Sky plus question. Can I just buy box?

stressedofdevon

My parents are Sky customers and would love Sky+. Sky will not let me buy it for them which I understand but I have seen a box available locally at a good price and wonder if I purchase it as a christmas present can they just swap it over with their ordinary box and it will work to provide the plus service? I have heard that it no longer carries a premium charge on the subscription but not sure whether they would need to do something at their end?

Can anyone help? :A

sunshine54

no you cannot buy a box and just plug it in i'm afraid, you need an extra LNB and cable from your dish to record programmes.

Inactive

If their LNB on their dish has a single output, this would need changing to a twin or more likely a quad output one, an additional cable is also required from the LNB to the receiver.

A quad LNB and cable etc. can be got on eBay for around £20.

DatabaseError

you'll also need to tell sky

jasonwatkins

sunshine54 wrote: »

no you cannot buy a box and just plug it in i'm afraid, you need an extra LNB and cable from your dish to record programmes.

not quite true. a sky + box will work on a single LNB in much the same way a freesat box will.

tonyhague wrote: »

you'll also need to tell sky

again, not quite true.

i bought a second hand sky+ box off ebay years ago and plugged it in to my single LNB system and it worked fine as a freesat box.

i ultimately paid someone to add an extra LNB to my dish though and then contacted sky to take out a sky+ subscription.

you don't need to connect it to a telephone line either and don't let anyone tell you you do.

DatabaseError

ok, I'll rephrase...
In order to use the +functions you will need to contact sky (and have dual feed), takes 5 minutes, costs the price of the call.

sweep9

...and strangely, you ARE charged for the Sky+ functions at £10 per month, but because you are a Sky subscriber you receive a £10 per month credit!!!

Conor_3

jasonwatkins wrote: »

i ultimately paid someone to add an extra LNB to my dish though and then contacted sky to take out a sky+ subscription.

Bearing in mind how little Sky charge for a full Sky+ installation including box, how much did it all end up costing, including the cost of the box?

DatabaseError

speaking for myself, once I'd sold the excess card and box (I already had a quad LNB running 2 extra boxes) I think it cost me £4 to upgrade to a 160gb plus box
the bad side....
I've bought the thompson pvr2.5 box, not the quietest, and I'm loath to try adding a resistor inline with the hdd fan this side of xmas, and I dont get the on-demand stuff (but i don't care)

Millionaire

I got Sky+ via Sky for free and free installation about a year and half ago. Also got one of the Pace boxes, which are said to be the most reliable of the lot.

Went through cancellations to get the offer. Sold my old Sky box on ebay for around £30.

stressedofdevon

Thanks everyone, very helpful advice. Think I will have to come up with a Plan B.