Sky+ Box, Which model: Amstrad, Pace or Thomson.

Charlie

I'm getting two sky plus boxes installed on the 13th and I have been reading around a couple of other froums which distinguish between the 3 diffrent makes of + box, Amstrad Thomson and Pace. The Amstrad seems to be getting a lot of bad reviews with the Pace getting good ones. I have two quaestions: Firstly, Does anybody have experiences with the Amsrad, and were those exepriences good or bad. Secondly, I live in Dublin 3, so will the company that does installs for this area use a particular type of box and if so which one, or is it pretty random what box any installer uses.

Finally, would it be worth my while requesting a particular model to be used, when the installer rings the night before.

Tony

Ask for a pace, thompson only make the 160 box so doubt you will be offered that. (its terrible anyway)

charlie mchugh wrote:

I'm getting two sky plus boxes installed on the 13th and I have been reading around a couple of other froums which distinguish between the 3 diffrent makes of + box, Amstrad Thomson and Pace. The Amstrad seems to be getting a lot of bad reviews with the Pace getting good ones. I have two quaestions: Firstly, Does anybody have experiences with the Amsrad, and were those exepriences good or bad. Secondly, I live in Dublin 3, so will the company that does installs for this area use a particular type of box and if so which one, or is it pretty random what box any installer uses.

Finally, would it be worth my while requesting a particular model to be used, when the installer rings the night before.

Charlie

Would it be likely that i would get a pace if i asked for one or will the instaleer just think i'm being fussy. Also, Tony as you are a installer yourself, do you know what company does the installs for sky in the clontarf area or is it just random.

Tony

charlie mchugh wrote:

Would it be likely that i would get a pace if i asked for one or will the instaleer just think i'm being fussy. Also, Tony as you are a installer yourself, do you know what company does the installs for sky in the clontarf area or is it just random.

No idea sorry, I have not done a sky install for over a year

Sparky

i think sierra do skys installs.
and gey a pace, as its the most common one.

Gwynston

I went through this thought process for my install in the summer as a friend in England told me to avoid the Amstrad, but that this was hard to do over there as Pace's are hard to come by.

However, it seems to be the other way round in Ireland, and usually Pace's are always provided, so you should be OK. My installer said it's probably because the Pace's are actually made in Galway! :cool:

Charlie

Gwynston wrote:

I went through this thought process for my install in the summer as a friend in England told me to avoid the Amstrad, but that this was hard to do over there as Pace's are hard to come by.

However, it seems to be the other way round in Ireland, and usually Pace's are always provided, so you should be OK. My installer said it's probably because the Pace's are actually made in Galway! :cool:

Sweet! Thanks for the info. Did you ask the installer for a pace when he rang up to confirm the install, or did you just hope he brought a pace?

Gwynston

I booked the install through Sky, so wasn't given the installer info to be able to contact them directly. But I got Sky to explicitely state on their order that I wanted a Pace box. However, I'm not convinced that the info got through to the installer anyway - but like I said, he suggested to me that he always supplied Pace's exclusively (Galway based installer).

That was back in June though, and I think the Pace box has changed since then (now has a bigger hard disk).

byte

I don't think the Amstrads are openly distributed around Ireland. Dunno about Thomson, I've never seen a house in ROI with one either.

I'm not a big fan of any Sky+ box, as they're too fragile! Though, some of the problems seem to be down to Sky's software, more so than hardware issues these days.