Sky / Sky+ and phone lines
Discussion
We upgraded our aged Sky box to Sky+ Multiroom today, which involved the Sky man moving our old Sky box upstairs to the family room and installing a Sky+ box in its place.
Anyway, we inherited the Sky box with our previous house and brought it to this one as the previous owner of our house left the dish here. In that time we have never had it connected to the phone line.
Turns out that a condition of today's installation is that both boxes have to have a phone connection and the Sky man laid in temporary phone extensions for us today in order to achieve that. He says that they are required to synchronise the two boxes, although I'm a little dubious of that.
My question is how necessary are these phone connections?
Can I safely disconnect them or must they stay connected?
What will these boxes do with the connections? Will they "phone home" in the early hours of the morning and tell Sky about my viewing habits?
I'm sure there's someone out there in PHLand who'll know.
Cheers
Jon
Anyway, we inherited the Sky box with our previous house and brought it to this one as the previous owner of our house left the dish here. In that time we have never had it connected to the phone line.
Turns out that a condition of today's installation is that both boxes have to have a phone connection and the Sky man laid in temporary phone extensions for us today in order to achieve that. He says that they are required to synchronise the two boxes, although I'm a little dubious of that.
My question is how necessary are these phone connections?
Can I safely disconnect them or must they stay connected?
What will these boxes do with the connections? Will they "phone home" in the early hours of the morning and tell Sky about my viewing habits?
I'm sure there's someone out there in PHLand who'll know.
Cheers
Jon
Keep it connected. I tried getting away with leaving my normal sky box unconnected (While the sky+ unit had a connection) and i was threatened with having my subscription cancelled. Cost me a few quid to get the BT man to come round and install yet another telephone extension.
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 29th November 19:19
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 29th November 19:19
Only got he one Sky box but I disconnected the phone wire soon as the installer left. I think you only need it for the interactive stuff like responding to adds or voting on some of those reality progs.. oh and box office stuff.
I have no wish to do any of those things and havnt a problem in 3 years of use.
I have no wish to do any of those things and havnt a problem in 3 years of use.
Having done some poking around...
As its multiroom it HAS to be connected to a phone line.
This is because you are getting a discount on the second skycard and Sky need to check, via once a month callback, that both boxes are in the same house i.e. on the same phone line so you arent just signing up and giving the card to your nan.
It definately doesnt report viewing habits, its just for pay stuff and to check as above.
If you dont have multiroom you can pay a £25 one off fee for a no phone line installation, accept the phone line connection for 12 months and unplug after that or unplug straight away and risk the consequences.
As its multiroom it HAS to be connected to a phone line.
This is because you are getting a discount on the second skycard and Sky need to check, via once a month callback, that both boxes are in the same house i.e. on the same phone line so you arent just signing up and giving the card to your nan.
It definately doesnt report viewing habits, its just for pay stuff and to check as above.
If you dont have multiroom you can pay a £25 one off fee for a no phone line installation, accept the phone line connection for 12 months and unplug after that or unplug straight away and risk the consequences.
moreymach said:Exactly the same for me on sky and then skyplus
Only got he one Sky box but I disconnected the phone wire soon as the installer left. I think you only need it for the interactive stuff like responding to adds or voting on some of those reality progs.. oh and box office stuff.
I have no wish to do any of those things and havnt a problem in 3 years of use.
I have Sky+ without the multiroom and don't have a phone line. Managed to use one for the day to set it all up but never been plugged in since.
Same at my last flat too, an entire year.
Messes up your PPV films but you can do that over the phone if need be.
Why should I pay BT £10 a month for a phone I never use purely for sky to use??? Oooo no thank-you. lol
Same at my last flat too, an entire year.
Messes up your PPV films but you can do that over the phone if need be.
Why should I pay BT £10 a month for a phone I never use purely for sky to use??? Oooo no thank-you. lol
sounds about right. I've had sky+ and multiroom for 2 months now, and the box upstairs hasn't been plugged in since it was moved. Maybe I should one of the things they want to check is that you are in the UK. You could take the box to Spain and it would work, but they don't have the rights for the films there. So a friend has an arrangement where his PABX in a different country spots the call from the sky box and re-routes it to his london house where it dials out to sky with the london cli.
simon
simon
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