Sky Plus

[croggers]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, please move if it is.

My wife and I have Sky Plus. We have had it for over a year now and all was great. A wee while back, they contacted us informing us the guarantee on the box was expired and wanted to know if we wanted to take out another one. We declined.

In the past couple days, it's been on the blink. We have various things on record, which have failed a few times for no reason. It said no signal, but I was watching one checking to see if it was recording and it was fine. If it does record, it then won't let us play them.

Today, our box totally messed up and would not come up with anything on the screen for over an hour and we had to watch boring terrestial. Now, has anyone else had this problem and what did they do?

I am asking before I give Sky a ring to see have some ammo if possible to help the situation.

Croggers

[Soovy]

So they offered you a warranty, which you declined. Then the box has broken.

On what basis do you think they have any liability?

[Morningside]

What signal level are you getting? (Services Menu).

Also, try turning off your box and swapping over the dish (LMB) cables - You may have a dud tuner.

What box is it? If its the Amstrad one I know they have had a few issues but thats mainly recording.


Hmmm actually dead? Thinking about it, it sounds like your hard disk may have failed or slow to startup. You could try re-initalising it BUT you will lose all your recordings.

Edited by Morningside on Tuesday 27th January 19:01

[scotal]

Have you tried turning the box off for a couple of minutes so it resets itself. I have no idea why this worked,, but we had a spate where our sky box apeeared to be broken, and having done this, it is absolutely fine.

[Allanv]

stolen from google search (read the warning)

Had a problem with my Sky+ box the other day, was seeing jerky on the screen so decided to do a full system reset. This can be accessed from the Sky Engineers Menu by the following

Press “SERVICES” on your Sky Plus Remote

Select Option 4

Next press 0, 1 and SELECT - you should now see the engineer’s menu.

Choose option 8, ‘Full System Reset’. The box will now take a few minutes to reset itself.

BE WARNED: This will clear your HD and thus wipe all your recorded programs!!

This solution has also been known to resolve pausing and recording issues. Enjoy!

[Dover Nige]

Mine did this today too.

Does your surname begin with B or near to B in the alphabet? Do you live anywhere near Kent?

I've left mine unplugged for the last half an hour and will be switching it on again in a tick. Hopefully that'll cure it.

I'm convinced Sky send stuff to the digiboxes to screw them up if you've no insurance (and no, I don't believe in aliens or any other conspiracy theories!).

[oobster]

Sky boxes are notoriously unreliable. I think Pace boxes are supposed to be the best, with Amstrad the worst. Sounds like your hard drive is playing up - you can replace it yourself (plenty of how-to's on avforums).

I would suggest phoning to cancel and when they ask why explain the box fault. You MAY get a free callout, although if you've only been a sky customer for a short time it's doubtful.

Try doing a full reset - unplug it and hold in a couple of buttons while plugging it back in again (you'll find what the buttons are on avforums, or the sky technician will tell you if you phone their helpline). It'll delete all your stored shows though.

If you dont fancy fixing it yourself, or going down the cancel route then i'd suggest buying a new Pace box from somewhere like simplydigital.co.uk - thats what we did and our Pace box has been fine for nearly two years now.

[Dracoro]

Go to (or threaten to) Virgin Media.

They have V+ (same sort of thing as Sky+) and now have the Sky channels back.

The box is guaranteed as long as you're with them, none of this "1" year warranty rubbish.

And as a bonus you can get proper fast broadband!

[Nickyboy]

Allanv said:

stolen from google search (read the warning)

Had a problem with my Sky+ box the other day, was seeing jerky on the screen so decided to do a full system reset. This can be accessed from the Sky Engineers Menu by the following

Press “SERVICES” on your Sky Plus Remote

Select Option 4

Next press 0, 1 and SELECT - you should now see the engineer’s menu.

Choose option 8, ‘Full System Reset’. The box will now take a few minutes to reset itself.

BE WARNED: This will clear your HD and thus wipe all your recorded programs!!

This solution has also been known to resolve pausing and recording issues. Enjoy!

+1

Did the same to mine after 6 months of having it sat in the cupboard after freezing, Has been fine since

[Dover Nige]

Little update on mine that I just switched off at the mains....

Switched it back on and the red light came on. Tried to turn it on with the remote after 20 seconds, nothing. Left it for a good 5 minutes or so, switched it on using the remote, it came on and is now working fine.

I still don't trust Sky though and always leave the phoneline connection unplugged.

[Soovy]

Dover Nige said:

Little update on mine that I just switched off at the mains....

Switched it back on and the red light came on. Tried to turn it on with the remote after 20 seconds, nothing. Left it for a good 5 minutes or so, switched it on using the remote, it came on and is now working fine.

I still don't trust Sky though and always leave the phoneline connection unplugged.

They tell you this in the manual. Turn it off at the plug. Wait one minute. Turn it on at the mains, wait 30 seconds, turn it on. Fixed.

[miniman]

Soovy said:

Dover Nige said:

Little update on mine that I just switched off at the mains....

Switched it back on and the red light came on. Tried to turn it on with the remote after 20 seconds, nothing. Left it for a good 5 minutes or so, switched it on using the remote, it came on and is now working fine.

I still don't trust Sky though and always leave the phoneline connection unplugged.

They tell you this in the manual. Turn it off at the plug. Wait one minute. Turn it on at the mains, wait 30 seconds, turn it on. Fixed.

With Sky+ and SkyHD I would recommend leaving it longer than 30 seconds after turning it on at the mains. If you give it a good 2 or 3 minutes, it will work properly (i.e. quickly) once you turn it on. Basically it is no different to starting up a PC - it has to boot up and get itself going.

[Puggit]

Our's went on the blink today too

Missed all of Puggit jnr's bedtime programmes and we needed to revert back to DVDs. We also switched off/on/waited 2 mins etc.

[Silver993tt]

I got a call from sky a couple of months ago trying to sell me insurance, since I had my box for 10 months already. I declined but a few days later, the box packed up completely - no lights, no power. Two guys came out and replaced the original white plastic box with a silver one which they said was much better. I told them about the call from Sky regarding insurance and they said that they had heard this many times from other call outs - a few days after a call trying to sell insurance and the box would pack up. They advised me to unplug the telephone cable

[Dover Nige]

Puggit said:

Our's went on the blink today too

See, they're at it I tell you........:veryverysuspicioussmiley:

[Slinky]

Dracoro said:

Go to (or threaten to) Virgin Media.

They have V+ (same sort of thing as Sky+) and now have the Sky channels back.

The box is guaranteed as long as you're with them, none of this "1" year warranty rubbish.

And as a bonus you can get proper fast broadband!

A great alternative, if you're in a cabled area..

[Mello]

There are some serious issues with Amstrad PVR Sky+ boxes. Depending on your model, have a look at either:-

PVR2:- http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?...

or

PVR3:- http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?...

[Morningside]

Mello said:

There are some serious issues with Amstrad PVR Sky+ boxes. Depending on your model, have a look at either:-

PVR2:- http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?...

or

PVR3:- http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?...

Yup. And I have found a way round this. Turn off the Instant Rewind feature.

[Mello]

Morningside said:

Yup. And I have found a way round this. Turn off the Instant Rewind feature.

Very interesting! I'll try it

[miniman]

Morningside said:

Yup. And I have found a way round this. Turn off the Instant Rewind feature.

Interesting solution, but why should one have to forego a useful and worthwhile feature simply because Amstrad built a job lot of shoddy kit which Sky then loaded shoddy software onto...