DIYers, Install a Sky+ Box yourself

EnglishMan_2

Last summer I came across a Pace Sky+ box at a boot sale for £15. £2.50 for coaxial cable and £1.25 for connectors at our local pound shop, already had some cable clips. Fortuneately, the sky installers installed a quad LNB when setting up my original Sky DigiBox, so I had 3 spare outputs on the LNB making it easy to connect the extra lead needed for the Sky+ box. 'Phoned Sky to match up my DigiBox card with the "new" box and this was done within a few minutes.

It might sound unbelievably lucky, but passing our local Cash Converters a few weeks ago, they had a 320GB Maxtor hard drive displayed in the window for £20 usually £45+. Bought it, put it in the Sky+ box replacing the original 40GB hard drive.

Now have approx 160 hours of recording time for less than 40 quid and no problems so far, touch wood.

Unfortunately still have to pay £16.50 per month for Sky's basic package. But compared to the £12 per month we pay for the BBC channels, which we rarely watch, Sky is a very good deal.

I might be a bit odd, but I am a pro Sky person. My neighbours a few doors down have recently had an outdoor aerial installed to pick up FREEVIEW and it cost them nearly £200 and then another £189 for a Humax box which has turned out to be nowhere near as user friendly and reliable as a Sky+ box. Sky's installation charges are quite fair in my opinion and the people that do the installations have to earn a living. But if you can DIY then it shouldn't cost much more than a fiver for installation as long as you have an existing dish with at least a dual LNB attached with a spare output.

If you're happy with standard definition TV as I am for the present, there should soon be many second-hand Sky+ boxes on offer at boot sales and in Loot because a lot of Sky customers are replacing theirs with Sky HD boxes. For me currently there aren't enough HD channels with HD programmes available to warrant the extra expense of getting a HD box and the extra £9.75 a month. Supposedly HD channels like Channel 4 HD & SCI FI HD mainly only broadcast a few HD programmes daily, BBC HD repeats and repeats its programmes incessantly and ITV HD isn't currently available. For those that can afford Sky Movies & Sky Sports, well that's another matter.

NB. I wouldn't recommend self-installation if your dish is above first floor level:A