bloody useless bollocking sky+ crash - rant

[The Contrarian]

I know it is only fking television. It is not the end of the ttting world, but why do sky insist on not having a backup system for programmes stored on their hitherto reliable, but now a disappointing pile of bks sky+ hard drive.


How difficult can it be? They have a system (Anytime tv) which covertly records programmes I don't want onto my hard drive in case I want to watch them at the touch of a button - but no system of covertly sending my recorded programmes the other way to be backed up on their server. They only have about 6 million subscribers, not all of which will even have sky+


Twunts

p.s. Yes, I am aware I could get a little perspective of this 'problem' by visiting my local burns unit.

[Plotloss]

Consider, just in passing for a moment, if you will the sheer storage capacity and network capacity required for such a system.

The anytimeTV thing sends a tiny message to the box to set it to record, backing up the hard drive would be a monster monster task.

It would be significantly easier to enable and publish the USB port specifications so you could mirror it externally with DRM intact.

[OldSkoolRS]

I understand your annoyance, but how could Sky back up your hard disc? Even standard definition recording can use up around 2-2.5Gb per hour, so considering that the Sky internet package limits you to less than 2Gb a month download, the sums just don't add up. Good rant though.

[OldSkoolRS]

Sorry Plotless, I'm begining to feel like I'm stalking you today.

Should have scored the rant too: 7/10 as Sky is an easy target to rant at, so not too original.

[miniman]

The data is beamed to you from a satellite. How exactly do you think it can get back to Sky? Is there, for instance, a colossal satellite uplink station in your smallest room?

[The Contrarian]

Meh. I know there are technical challenges of bandwidth etc.

How can anythime tv be a little squirt though. According to the fker who talked me through the rest, you need to leave a line free overnight for it to feed your hard disl the anytime tv content - and since when you 'record' an anytime tv programme it is instantly recorded onto the hardrive, I assume they actually squirt onto the hardrive somewhere.


Anyway, it is a pain in the arse - they could make some revenue by selling a backup method of some sort.

Twatting arsebaskets.

[miniman]

The Contrarian said:

Meh. I know there are technical challenges of bandwidth etc.

How can anythime tv be a little squirt though. According to the fker who talked me through the rest, you need to leave a line free overnight for it to feed your hard disl the anytime tv content - and since when you 'record' an anytime tv programme it is instantly recorded onto the hardrive, I assume they actually squirt onto the hardrive somewhere.


Anyway, it is a pain in the arse - they could make some revenue by selling a backup method of some sort.

Twatting arsebaskets.

Basically it works such that they make an assumption that most of us aren't watching at night. Well, maybe watching for 10 minutes, then switching off. Anyway, knuckle shuffling aside, its a fair bet that the box won't be doing anything, so if it isn't, it starts recording shows from Anytime straight onto the hard disk. If you subsequently "record" it, it just sets a marker, similar to the "Keep" function on the normal recordings, so that the data is retained.

Agree entirely that some sort of backup mechanism (a better one than plugging in a circa-1992 VCR), not least because I am on my fourth HD box, and each time they replace it with an allegedly reliable one, I lose my porn stash important recordings.

[Plotloss]

Anytime content goes out on a specific satellite channel so initially a status message is sent to query whether the box is ready, does a date check etc, it then sets some record flags and just uses plus functionality to record the shows off the specific channel.

It records this to a special partition on the HDD that is reserved for Anytime and when you press copy it copies it across to the EPG partition so it doesnt get overwritten.

The telephone line doesnt need to be connected for any of this to happen whereas bulk upload of data to Sky would require the activation of the ethernet port on the HD boxes and using your DSL connection to upload the content.

[SLacKer]

When my Sky minus gave up the ghost I took the HD out and mounted it in a usb caddy and copied the files to a PC. I converted them for use on the PC and also copied them back to another 250GB drive and installed it back into the box. Now I did not get all the files as some were corrupted but got quite a few and a useful doubling of space.

A backup facility would be nice though they could use that USB connector.....but I am sure they will not.

[JustinP1]

The Contrarian said:

According to the fker who talked me through the rest, you need to leave a line free overnight for it to feed your hard disl the anytime tv content

Why do you think Sky made such a big fuss about adding the 'standby' function on Sky boxes where at night it turns itself off?

It isn't to save the planet.

Just by co-incidence they never bothered for years until the time that Anytime was put into place...

[monthefish]

What is the 'copy' function for in the sky planner? (for programmes already recorded)

Copy to where??

[miniman]

monthefish said:

What is the 'copy' function for in the sky planner? (for programmes already recorded)

Copy to where??

It just cues them all up to play in sequence I think, so you start the DVD burner and leave it to copy. In real time, mind.