pass.
> Then you get a prompt if you hit the yellow "delete" button. :up:


Thanks for that. The problem is that almost all of the recordings in my "planner" are being made by the TiVo - ie. HD recordings - so wouldn't I have to go through my recordings and mark them as "Keep" in order to get this prompt when it comes time to delete them? Doesn't sound like a reasonable solution, and because it's the TiVo making ad-hoc recordings there's no way to set "Keep" before the event either. Really not sure why Sky didn't add the option to confirm a deletion - it's a pretty basic rule for most graphical user interfaces!

The problem I really have with the coloured buttons is because I'm using a Harmony One remote with the coloured buttons located on the touchscreen LCD. Although it hasn't happened yet I'm just waiting for the day I twitch while tapping the yellow delete icon on the LCD screen and accidentally delete two or more programmes!


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

gazter said:


> Well, irblast is now non functional, and the way that sky has written the software, pretty much impossible to fix.
> 
> I had it setup to use tivo, and when tivo recorded on a hd channel it would send an extra record ir signal to tell the sky box to record.
> 
> The new software has a visual prompt when you select a recording, giving you the option of recording a single episode or season. The problem is, this changes, and sometimes you dont get the prompt making irblast unusable (or, any auto recording device).


Yes, irblast for SkyHD is now slightly broken with the update. irblast needs to send the "select" command after the "record" command, that should work every time - it would select "Record Once" when prompted, and have no effect when there is no prompt.

In Blast_SkyPlusDigiBox.itcl, change:


```
if { $okforhd && $elapsedmins == $irblast_option_skyplusrecord } {
                SendButtons "SkyPlusDigiBox" { "Select" "Record" }
                after 4000
}
```
to

```
if { $okforhd && $elapsedmins == $irblast_option_skyplusrecord } {
                SendButtons "SkyPlusDigiBox" { "Select" "Record" "Select" }
                after 4000
}
```
My minimall testing at this hour suggests it should work fine whether prompted or not... I'm assuming that the prompt always contains "Record Once" as the first item! 

Not sure how the PIN handling of irblast is affected by this upgrade, that may need tweaking as well.


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## cyril (Sep 5, 2001)

I've had the new SkyHD EPG a while now.

The more I use it the more I think it is rubbish to a 10 year old TiVo!

The usability and design hasn't been properly thought out, especially with the mini-TV and there are still hundreds of features missing that they could have put in! It has quite a few bugs and isn't any more reliable either.

It is a step in the right direction though!


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## gazter (Aug 1, 2001)

Milhouse said:


> Yes, irblast for SkyHD is now slightly broken with the update. irblast needs to send the "select" command after the "record" command, that should work every time - it would select "Record Once" when prompted, and have no effect when there is no prompt.
> 
> In Blast_SkyPlusDigiBox.itcl, change:
> 
> ...


Where you able to clarify this gives you full functionality as before? I have not used the hd function of my sky+ since the upgrade because of this.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

gazter said:


> Where you able to clarify this gives you full functionality as before? I have not used the hd function of my sky+ since the upgrade because of this.


Yes, the change restores full functionality.


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## gazter (Aug 1, 2001)

Milhouse said:


> Yes, the change restores full functionality.


Doing the change now, thanks.
It seemed almost a devious attempt by Sky. As the choice for recording depends on whether or not the show is a series or a single episode, and whether or not it had been selected before.


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

Why devious? Much more user friendly to ask when selecting whether you want all episodes instead of the old faffing of pressing record then going into the planner to press the green button for series link.

I can't see Sky worrying too much about Tivo users when developing changes for their Sky+ boxes!


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