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Sky Replacement Card

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  • spike7451
    spike7451 Posts: 6,944 Forumite
    After being told by Sky by e-mail I would have buy 2x new viewing cards,today I recieved a unexpected new viewing card,not for my Sky+ box,which I use as fta,but for my other,normal box,again fta,WHICH I cancelled multiroom on months before I binned the Plus!
    !!!!!!?!
  • As the Blue cards are about to be killed off within the next month or two (or rather the encryption system will then be changed to one they do not have a program on board to understand) Sky is now sending out pop up messages saying you need to replace the old card even if you are watching an FTV channel that doesn't require the card to decrypt it. The message is generated simply by the fact that you have the card in the viewing slot and that it is an old Blue sky card that the firmware on the box knows is out to become redundant.

    Your only solution is to take the card out of the box altogether and the message will then go away. But if you want to go on watching Fiver, FiveUSA, and Sky Three and possibly ITV1 (in some regions) and have correct regionalisation on BBC1, and ITV then you need to get hold of a new white Sky viewing card by one of the methods discussed elsewhere in this thread.


    Hi

    I've read the above but still confused please can someone help?

    We have Sky dish and sky boxes with the old blue cards. We don't subscribe - only use the dish and box as we don't have an external TV aerial.

    We keep getting the annoying pop up messages "you are about to lose viewing on this channel" and they seem to be on all channels.

    We only want the ordinary free to view channels so don't want to buy a new card. But how can we stop the annoying messages on screen?

    We've taken the card out but now we can't get ITV any more - pls can someone help? On ITV it just says "please insert your viewing card".

    Many thx
  • Okay sorry scratch my above post - have finally got it all to work!

    Just one question left please - I've manually added ITV (London) and Channel 5 (thanks to the excellent instructions on this site!) is there a way I can save these to my "favourites" so I don't have to keep accessing them through option 7 on the menu?

    Huge thx for saving me from having to spend £20 on a new card!
  • spike7451
    spike7451 Posts: 6,944 Forumite
    Okay sorry scratch my above post - have finally got it all to work!

    Just one question left please - I've manually added ITV (London) and Channel 5 (thanks to the excellent instructions on this site!) is there a way I can save these to my "favourites" so I don't have to keep accessing them through option 7 on the menu?

    Huge thx for saving me from having to spend £20 on a new card!

    Short answer.No.
  • Inactive
    Inactive Posts: 14,509 Forumite
    spike7451 wrote: »
    Short answer.No.

    Agreed, or buy a card.;)
  • Just one question left please - I've manually added ITV (London) and Channel 5 (thanks to the excellent instructions on this site!) is there a way I can save these to my "favourites" so I don't have to keep accessing them through option 7 on the menu?

    Huge thx for saving me from having to spend £20 on a new card!

    will-in-estoril has identified that it is possible to get two replacement Sky viewing cards for a total of £17.96 (£8.98 each) from Nollywood movies tv using the method described in posts #26 and #34 at http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2135509&page=2 He has also posted further on this subject over on a thread on the digitalspy discussion forum at https://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1194389

    Surely £8.98 per card isn't much to pay (they should last another five to six years) in order to be able to access Five and ITV1 by the usual channel number method and also to have access to Fiver, Five USA and Sky Three (all of which are Free To View rather than Free To Air) channels that you can only see with a valid current Sky viewing card.

    Also with the Nollywood Tv route you can make a one off payment by Paypoint and do not have to use a credit card or direct debit or deal with Sky and all their outragerous customer trickery. Better still they use a normal 020 phone number that is part of bundled minutes packages and not a horrid premium rate 0844 numbers as Sky do. See https://www.nollywoodmovies.tv/info/contact
  • alexeix
    alexeix Posts: 24 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10 Posts Combo Breaker
    My parents live in Spain and I gave them an old SKY box which a colleague had given me.
    Their box only received Fiver, Five and Five US, and they were happy with that, however, it has now stopped working.

    I understand that I can contact Nollywood (?) to get one of the new cards, but will it need to be inserted in the box it is to be used in, in order to be activated?
    OR can I just insert the card in ANY SKY box, then phone SKY for activation, subsequently sending the card to my parents?

    Any advice would be appreciated.
  • alexeix wrote: »
    My parents live in Spain and I gave them an old SKY box which a colleague had given me.

    Their box only received Fiver, Five and Five US, and they were happy with that, however, it has now stopped working.

    They could only get these British channels due to their satellite dish not being large enough to receive the other unencrypted British channels (all BBC, ITV and nearly all C4 channels apart from C4 HD). If they attached a larger dish to their box they would get all those channels without any viewing card in the slot. They ought to have also got Sky Three when they were getting Fiver, Five and Five US plus probably a load of news channels and things like TrueMovies and Movies4Men

    Where are they based exactly? As I understand it a https://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk viewing card does not need to be activated but they now cost £25. See https://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/faqs-freesat.aspx#q3 A Nollywood Tv card would need to be "activated".

    However your parents may find it more worthwhile to pay for a larger satellite dish so they can get all the FTA BBC, ITV and C4 channels.
  • Inactive
    Inactive Posts: 14,509 Forumite

    However your parents may find it more worthwhile to pay for a larger satellite dish so they can get all the FTA BBC, ITV and C4 channels.

    You do realise that to get BBC 1 and 2 in some parts of Spain a 2.4 metre dish is required.

    Oh and a FreesatfromSky Card does need activating in the UK.
  • Inactive wrote: »
    You do realise that to get BBC 1 and 2 in some parts of Spain a 2.4 metre dish is required.

    2.4 metres is a belt and braces solution but rarely implemented in Spain because it is not affordable and/or aesthetically pleasing. In practice dish sizes used to get UK channels tend to be no more than 1.5 metres and receive programs on most channels 90% of the time. 2.4 metres is more like the dish size you would need in the Canary Islands. I imagine the OP's parents had a dish size that was suitable before most UK channels were shifted to transmission on Astra 2D. Perhaps their dish is say 90cm?
    Oh and a FreesatfromSky Card does need activating in the UK.

    Both I and my mother have received replacement Sky Pay Once Watch Forever viewing cards in the last three months and neither of them had to be activated. Insertion in the Sky box was all that was required.
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