problems with sky+

xycom1

It won't be anything to do with the phone line. Follow deanos advice - housekeeping might fix it. If you have to use housekeeping more than every once in a while (e.g. once every 3 months) then the hard drive has gone.

I had similar problems with an Amstrad Sky+ box and it was about 16 months old at the time. I did use to leave it switched on all the time (i.e. green light on the front) meaning that the hard drive is running (and therefore wearing) all the time.

Rang Sky and told them the box was useless after I had to delete everything to get it working again. Lost loads of programs and was not pleased at the time. Managed to get a brand new replacement box for £65 and I was only on the £10/month Sky+ recording subscription at the time (no channel sub).

Had my new box for nearly 8 months now - will try the same again once over 12 months and see if I can get a SkyHD box cheap.

Now I always have the box on standby (red light on the front) when it's not being watched - this stops the hard disk (unless it's recording) so reduces wear on the system and will hopefully make it last longer...!

deanos

Yes i always put mine in standby at night it dosent stop it recording and turns itself on/off if you have anything set to record

Lob_Rockster

If you don't use Instant Rewind then turn it off in the Sky+ setup - the HDD will then only really be used when you're recording programmes.

Phone line has nothing to do with the problem you're seeing, it's related to HDD (most likely) and possibly HEAT. Allow a reasonable amount of space above and to the sides of the Sky+ box and ensure that area is well-ventilated.

Pace Sky+ boxes are the best btw.

You can of course take it upon yourself to change the HDD yourself (potentially for a bigger model) but if you're within the 1st year, get Sky to change it and insist on a Pace model.

For decent instuctions on the HDD swap, see automan's profile on DigitalSpy and wander over to his homepage....

nickmack

In my first year of Sky+, I had 8 different boxes.

I had the same sort of problems as you. Recordings showing as failed after they had been successfully taped, the box freezing randomly plus other minor but annoying bugs.

Sky kept insisting that I must be extremely unlucky with my hardware. I knew otherwise.

Some of the software releases have been very buggy, particularly in specific boxes. Sky kept denying this, but I found out they did know there was a problem.

Eventually they released a software update that seemed to do the trick. Previously I had tried all the remedies on their checklists: Turn off box for 2 mins, Housekeeping/Planner Rebuild, System Reset, Disconnect phone line, Reconnect all wires. Of course none of these were causing the problem.

As others have said, one of the best places to get info is DigitalSpy, there are some (good) ex-Sky engineers on there and your problem will no doubt be covered.