# Annoying card reminder of SkyHD box



## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

I use an unsubscribed SkyHD box as a source for my 2nd TiVo & last night in the middle of 'Strictly' a card reminder came up in the middle of the screen.

I am now ditching it for an old freeview box as an alternative source.

Has anybody else had this happen and what can be done about it as I am not prepared to pay anything to replace the card in my SkyHD box?


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

Not much you can do AIUI. Sky are swapping out all their dark-blue cards for new white cards (their 3rd generation)

Once Sky have swapped out all their dark-blue subscriber cards, there is a suggestion (from Wotsat) that Sky will switch to a new VideoGuard (encryption) variant that will only work with the new white cards. (The new cards are rumoured to run a LOT faster, which will stop card sharing over the internet)

AIUI the only way to get a new card is to be a subscriber or buy a new &#163;20 Freesat from Sky card (though there may be a minimum period Sky guarantee their Freesat from Sky cards?).


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

Have you got a viewing card in the box? You could try resetting it - unplug from the mains then hold the backup button while powering up - that should remove the card pairing and give you the basic FTA channels, though that could mean no Channel 4 or Channel 5 which makes it very restricted. Freeview will give a better choice if you don't want to pay for a new Sky card.


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## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

Trinitron said:


> Have you got a viewing card in the box? You could try resetting it - unplug from the mains then hold the backup button while powering up - that should remove the card pairing and give you the basic FTA channels, though that could mean no Channel 4 or Channel 5 which makes it very restricted. Freeview will give a better choice if you don't want to pay for a new Sky card.


Thanks for your advice.

I have bitten the bullet and ordered a new Freesat card for £20.


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## mrtickle (Aug 26, 2001)

Yes, I had this at the time (August). Very annoying and stupid, serving no purpose - designed to trash recordings on non-Sky PVRs. All I could do was to swap the card as soon as the new one arrived to avoid more trashed recordings.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

mrtickle said:


> ...designed to trash recordings on non-Sky PVRs...


To be fair, I don't actually think that's the _actual_ reason for the card change


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## KiNeL (Feb 6, 2006)

Trinitron said:


> Have you got a viewing card in the box? You could try resetting it - unplug from the mains then hold the backup button while powering up - that should remove the card pairing and give you the basic FTA channels, though that could mean no Channel 4 or Channel 5 which makes it very restricted. Freeview will give a better choice if you don't want to pay for a new Sky card.


CH4 has been clear for a long time and CH5 can be added manually.

Services - System Setup - Add Channels.

Frequency : 10.773,
Polarisation : H
Symbol Rate : 22000
FEC : 5/6
Find Channels.
Channel 5 will now be in the list of channels maybe called 6335
Use the Yellow button to place a tick beside each one you wish to store and when you've finished ticking press "Select". The channel will now be stored.

You can view it by pressing Services - Other Channels.

Channels you will lose without a card are Sky3, Five US, Five US +1, Fiver, Fiver +1 and some ITV regional variants.


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

Yes - it is annoying that the default "no card" stream mapped in Sky boxes for 'five' is one of the encrypted 'regions' on a Europe-wide beam 2A/B and not the FTA one that is uplinked by the BBC on a UK-beam on 2D.


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

KiNeL said:


> Channels you will lose without a card are Sky3, Five US, Five US +1, Fiver, Fiver +1 and some ITV regional variants.


And C4 HD if you have an HD box. (C4 HD is FTV encrypted - no HD sub required)

Don't know if E4 HD (due to launch on Sky HD today) is also going to be FTV.


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## ywu (Jan 12, 2003)

KiNeL said:


> CH4 has been clear for a long time and CH5 can be added manually.
> 
> Services - System Setup - Add Channels.
> 
> ...


So will Tivo treat this new channel (6335) as if it's the same as "105" in the TV Guide?


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## mrtickle (Aug 26, 2001)

cwaring said:


> To be fair, I don't actually think that's the _actual_ reason for the card change


Perhaps you misread. I did not say anywhere it was the reason for the *card change*. As if Sky would spend millions creating new encryption cards and send them out to all their customers, just so that they'd be able to put up a warning banner and trash some TiVo recordings in the process, don't be so silly.

Displaying a banner onscreen that doesn't time out, which will trash a recording made by every recording device except Sky's own; a banner which didn't need to be displayed in the first place ("your card is in the post" - gee, thanks, I need coaching to open my own envelopes), was also not the reason for the card change. Even if they could come up with an excuse for having it - the only one I saw was along the lines of "some thick people throw away their post thinking it's all junk, even the post that is real post" - then it could have easily been made more TiVo/VCR/DVD recorder -friendly with an automatic timeout. So designing the non-timing-out banner that they ended up using could have been deliberate, careless or thoughtless among other reasons. Knowing the cavalier way Sky operate, I go for all 3. YMMV. If you want to be excessively charitable to Sky about it, I'll change it to "it was designed without thought and accidentally on purpose trashed recordings on all non-Sky PVRs".


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

To be fair - the "it's in the post" warning is so that you can chase it if it doesn't arrive I suspect.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Virgin Media are also guilty of various pop up messages that don't timeout.

I think it's just poor design rather than anti-PVR design.

ObTivo:

Tivo will revert to liveTV after 30 minutes in any menu/situation, with the only exception being if you pause a recording.
(Pausing liveTV continues when it runs out of buffer - annoyingly doesn't record the program at that point).


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

ywu said:


> So will Tivo treat this new channel (6335) as if it's the same as "105" in the TV Guide?


No - you have to go to OTHER CHANNELS and select it by cursoring... It doesn't appear in the TV Guide EPG - so isn't useful for Tivo purposes (unless someone creates a bespoke way of accessing OTHER CHANNELS by IR, and allows you to map a pre-defined "cursor down count")


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## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

mrtickle said:


> ("your card is in the post" - gee, thanks, I need coaching to open my own envelopes), was also not the reason for the card change.


Thanks for the warning, I will wait until the new card is installed before going back to using the SkyHD box as a source.

Incidently I'm having a few problems with setting up TiVo with a freeview box with the right 'service package you receive' setup as the channel numbers are not correct for some of the minor channels. Its on aerial + Digital terrestrial and freeview london/southeast and then Basic A I think. There is one other option under 'service package you receive' called Digital and I do not think this is any better.

Can anybody run through the set up screens for me?

The channel change meanwhile is working a treat once I had removed redundant channels from the 'channels you receive' list.


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## DX30 (May 22, 2005)

The new Sky HD EPG seems to have a number of problems with message timeout that cause problems for a TiVo.

The one that most annoys me is the channel banner on timeshare channels like BBC3 and BBC4. Because of auto padding any recordings made for a 7:00 pm show start at 6:58, before the channel is actually on air. As a result the channel banner stays for the entire recording. With the old Sky EPG it would go away once the channel came on air at 7:00.


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## mrtickle (Aug 26, 2001)

Sneals2000 said:


> To be fair - the "it's in the post" warning is so that you can chase it if it doesn't arrive I suspect.


Nah. They could easily pop up "it should have arrived by now" warnings, 2 weeks after posting if the old card is still in use (with a timeout!) to catch the tiny number that don't arrive. So I'm afraid I can't agree with that excuse! There really was no need for it to be done to all viewers, so soon after posting, without a timeout - if they are going to pop up banners at all.


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## Mark Bennett (Sep 17, 2001)

I had my recording of the Le Mans 24 hours trashed by the banner back in June. We were away at the race, the card arrived whilst we were away, and the recordings were trashed from then. 
If it had arrived 2 weeks before and we hadn't installed it I could kind of accept it, but we were away when it arrived, and the messages started within that week. 

Motors TV are never going to show the race in it's entirity again. Incredibly annoying of Sky to do this.


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## Bob49 (Mar 4, 2002)

From the Sky website:

"If you do not replace your Sky viewing card, you will start to lose access to the following channels from October 2009:

ITV1 (if you receive one of the following ITV1 regions: ITV Anglia West, ITV Central South West, ITV Meridian North, ITV Meridian South East, ITV Tyne Tees South or ITV Yorkshire East)
FIVE (if you live in London, the North of England or Scotland)
FIVE USA, FIVE USA +1, FIVER, FIVER +1
Channel 4 HD
Sky 3"

https://mysky.sky.com/replacecard/

I wasn't sure if this was accurate however as 103 on my digibox corresponds to ITV1LON and I'm getting the warning message.

On further inspection - although Tivo asks for 103 ITV1LON it actually gets 103 ITV1MER which is no longer FTA. Sky channel 993 is ITV London on my box and is FTA. After rebooting, without a card present, the box reverts to the default ITV Central W on 103 which works. No Five though.


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## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

Installed new white card and I am still not receiving Five or other Five related channels.

Any suggestions on what I should try next as for 105 and the other respective channel numbers all I get is 'No satellite signal available'.


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## ywu (Jan 12, 2003)

Major dude said:


> Installed new white card and I am still not receiving Five or other Five related channels.
> 
> Any suggestions on what I should try next as for 105 and the other respective channel numbers all I get is 'No satellite signal available'.


Mine worked a minute or so after it was activated (have you called them on the 0844 number to do that?). It can take up to four hours after activation apparently.


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## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

ywu said:


> Mine worked a minute or so after it was activated (have you called them on the 0844 number to do that?). It can take up to four hours after activation apparently.


Rang and asked and they said it was my satellite equipment was to blame yet I can receive Five on both my Humax foxsat HDR and my Eye TVsat which are both connected to the same LNB from the BskyB Astra Sat.

Is it possible to manually add Five and the rest of the five related channels on the SkyHD box?


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## ywu (Jan 12, 2003)

Major dude said:


> Rang and asked and they said it was my satellite equipment was to blame yet I can receive Five on both my Humax foxsat HDR and my Eye TVsat which are both connected to the same LNB from the BskyB Astra Sat.
> 
> Is it possible to manually add Five and the rest of the five related channels on the SkyHD box?


AFAIK you're not comparing like with like. Freesat is different from Freesat-from-Sky, the latter has a few channels encrypted (the ones you mention for example) and needs a card. The humax and eyetv don't. Therefore, there is still the possibility the card hasn't "paired" properly with the set top box, preventing the decryption from happening.


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## Major dude (Oct 28, 2002)

ywu said:


> AFAIK you're not comparing like with like. Freesat is different from Freesat-from-Sky, the latter has a few channels encrypted (the ones you mention for example) and needs a card. The humax and eyetv don't. Therefore, there is still the possibility the card hasn't "paired" properly with the set top box, preventing the decryption from happening.


But in that case would I get a different message up?


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

My card for my spare box before it got it's new keys this month had the message about improper pairing, but it was in the right box. It soon updated correctly. I suspect the error messages aren't quite correct.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Does anyone have any idea on exactly *when* this change is being effected. The Sky site still just says "If you do not replace your Sky viewing card, you will start to lose access to the following channels from October 2009:". Hey guys it's now nearly 4 months later - JFDI for pity sake!

Having put up with this annoying message for over 3 months I just want to know when it's going to stop - and please don't say "when you buy a new card" because I'm not going to. I can live with the loss of rubbish like Fiver, FiveUS, Sky3, etc.. That's my choice so why don't Sky respect that and lay off with the messages? Sometimes they even put the message up 5 or 6 times in ONE evening! Sheesh - give it a rest.

BTW they even display the message on channels which aren't going to be affected by the change (e.g. BBC1) albeit in a slightly different form - "To maintain full viewing blah blah" rather than "You will shortly lose viewing on this channel". This is a bit naughty IMO. If they are doing that they why not put a similar message on all _new_ "white card" FTA/FTV channels since, by definition, you aren't getting "full viewing" from a million-pound-a-year subscription package?

<end rant> But I digress... 

The excellent NoRedDot script takes care of removing the message from within recordings. The only issue remaining is if the message is on-screen when Tivo tries to change the channel - which then fails. There seem to be 2 options here: (1) change the IR codes to prepend a "backup" at the front of every channel change (but I have no idea how to do this!), or (2) modify NoRedDot to blast the "backup" code every minute *even if* Tivo is not currently recording. I think this is how the NRD script worked originally and was a very simple change.

The odd recording might still get missed (e.g. if the Sky reminder appears in the 60 secs between NRD "backup" and Tivo channel change) but I guess I can live with that.


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## Sneals2000 (Aug 25, 2002)

There are lots of people who are using Sky cards in non-Sky receivers (Media Centers, Diseqc compatible boxes with multiple satellite reception capabilities etc.) who are hoping the change takes a long time - as once it happens they are expecting their receivers to stop working for an indeterminate time until the new implementation of the encryption scheme is reverse engineered (if it is)...


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## KiNeL (Feb 6, 2006)

Haven't tried this myself but somebody posted this to another forum I visit:

If watching Sky1 or Sky Movies by pressing Text, waiting for the teletext to appear , then pressing text again and you'll just get a txt image in the top right hand portion of the screen.

Be interesting to know if it works, and for how long. Presumably you'd have to do it every time you changed channel.


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