# Replacement Skybox



## Jimus (Dec 28, 2005)

Howdy,

My venerable Grundig skybox is suffering from regular crashes after years of regular as clockwork reliable operation.

I have read (in this forum I think) that this is mainly due to the recent software update by Sky causing instability and crashes, as far as I know there is not much I can do about this. Whatever the reason I need to sort it.

I only watch the FTA services and live in a marginal Freeview reception area (still experimenting!). If I buy another satellite box will Sky let me register it with them  ?

Assuming I can do this can anyone recommend a box which is cheap and works well with TiVo?

Ta

Jimus


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

My old Pace box seems OK still. These are cheap as chips on eBay. 

I don't think you need to register the box if you only use FTA channels, although I'm happy to be corrected on that if anybody knows better


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

My old Panasonic TU-DSB20 box still seems to be working fine. I do however power it off for 5 minutes every morning at 5am on a timer as crashes on boxes only usually only seem to happen after they are left on for several days in a row.

If you buy a secondhand box on Ebay (just put Digibox in the search) then your current desubscribed viewing card will work in it and give you Channels 4 and 5. It only needs to be "matched" to the box serial number for premium Sky channels like Sky Sports and Sky Movies to work. If you ever resubscribe to Sky then Sky will happily rematch the replacement box you have acquired to your existing Sky viewing card at that time.


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## Fred Smith (Oct 5, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> If you buy a secondhand box on Ebay (just put Digibox in the search) then your current desubscribed viewing card will work in it and give you Channels 4 and 5.


And Five Live, Five US and Sky Three.


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## frogster (Jan 4, 2006)

Jimus said:


> I have read (in this forum I think) that this is mainly due to the recent software update by Sky causing instability and crashes, as far as I know there is not much I can do about this. Whatever the reason I need to sort it.


Try reloading the firmware before you bin it.

TV on.

Digibox off *at mains*.

Hold down "back up" button on the fascia and turn on at mains. Do not release button until all fascia lights come on and software update message appears on TV screen (10secs approx).

Wait.

When download ends, wait two minutes and then restart the box.


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## Jimus (Dec 28, 2005)

Thanks guys, next time it crashes I will give a firmware re-flash a go.

TBH I don't watch much telly , its mainly the wife. My role is mainly chief fiddler / gizmo freak and 'responsible person' for anything that goes wrong (whether or not its my fault, you know the score).

She reports recent Skybox behaviour has been improved for some inexplicable reason, it was doing it all the time a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the stern 'talking to' she gave it.

Jimus


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Jimus said:


> Thanks guys, next time it crashes I will give a firmware re-flash a go.
> 
> She reports recent Skybox behaviour has been improved for some inexplicable reason, it was doing it all the time a few weeks ago. Maybe it was the stern 'talking to' she gave it.


It seems entirely possible Sky have realised there was a problem with the first firmware upgrade affecting the Grundig box, have had it fixed and have now transmitted a replacement version.

What are you spending all your time doing then while "the wife" watches the telly?


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Actually you may well find this has nothing to do with firmware!

Most Sky Digiboxes experience faults after around 3 or 4 years of continuous use!

Pace boxes suffere from a descrete component failing in the Tuner causing a "No Signal" problem.
Grundigs suffer from the capacitors in the Power Supply drying out (easily spotted by the tops bulging (instead of being completely flat).
Amstrads Suffer the same problem as the Grundig + I think I remember them having a tuner issue too.
Panasonics suffered a fault too but can't remember what it was (didn't work on too many of them).
I have a Sony digibox which has faired better than most but this too failed after 4 years, again a power supply issue, it started to be difficult to get to come out of stand-by, eventually refusing to come out all together!

Conspiracy theorists believe this is intentional heheh!

Other say its simply a case of using poor quality components but it is rather strange when you consider the problems affect nearly every manufacturer and all result is some sort of failure after a few years 

Anyway, If you feel up to a bit of investigation, simply un-plug your digibox from the mains and remove the lid, its only a few phillips screws.

Have a look at the power supply, its the smaller PCB on the right (that the mains goes into).

The capacitors are the tall cylinder type components, usually black, brown or blue with a white strip going down them signifying which pin is the negative.

They are 2200uf I think from memory. The aluminium case on the top is scored to allow them to bow when the component starts to fail. If any of these tops are slightly bowing outwards, this is your problem!

The faults are so common, you can even buy repair kits which literally consist of several components to swap for the most common items that fail!

Regs
Dave.



Jimus said:


> Howdy,
> 
> My venerable Grundig skybox is suffering from regular crashes after years of regular as clockwork reliable operation.
> 
> ...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

healeydave said:


> Panasonics suffered a fault too but can't remember what it was (didn't work on too many of them).


Except for the Panasonic TU-DSB 20 which had a slower processor than later models so runs much cooler. That is why you still see so many working 6 plus year old ones for sale on Ebay and why mine doesn't seem to have objected to a prolonged career of sustained 24/7 Tivo partnering use. Their handling of interactive services is painfully slow but they handle basic Sky Digital tv reception absolutely fine.


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Ah, thats right, I think a fan modification was applyed to some Panasonic models.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Lately (after the firmware update?), my old Grundig hung once a week, then once a day up to the beginning of last week. Since then, it hasn't hung at all.

Either they've downloaded a replacement update, or they've stopped using the interactive data that might have screwed the box up.

Does this timeframe fit in with other affected users? If so, then we can all breathe a sigh of relief, since it probably isn't the box at fault.


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

I have noticed some channel changes fail which is normally un-heard off. I have an RF2Link on a Sony Digibox and normally channel changes are 100% but not in the last 1-2 weeks.
Un-related I'm sure but than again I like to blame sky for everything so perhaps not


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Same deal here. Grundig box got to the stage where I had to power cycle it (on a power timer) twice a day and even then, once a week that wouldn't be enough. 

On a recent trip to the UK I snagged my parents old Panasonic Digibox now that they're on freeview. When I got home I was shocked to see that even on Sky channels, it was happy to accept my Sky card without me having to call Sky. That didn't happen when I upgraded from pace to grundig a few years ago. I had to call Sky that time, even though I never had Sky Movies or Sky Sports.

I was a bit shocked to see that the signal test showed that my signal quality went up from 70% to 90% with the Panasonic. Are Grundigs usually not as good as Panasonics at pulling a good signal quality out of the cable?


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Jimus said:


> I only watch the FTA services


I'm thinking of cancelling my sky sub once the "please-don't-leave-us" offer (price reduction) I got runs out at the end of the year.

Can you tell me, do you still keep your (cancelled) sky card in the box? Does it give you more channels than when you have no card in at all? When I take my card out I lose even channel 4 and 5. I'm not surprised to lose Sky one obviously, but C4 and C5 is a surprise.

I wondered whether a cancelled card let's you keep channels that are available on freeview (e.g. c4,c5,more4,e4,film4,itv2/3/4 etc). If not, has anyone heard whether the freeview organisation are making any attempts to push sky to make those channels FTA ? I don't see why FTA freeview channels shouldn't be FTA on sky.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> When I got home I was shocked to see that even on Sky channels, it was happy to accept my Sky card without me having to call Sky. That didn't happen when I upgraded from pace to grundig a few years ago. I had to call Sky that time, even though I never had Sky Movies or Sky Sports. I was a bit shocked to see that the signal test showed that my signal quality went up from 70% to 90% with the Panasonic. Are Grundigs usually not as good as Panasonics at pulling a good signal quality out of the cable


Signal level is hugely affected by choice of box model as people trying to get Freesat out in places like Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Greece and Cyprus know all too well (do some Google searches for Sky Spain Digibox signal etc) . The cream of the crop for strong signal is the Pace 2600 C1, then the Pace DS430N, then most Panasonic boxes and so on down the tree (Sonys are especially poor with a weak signal). In the UK where the signal is aimed any old crappy box will normally work with a 60CM dish as long as there isn't heavy rain or tree branch obstruction.

Since I have had a Sky capability in April last year it has always been widely stated to be the case in web forums that a Digibox card only needs to be matched to that box for the premium channels. I expect demanding card matching for the lower cost customers wasn't considered worth it in relating to the number of customer support queries generated. Pubs don't generally want to show the big game from one of the standard Sky channels - its normally on Sky Sports and its a customer taking his Sky card down the pub they want to stop.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> Can you tell me, do you still keep your (cancelled) sky card in the box? Does it give you more channels than when you have no card in at all? When I take my card out I lose even channel 4 and 5. I'm not surprised to lose Sky one obviously, but C4 and C5 is a surprise.


Yes you keep your card with Sky so long as you call Sky when you desubscribe and tell them you just want to desubscribe for now and may well want to subscribe again in a few months time. Never tell them that you have sold the box with the card in it on Ebay for instance as they then will cancel its validity permanently and immediately (the cards are not transferrable under their terms and conditions). Once you have desubscribed from Sky you can still resubscribe again at any time for a minimum of one month and two Sky Mixes. You don't have to sign up for another 12 months minimum.

You need to have a card in the Sky Digibox to receive the so called Free To View (FTV) channels which require a valid Sky viewing card to decode them but do not require you to be paying a Sky subscription for that card decoding to operate. The FTV channels used to include all BBC and ITV channels but first the BBC and then ITV renegotiated their contracts with Murdoch as they plan to launch their own rival Freesat Digibox service promoting in particular HD with no monthly sub in the next year or so. The BBC and ITV channels are now all Free To Air (FTA) - that is you can watch them without a viewing card in the box although you will only get BBC1 London on 101 and ITV London on 103 if you don't have the card in the box. However you can still get the other regionalised versions in the 970s.

The FTV channels still left though which you do need your old Sky viewing card to watch but do not have to pay a Sky subscription to receive are:-

Channel4, Five, Sky Three, Five Life, Five US. Bizarrely you cannot currently get E4 or More4 as non subscription FTV channels on a desubscribed Sky Digibox as they are part of its basis subscription range. This is even though those channels are FTA on Freeview. However FilmFour is FTA on both Freeview and with a Sky Digibox where no viewiing card whatsoever is required to receive it.

There are another 300 or so television channels you can get on a Sky Digibox without a card and although most are shopping channels or weird Islamic channels you also get free film channels like TrueMovies 1&2, Zone Horror, Zone Thriller, Movies4Men 1 & 2 and so on. The overall channel lineup on a desubscribed Sky box is far better than on Freeview (a Sky box gets CNN and Euronews while on Freeview you do not) which begs the question why your parents actually got a Freeview box instead of just desubscribing from Sky? You could always take them their old box back and reinstall it and then pick up another decent box for yourself on Ebay.

You can then use your current Sky viewing card in that. Given the more solid picture quality on Sky and the bigger range of free film channels they would be better off with their old Sky box if you can successfully explain to them they don't need to go on subscribing to Sky to use it and its quite legal. They could always use the Freeview box in their bedroom or something instead.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Thanks for the very informative reply Pete. They did cancel Sky and tried it for a few months but were disappointed with missing channels like C4, C5, E4 and had seen the channel list on someone's freeview and were sold on the idea. A couple of 30 quid freeview boxes later and the Sky box wasn't switched on for another 6 months.

I just tried using their Sky card which I brought with the box. It contradicts what you said about keeping the FTA channels. Having their cancelled card in seems to offer nothing more than having no card in.

Do you think the fact that Sky were told that they were switching to Freeview made a difference? Perhaps doing what you say, which is to tell them that you're just cancelling it for an undisclosed amount of time, makes a difference. Or perhaps you have to state that you want the FTA "card-channels" left on.

All the ITV and BBC channels are working, as is Film 4. You already said that E4 and More 4 aren't available, so they're not in the list below. I also don't expect to receive Paramount Comedy so I've removed that too. The following channels though I would expect to see but they aren't viewable with their subscription-cancelled card:

104 - C4
105 - Five
108 - Sky 3
185 - abc 1
505 - CNBC

Which of these channels do you still get?


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## Jimus (Dec 28, 2005)

I'm confused, my Skybox has one of those FTA cards I bought from Sky (£20) and we can definitely get C4, C5. As far as I know the only channel we have to watch on Freeview which is not available on our satellite box is E4.

Anyway, in reponse to another Grundig skybox users question above, my box crashed today for the first time in over a week now. This is as compared with 2-3 times a day a month ago - something has definitely changed for the better.

Jimus


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> Do you think the fact that Sky were told that they were switching to Freeview made a difference? Perhaps doing what you say, which is to tell them that you're just cancelling it for an undisclosed amount of time, makes a difference. Or perhaps you have to state that you want the FTA "card-channels" left on.
> 
> All the ITV and BBC channels are working, as is Film 4. You already said that E4 and More 4 aren't available, so they're not in the list below. I also don't expect to receive Paramount Comedy so I've removed that too. The following channels though I would expect to see but they aren't viewable with their subscription-cancelled card:
> 
> ...


Cards appear not to work when the box has been sitting in a cupboard for several months. They get a signal every day that keeps them authorised for FTA channels for the next 28 days. Eventually this runs out if the box remains off. Leave the card in your box overnight and I'm sure you will find it lets you watch 104, 105, 108, 207 and 209 by tomorrow morning. That's the position with my backup Sky card for the Sky Scotland region that came with this box when i bought it although I now have a more local card fro my Tv region. The Sky Scotland card looks dead when I first put back in the box. It starts working again for decoding C4 etc when left in the box overnight.

Also if you read my previous message fully I stated the channels you needed the card for decoding as being C4, Five, Sky Three, Five US & Five Life (207 and 209 as you seem to be unaware of their recent launch). Those are the only FTV channels that you will get with an active desubscribed card but not without a card or with a cancelled card. You will get the BBC and ITV channels and Film Four without any card in the box at all.

CNBC and Fox News are in the basic pay News Mix on Sky, so you won't get them without a sub to it. Ditto you need a sub to the Entertainment Mix to get ABC1 which like E4 and More4 are channels you need a sub for on Sky even though you don't on Freeview. But ABC 1 is only broadcast 6am to 6pm on Freeview.

Let me know if you get your parents card working again by leaving it in the box overnight.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> Let me know if you get your parents card working again by leaving it in the box overnight.


Thanks again, I'll bring the result back as soon as I know. I'll give it a few days


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Jimus said:


> I'm confused, my Skybox has one of those FTA cards I bought from Sky (£20) and we can definitely get C4, C5. As far as I know the only channel we have to watch on Freeview which is not available on our satellite box is E4.


You also need Freeview to watch, More 4, Sky Sports News, ABC1, FTN, UK Bright Ideas, The Hits and TMF. All of these are pay channels in the basic Sky subscription Mixes but are FTA on Freeview.

But then Freeview doesn't have CNN or Euronews available free or Zone Reality, or Zone Horror Movies, Zone Thriller Movies or TrueMovies 1&2 or Movies4Men 1&2. Plus 101 free Asian & Islamic & Shopping channels that you may or perhaps may not want.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> Signal level is hugely affected by choice of box model as people trying to get Freesat out in places like Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Greece and Cyprus know all too well (do some Google searches for Sky Spain Digibox signal etc) .


And don't trust the signal meter in the box itself. My Panny 30 reports a 90% quality level on Astra 2D, whereas my Pace 430N reports 30%, yet both are on the same 2.4m dish and get perfect trouble free reception. 


> The cream of the crop for strong signal is the Pace 2600 C1, then the Pace DS430N, then most Panasonic boxes and so on down the tree (Sonys are especially poor with a weak signal).


The Pannys have a problem that if the signal drops out the box then locks up completely and either does nothing, or tries to change channels but reports no signal. Very annoying.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

b166er said:


> I wondered whether a cancelled card let's you keep channels that are available on freeview (e.g. c4,c5,more4,e4,film4,itv2/3/4 etc).


You get to keep the channels listed here 


> If not, has anyone heard whether the freeview organisation are making any attempts to push sky to make those channels FTA ?


There is the BBC Freesat alliance that plans to launch next year, not to be confused with Freesat listed above.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

b166er said:


> The following channels though I would expect to see but they aren't viewable with their subscription-cancelled card:
> 
> 104 - C4
> 105 - Five
> 108 - Sky 3


If the decryption keys in your card have expired it can take up to 24 hours for it to get a refresh and those channels start working again. It works fine, honestly!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> The Pannys have a problem that if the signal drops out the box then locks up completely and either does nothing, or tries to change channels but reports no signal. Very annoying.


I seem to recall that is why I put mine on a timer that switches it off for 5 minutes every 24 hours. I can tolerate lost recordings from one day but not days and days worth.

However sometimes I have had the message No Satellite Signal or something similar in a recording of a program for half an hour only for the program to then start being decoded again. The satellite dish is a distributed communal system from one dish to 17 flats and there is no possibility of any tree branches etc obstructing its path where it is located. This has only been once every 2 or 3 months on just one recording for and I had put it down to maintenance work on Astra itself or at Sky's Uplink centre?


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

That sounds more like the problem described here...
http://www.satcure.com/filter.htm


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> You get to keep the channels listed here


Not true as you don't need a Sky viewing card or even a Sky approved Digibox to get most of those channels.

You only need a Sky Digibox and working decryption card to get C4, Five, Sky Three, Five Life and Five US. Everything else will be received fine by a bog standard European Astra capable satellite box with none of Sky's proprietary features.

However such a box may not use the same channel number scheme as Sky which is a disaster from the point of view of Tivo operation. It may however be able to receive quite a few channels a Sky Digibox cannot receive due to frequency restrictions on what a Sky Digibox can decode.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> That sounds more like the problem described here...
> http://www.satcure.com/filter.htm


That filter doesn't cover the TU-DSB20 but perhaps the box may still suffer with the issue, even though it would need a different filter to cure it. Its so rarely that it happens that to be honest it isn't a serious issue as I always have such a backlog of other successfully recorded Tivo programs to ever find the time to watch..............


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> Which is what we were talking about! We were talking about which channels do you get with a card


You rather implied you needed the card to get the whole channel range promoted as www.freesatfromsky.co.uk You only need the card to let you get 104, 105, 118, 207 and 209 plus to regionalise 101, 102 and 103 correctly for your part of the UK (otherwise you will just get the London region variants on those channels and have to hunt for your local versions up in the 900s on the Sky EPG).

www.freesatfromsky.co.uk is in my opinion a ripoff where you pay an arms length arm of Sky £150 to install a sky digibox and dish with a viewing card that does not let you watch any Sky subscription channels even for the odd month. That can only be changed by agreeing to sign up to a minimum Sky 2 Mix package for a whole year even if you have already had your www.freesatfromsky.co.uk box for 2 or 3 years.

Its far better to have a pay 2 Mix sky subscription package installed via www.quidco.co.uk

You then only pay 3 x £7.50 plus 9 x £15 monthly subscription = £157.50 and get £50 back from Quidco in due course taking the whole cost down to £107.50. You then desubscribe at the end of the first year and can then resubscribe for as little as 1 month on just 2 Mixes whenever you want to.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Oh I agree it's a ripoff, but it was a sop to pacify the regulators who didn't do the sums.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

kitschcamp said:


> Oh I agree it's a ripoff, but it was a sop to pacify the regulators who didn't do the sums.


The ripoff comes mainly from the fact that Sky refuse to let these people subscribe to pay tv later on without signing up for a minimum 12 months Sky subscription contract.

If you look at the absolute minimum Sky extracts from one of their subscribers in revenue in the first year then I suppose £150 for the box and the installation is not that unreasonable. Although having said that you would have thought Murdoch had an incentive to do it for £75 with the right to become a subscriber at any time later on for say at least 6 months if you want to in order to stave off the threat from Freeview.

Clearly Ofcom are no good at sums. Ofcom's latest de-regulation of BT phone call prices has just led to a 20% rise from BT (effective minimum call charge increased to 6p instead of 5p) rather than to a fall.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

b166er said:


> Thanks again, I'll bring the result back as soon as I know. I'll give it a few days


You the man Pete!! I'd never have thought of leaving the card in 24 hours and have it come back to life (C4, C5, Sky 3, Five US, Five Life) but it did. So that 1-year-now subscription-cancelled card of my parents is now bringing a meaningful life to my second sky box (on LNB feed #2), and I now know that when I cancel my own sky subscription at the end of this year, I'm 100% sure of exactly which channels I'll lose.

Looking at the channels I watch, I'm only going to miss UK Gold(s), Paramount(s) and CNBC. There was never anything on E4 or Sky One/Two that I watched. I usually obtained the shows on there from alternate sources long before they aired there. I'll miss CNBC for the jay leno and conan o brien shows, but any good interviews appear the next day on youtube anyway 

Bye bye Sky sub, I'll miss you... NOT 

FYI - when my parents chose to cancel Sky last Christmas, all kinds of offers were made to stop them quitting. Having heard those offers I got sneaky and pretended I wanted to cancel my own Sky sub, just so I could let them talk me out of it. I eventually dragged out a deal where my 22 quid a month (roughly) sub was reduced to 13 quid a month for a whole year. That expires soon obviously and that's when I'll quit for real  :up:


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> FYI - when my parents chose to cancel Sky last Christmas, all kinds of offers were made to stop them quitting. Having heard those offers I got sneaky and pretended I wanted to cancel my own Sky sub, just so I could let them talk me out of it. I eventually dragged out a deal where my 22 quid a month (roughly) sub was reduced to 13 quid a month for a whole year. That expires soon obviously and that's when I'll quit for real  :up:


You won't be tempted if they offer you the £13 per month a deal again then? 

I only subscribe in January for the Paris-Dakar rally and in June for the Le Mans 24 hours. I go for the News & Knowlege Mixes and record everything else I can at the same time.

P.S. So you don't think your parents would realise they could benefit from keeping their old Sky box once its explained to them all the extra free channels they could continue to receive that aren't on Freeview?


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> You won't be tempted if they offer you the £13 per month a deal again then?


I don't think so. I can't imagine I'd stay for £5 a month. There's so few shows I'll miss without those channels it's hardly an issue. There's certainly nothing I can't obtain by downloads (which I do for almost all the american shows I watch).



Pete77 said:


> P.S. So you don't think your parents would realise they could benefit from keeping their old Sky box once its explained to them all the extra free channels they could continue to receive that aren't on Freeview?


They never watched any channels that aren't on freeview. They were happy to have them, but never watched them. And one more box only adds to the confusion. Right now it's two remotes. One for the TV and one for freeview. Couldn't be easier  One day I'll upgrade one of those freeview boxes for them to one that has a built-in hard-drive.


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## sleepa (Feb 20, 2004)

re: the Grundig aspect of this thread

Mine too has now settled back down from its recent spate of 1 crash per day to just 1 crash in the last 9 days.

Wifey obviously blamed the Tivo throughout, flying in the face of all available logic; 'It didn't record xxx...' etc. Ho hum.

Sorely tempted to switch her to Sky+ except that that would surely qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

sleepa said:


> Wifey obviously blamed the Tivo throughout, flying in the face of all available logic; 'It didn't record xxx...' etc. Ho hum.
> 
> Sorely tempted to switch her to Sky+ except that that would surely qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.


Don't Wifeys normally fly in the face of all available logic though? 

Do Sky offer a 30 day money back offer on upgrading to Sky+ I wonder? If so it might be worth doing just to prove the point that Tivo is far better than the alternatives.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

If you are near Malmesbury, I have a few Sky+ boxes lying around so you would be welcome to borrow one of them for a couple of weeks 

Long story, but I was thinking of 'expanding' by offering Sky+ upgrade drives as well, so I bought the boxes to test the drives and the process etc. However, Sky+ is such pants that every time I had anything to to with them I felt kind of soiled and I just haven't got round to doing anything more about it..... :down::down::down:

<note _target="self">
*Get rid of those blasted Sky+ boxes on eBay before Xmas!*
</note>


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> If you are near Malmesbury, I have a few Sky+ boxes lying around so you would be welcome to borrow one of them for a couple of weeks
> 
> Long story, but I was thinking of 'expanding' by offering Sky+ upgrade drives as well, so I bought the boxes to test the drives and the process etc. However, Sky+ is such pants that every time I had anything to to with them I felt kind of soiled and I just haven't got round to doing anything more about it..... :down::down::down:


Surely though you can't use the Sky+ recording feature unless you are paying Sky at least £30 per month in Subs or something? If and when Sky ever drop the sub for Sky+ I shan't hesitate to buy a secondhand Sky+ box and use it as a backup to the Tivo and/or to handle program clashes on the Tivo.

As to the Sky+ upgrading process I thought it was just a case of plug and play with the bigger hard drive really and you couldn't touch the software. So not much the involves your expertise really?

What about upgrading hard drives on the higher end Freeview PVR boxes though? I understand that is quite tricky to do and the boxes aren't even designed on the basis of being opened up by the customer?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

You can record with a Sky+ box on any package if you pay the £10 extra per month to have the recording "feature" (their word, not mine ) enabled. If you only have a single-LNB then you can't watch one channel while recording another, but you can record what you're watching. 

Yes, "upgrading" a Sky+ box is a non-event compared to upgrading a TiVo - hence my initial interest when I saw how much Sky+ upgrade 'kits' were selling for elsewhere - but I'm not sure I have the stomach for it any more. Ugh! :down:

Other freeview PVRs are still such a small market that it wouldn't be worth the effort buying one and figuring out how to do the upgrade for the handful of kits I might sell a year. And of course, when TiVo return to the UK with a Series 2 or Series 3 machine I won't have time for messing around with other manufacturers' kit.... I hope


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

blindlemon said:


> And of course, when TiVo return to the UK with a Series 2 or Series 3 machine


Love the optimism .... *"when"* TiVo return.... :up: :up:


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> Other freeview PVRs are still such a small market that it wouldn't be worth the effort buying one and figuring out how to do the upgrade for the handful of kits I might sell a year.


I thought it might be worth it for the Topfields which lend themselves more to mods and undoubtedly have more mod minded owners. Do they have a web forum somewhere perhaps?

Alternatively how about you getting into business in configuring PCs as bespoke Windows MCE dedicated machines?


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## TheBear (Feb 21, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> www.freesatfromsky.co.uk is in my opinion a ripoff where you pay an arms length arm of Sky £150 to install a sky digibox and dish with a viewing card that does not let you watch any Sky subscription channels even for the odd month.


Why a rip off?

For £150 you are getting a receiver, dish and installation.

Compare this with freeview: £30 for a receiver and £120+ for an aerial inclusive of installation.

One offers 10 times the channels of the other. Remind me again, which offers the best value??

Granted, you may already have a freeview aerial which will bring the cost down but similarly you could already have a suitable dish installed.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TheBear said:


> Why a rip off?


Because using the www.quidco.co.uk you can get a Sky dish and box installed for a net £107.50 (after the £50 cashback arrives) with 2 Sky Mixes and after the end of the first year you can descubscribe and subscribe back in at any time for just one month if you need to watch a subscription channel.

If you go for www.freesatfromsky.co.uk you pay £150 to get the box and dish and get no pay Sky channels included in the first year but if you ever want to have subscription Sky channels they then make you sign up for a whole year to at least 2 Sky Mixes at £180 on top of the £150. This is even if you have had the www.freesatfromsky.co.uk installed three years ago.

Its there obvious why www.freesatfromsky.co.uk is less sensible than getting a box and dish as a Sky subscriber.


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