Loadza Sky+ Questions - Hope you can answer em all!

niceirishfella

Hi,

I had my local sky engineer around the other day fixing my dish that moved in the wind. Anyways - he tells me that i can now get Sky+ .........cos i could'nt before because i had not landline.

Well, apparently Sky have relaxed this requirement.
It'll cost me €231 all in installed and he insists that he has to take away the old standard box (why?)and my €30 sub stays the same.....looks ok.....but i have a few questions to to ask here.

1) What the best brand of box to request......ie. the one that gives less hassles. I was told some are troublesome.

2)How many hours wil it record?

3) as i have no phoneline, can i do the remote recording thing.........from my mobile or online? does this cost extra?

4) Will my SLX2CF 2way Aerial amp and 2 tevion magic eyes work ok with the new +box?

4) will i have to get 2 new Sky + remotes - for the kitchen,bedroom as the box is located in my sittingroom and i'll get a new remote but will i need 2 more new ones? Or will my ordinary remotes still work ok - just without the playback/record facilities etc.

5) i like to listen to radio station on my skybox - Can i record radio programmes onto the harddrive for playback?



Ok, thats all my queries for now - hope you can help.

Rgds and thx in adv.

NIF.

watty

Take away your box first. It's yours. Unless it is an official Sky part exchange designed to get rid of ordinary boxes, it's a scam and he will sell it.

Yes you can get Sky+ without phone line, and there always was ways to do so. Multiroom needs a phone line.

Recording hours depends on size of hard drive and on the Channel. BBC eats disk faster than ITV. It records the exact signal, so playback is live quality, so unlike DVD /HD standalone recorders there are no different quality settings to change recording time. (This is actually good).

Welcome to the Forum.

niceirishfella

Can anyone help me re; the remotes? Best brand of box and the radio question?

Thanks.

St Senan

Their is no such thing as a Sky engineer it's a word that the Sky call centre staff use to describe their installers. he is an installer of Satellite systems and maybe Aerials. Their is no way he should demand your standard box to be given to him in exchange for sky plus system it is your property and a sky plus install costs €194 not €231

Kensington

Thomson or Pace are the only makes that seem to be coming into Ireland, with the majority seemingly being Pace - no Amstrad's have ever been reported. Neither Pace or Thomson should give you any trouble although the Thomson's do tend to be noisier and a fraction slower response wise than the Pace's.

Remote recording may be a problem if you don't have a phoneline. The sky+ box does need to go online for the initial setup, to allow it to register itself as the sky+ box you want to send remote record instructions to. After setup though, instructions are all sent over the air from the satellite so a constant phoneline connection isn't needed for it to work. Remote recording online (through a PC or Sky Anytime on mobile) is free, remote recording by SMS costs 50c per programme.

Magic eyes will work, so long as you remember to turn on the RF2 9V output and have sky+ remote handsets at each eye. And while its possible to reprogramme sky+/sky HD to operate standard sky boxes, for your case I don't think it works in the reverse - you must have a sky+ remote to operate a sky+ box as you can't reprogramme the standard ones to operate sky+/sky HD. So you will need two new handsets. I am open to correction on this though...

You can record radio programmes to the HDD alright, you can get hundreds of hours or radio on the disk at a time as they take up feck all space. You have to set up the recordings as manual recordings though, you can't record straight off the EPG the way you could a TV programme (which is an awful pity really).

As watty says, the amount of space you'll get onto the disk will vary with what you're watching as the box records the broadcast signal at whatever bitrate it is transmitted at. RTE and BBC channels which have the highest quality tend to eat space, you might get 25 hours at most out of recording RTE or BBC. Most channels you'll get about 40 hours or so, some of the shopping channels which look more on par with a youtube clip than a TV channel will let you record about 60 hours or upwards (rough guestimate from accidental recordings!) although why you'd want even a minute of a shopping channel recorded is beyond me...

And about the box, keep it if you can. AFAIK it's yours from day one to do with it as you please so hang onto it - you can always run a spare cable from the dish (they'll replace your current dish LNB with a four output LNB) to the spare box and get the free BBC, ITV channels.

John mac

Take away your box first. It's yours.

Its yours

dont let him take it.

you can use it in another room (without sub)

byte

Apparently, it is possible to use a standard Sky remote on a Sky+ box.

See this link:
http://www.satcure.com/tech/digicode.htm#skyplus

I'd guess that recording from an ordinary remote will be impossible due to not having a R(ecord) button.

And as others have said, keep your existing box! It's yours

patrickc

watty wrote: »

BBC eats disk faster than ITV.

just picking up on this bit, is there a way to record itv?

steveon

As Itv and bbc3 etc are not on the Irish EPG the only way for us to record it is by using an external device such as a VCR or Dvd recorder...however you will have to watch the channel in order to be able to record and wont be able to change channel other wise you would record whatever you change to

John mac

no not with an Irish sub.

VERYinterested

Cheapest place to buy a Sky+ remote I found was Let's Automate through Amazon, I had to get it sent to my sister who lives in Belfast though, worked out under €25 a few weeks back, would be cheaper now with stronger Euro.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B000ON7BXM/ref=dp_olp_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1206354294&sr=1-1

Rippy

scaller wrote: »

and a sky plus install costs €194 not €231

€231 would be about right
€149 for the box
€45 install fee
€37 Non-Landline fee.
Sky do not pay any commission on upgrades to independent agents.Therefore the installer is going to make €45 (before tax) by driving to you, putting up ladders, changing lnb, checking dish alignment, running a new cable, set up new box, phone sky to activate sky+ functionality, clear up, drive home.
Who can blame him for asking for your old box to compensate himself?
He should have been upfront about it though, the box IS your property.

St Senan

Yeah thats about right Rippy i didn't pick up on the non- landline fee

molly1507

This has become a recurring problem after sky has shut & going into the weekend Sky+ HD box isn't getting a satellite SIGNAL. The guys @ sky can resolve this issue by sending a signal to the box as much as I enjoy talking to their customer service is there a way I can resolve it for myself. I have been on the " http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/tv/sky-plus-hd/error-messages/no-satellite-signal/" page and been through the services Menu found the signal option which is poor as in no Input1 signal. I checked the cables they are fully plunged in.After this I attempted to find LNB Reset under services on my Sky remote control and I saw the main menu with Options I Press 0 (zero), 1 then select to access the
Installer Setup menu which did not appear. So I was unable to set the correct LNB Set Up values should as they should read.I am off to bed where I have a SAORVIEW box would like to have recorded the programme tonight how and ever.

zg3409

molly1507 wrote: »

This has become a recurring problem after sky has shut & going into the weekend Sky+ HD box isn't getting a satellite SIGNAL. The guys @ sky can resolve this issue by sending a signal to the box as much as I enjoy talking to their customer service is there a way I can resolve it for myself. I have been on the " http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/tv/sky-plus-hd/error-messages/no-satellite-signal/" page and been through the services Menu found the signal option which is poor as in no Input1 signal. I checked the cables they are fully plunged in.After this I attempted to find LNB Reset under services on my Sky remote control and I saw the main menu with Options I Press 0 (zero), 1 then select to access the
Installer Setup menu which did not appear. So I was unable to set the correct LNB Set Up values should as they should read.I am off to bed where I have a SAORVIEW box would like to have recorded the programme tonight how and ever.

Start a new thread. You dish probably needs to be re-aligned.