# Terrible Timing



## leemcg (Nov 9, 2003)

As a S1 TiVo user who moved to Sky+ about a year ago when it started getting too difficult to keep TiVo going, I've been reading the Virgin news with some interest and have dusted down my TiVoCommunity login.

I have had terrible experiences with Virgin (well NTL) in the past, and good advantage of Sky is that you can use a completely separate company who offer good customer service to install everything. However, the Sky+ interface is terrible. There are just too many recordings missed when there's a 2 week gap, or permanent ends just because of one failed recording etc. I am seriously considering moving to Virgin just to get TiVo.

But the timing looks bad. I realise I can't get TiVo today.


I have 2x Sky HD boxes, and they are both breaking. One won't record (or pause), and the other does record but it fails to acknowledge one of its satellite inputs (which creates unpredictability as to whether a particular channel will work at a given time). Most recordings are currently failing.

Of course, you own your Sky boxes so it's my problem. I might buy new ones. I can get them a bit cheaper, but extend my Sky contract by 12 months, or buy elsewhere more expensively. I'll likely spend £500 on boxes.

That's not going to make me feel like it's good idea to move to Virgin in 2 months.

Alternatively maybe I could move to Virgin today, and upgrade to TiVo in a few months. But that looks like it could well create substantial cost for V+ then TiVo boxes...


If only TiVo was coming 3 months ago or in 9 months time!


And to make it worse (and look more like an omen).. O2 just emailed me to say they are putting up my (4.5meg!) broadband by 23%.



Any advice appreciated but I am thinking this is just bad luck in terms of timing...

Lee


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## geekspeak (Oct 1, 2002)

leemcg said:


> I have had terrible experiences with Virgin (well NTL) in the past, and good advantage of Sky is that you can use a completely separate company who offer good customer service to install everything. However, the Sky+ interface is terrible. There are just too many recordings missed when there's a 2 week gap, or permanent ends just because of one failed recording etc. I am seriously considering moving to Virgin just to get TiVo.


I have had horrendous problems with them too. The only thing they are good at is good retentions deals. (particularly when you have genuine problems)

The V+ HD box was unusable for me. For example playing back a recorded film, it would stop half way through saying "end of recording" and you cannot watch anymore. My sound system is not "compatible" so I lose sound everytime I do something such as pause tv/a recording. Also picture breakups were common even on a brand new box. The bad thing is that these are all well known faults going back many months but they don't get fixed.

That said a V+HD works well with a S1 Tivo. Just a waste having HD and the V+ harddrive when It doesn't work.

Those were just one or two of the MANY issues experienced over the years.

The epg often crashed when I tried it and apparently it is almost unusable for a couple of hours after midnight when it updates. However using Tivo I didn't experience this.

Customer service was in my opinion not worth bothering with, just call and say you want to cancel and then let retentions try and help fix any problems. I'm sure normal customer support would try to "send a signal down the line to fix a problem" even if you reported smoke and flames coming out of the box  At least those calls are free.

Hope that helps in your comparisons with Sky.


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## abuelbanat (Jan 8, 2011)

I can also add a little perspective on my experience...

I've had Sky for 10 years, using an S1 Tivo for 8 of those. No major problems with Sky (although had no cause to contact customer services) - however the panasonic sky box I have packed in around a month ago....shortly after my S1 had packed in.

Around a year or so ago I switched broadband provider to VM, and a decent deal at the time was to take M TV from them and I managed to wangle a V+HD box from them too. This means for the last year I've had both Sky and VM..... the plan was to make a decision on what we liked best and bin one of the TV providers however procrastination and an inability to give up my beloved S1 TiVo meant we kept both until the recent death of both Sky box and S1.

It's worth pointing out that I've never had any problems with the TV service from VM, none of the V+ box issues that have been widely commented on and overall can't complain about the service provided by them.

Hope you make the right decision......personally I'd ditch Sky and get a V+ box and then wait and see how the TiVo situation develops.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

If you got you boxes "about a year ago" and they are breaking, then you have Sale of Goods act right to get Sky to repair or replace them.


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## okonski_uk (Dec 28, 2000)

SOGA is of limited use. Sky will say it is out of warranty. If the purchase price to the viewer is negligible (often free) SOGa doesn't apply because there was no 'sale' - the tuner was provided only as an inducement. 

It is often cheaper to pick up a replacement STB on an auction site and get them to re-pair your card to the replacement box.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

SOGA has nothing to do with warranty. Dodgy companies use warranty expiration as an excuse but their obligations extend much longer. How much longer depends on the reasonable lifetime of the product. Certainly more than a year in this case.

Fair point of hardware given away free, but even Sky don't hand out two boxes for free do they?


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## leemcg (Nov 9, 2003)

The boxes are both much more than a year old. I got one for just HD when Sky introduced it but I was running SD through TiVo alongside. When I gave up on TiVo I bought another Sky HD box but bought second hand because I needed component output (later boxes only have HDMI). 

Another factor in my decision is that I'm not sure another temporary interface by moving to V+ without TiVo will be very wife friendly. And might have to pay for V+ then TiVo boxes again. Ho Hum. 

Lee


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

leemcg said:


> The boxes are both much more than a year old. I got one for just HD when Sky introduced it but I was running SD through TiVo alongside. When I gave up on TiVo I bought another Sky HD box but bought second hand because I needed component output (later boxes only have HDMI).
> 
> Lee


Probably power supplies playing up due to the capacitors being cooked.

My main SKY+ box threw a wobbly a couple of weeks ago, would not recieve some channels on the first LNB input. Was also doing wierd things like you hit pause, it says pause on the screen, but the program kept playing, then you hit play, the play logo came up and the program paused !!!

Ordered a repair kit from www.satcure.co.uk and changed all the capacitors and its working perfectly now. Cost me less than £20 inc P&P


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## mdolan (Jun 4, 2002)

If it is the PSU issue and you dont want to fix it yourself, there are people on a well known auction site who will do the job. You send *just* the PSU and they perform the capacitor swap.

I did that - service cost was £13.99 plus the pnp for me to send the PSU. Was done within about 3 days. Fantastic! I used graeme1975. "THOMSON POWER SUPPLY- SKY PLUS+ / HD PSU KIT (FITTED)"

No other connection other than a very happy customer. And we both live in Scotland. And we're both male.


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