Replacement Sky HD box... for free?

spyhunter

Just an update,The engineer turned up with 2 new boxes and replaced both my boxes with brand new ones all free of charge. The boxes are about half the size of the old boxes and are a lot faster and quieter. They are amstrad but had no probs so far. fingers crossed.

davemurgatroyd

Lets get some facts into this thread to replace a lot of the misinformation posted above.
1 For around two years now there has only been one manufacturer of Sky boxes - the former Amstrad company owned by Sky since before that time.
2 There are only 3 models of Sky box all HD - the DRX595 a non PVR single tuner box, the DRX 890 twin tuner PVR with 500 GB HDD (250 for personal use) and the DRX 895 with 1.5 TB HDD (1 TB for personal use. These are made in 3 different countries (at least the DRX890 is) signified by the a letter after the DRX890 (C for China, R for Romania and Z for??).
3 Sky have now ceased branding the boxes as Amstrad and supplies are coming through now with no mention of Amstrad on the receivers themselves and for a couple of months Sky have put notes in with the receivers saying to disregard any anomaly between Amstrad and Sky branding on the packaging, receivers or manuals as they are the same design as they use up supplies of the components and packaging.
4 The free replacement of Thomson boxes is an exchange scheme to remove them from the subscriber base as they are incapable of running the latest Darwin software (which includes Anytime+). Sky have also lost/cancelled the contract with the suppliers of the original middleware software used on these boxes and will be totally unable to supply any further updates for the Thomson boxes and may in the future withdraw any support whatsoever on the broadcast basis as I believe it is costing them money to still support that original software in that way.

So to all those attempting to keep your old boxes - you may well find in the future that the box will be completely useless as anything other than a FTA receiver.

SAHD_Jim

Maybe if Sky were up front about the reasons and explained them rather than claiming it is something to do with loyalty, people would be less cynical

Unfortunately, I've got a Samsung Box so no shiny new box for me...:(

Pikeyp

@davemurgatroyd
A quick question here dave , if I may?
A friend of mine just today had her old Grundig box replaced with an Amstrad DRX550 .. (she's not on HD) .. it appears to be new and un-used and is far better than the old one so she is happy with it so far!
I notice you don't mention this model in your list above .. is this Amstrad box considered OK for standard installations or did the engineer do something wrong here?
Many thanks for any advice ..

davemurgatroyd

Pikeyp wrote: »

@davemurgatroyd
A quick question here dave , if I may?
A friend of mine just today had her old Grundig box replaced with an Amstrad DRX550 .. (she's not on HD) .. it appears to be new and un-used and is far better than the old one so she is happy with it so far!
I notice you don't mention this model in your list above .. is this Amstrad box considered OK for standard installations or did the engineer do something wrong here?
Many thanks for any advice ..

That box is at least two years old as no SD boxes have been made for at least two years. There is a chance that it is an unused box as sky asked all dealers and ASAa to return any unused stock to them back in March (when all new installations went over to HD boxes only) for Sky to use as service replacements. The DRX 550 was one of the most reliable of the last of the SD boxes and had an even lower failure rate than the similar looking Pace boxes.

Sky will still use SD standard and Sky+ boxes for service calls and are nearly all refurbished units now.

Pikeyp

Thanks for the reply Dave!

He did specifically say it was a new one and not a re-furb .. and she is delighted with it so far!

kenbroxson

I have just had my old Sky HD boxes replaced with a lovely shiny new unit :j.
Prior to them replacing my unit had lots of issues accessing channels on the box:(. Thought this was initially because i had an issue with the dish/cabling. When the new box was added I informed the installation engineer that he may have to address that problem before he would be able to get the new box to work. The engineer was not too concerned about this and in fact assured me that this was probably being caused due to the Thompson box I had installed not being compatible with the new Sky systems. Low and behold when he had installed the new box all the signals were excellent and no issues with receiving any of the channels that were previously so problematic:T. As for any new contractual obligations, there were none. No new contract to be entered into or anything.

Notsram

I received my new Skybox today. However, what they don't tell you is that unless you have a wired router in the same room as your Skybox, you either have to shell out £60 for a wireless network adaptor or lose ALL Sky Anytime facilities. My new box is all set up correctly (engineer installation), but Anytime now just says that there are no programmes available. Bit of a con IMO, seeing as no mention of this was made when I phoned Sky to accept the offer.

Fair enough, I have a new Skybox for free, but seeing as I pay Sky a small fortune to watch their programmes, I think I should still be able to watch at least the regular Anytime provision.

My girlfriend oversaw the installation and didn't think to ask about Anytime, but I'm going to ring the engineer tomorrow and see what he says...

davemurgatroyd

Notsram wrote: »

I received my new Skybox today. However, what they don't tell you is that unless you have a wired router in the same room as your Skybox, you either have to shell out £60 for a wireless network adaptor or lose ALL Sky Anytime facilities. My new box is all set up correctly (engineer installation), but Anytime now just says that there are no programmes available. Bit of a con IMO, seeing as no mention of this was made when I phoned Sky to accept the offer.

Fair enough, I have a new Skybox for free, but seeing as I pay Sky a small fortune to watch their programmes, I think I should still be able to watch at least the regular Anytime provision.

My girlfriend oversaw the installation and didn't think to ask about Anytime, but I'm going to ring the engineer tomorrow and see what he says...

You are NOT losing Anytime facilities - that is downloaded via satellite and has absolutely nothing to do with a phone or broadband connection and can take several days to download content to your box. Note also on Anytime+ activated boxes this may be named as "Showcase".

What you are not getting until you either install a network cable to your router or purchase a WiFi adaptor is the Anytime+ service. Confusingly the two similarly named services are totally separate and nothing to do with each other.

Did you not notice the small print in every advert I have ever seen referring to Anytime+ that a network/broadband connection is required?

Notsram

davemurgatroyd wrote: »

You are NOT losing Anytime facilities - that is downloaded via satellite and has absolutely nothing to do with a phone or broadband connection and can take several days to download content to your box. Note also on Anytime+ activated boxes this may be named as "Showcase".

What you are not getting until you either install a network cable to your router or purchase a WiFi adaptor is the Anytime+ service. Confusingly the two similarly named services are totally separate and nothing to do with each other.

Did you not notice the small print in every advert I have ever seen referring to Anytime+ that a network/broadband connection is required?

Was going to edit my original post, but will just reply to this instead

I was wrong about losing all Anytime. It has now activated (took over 24 hours to do so, though). However, I now have a grand total of 5 viewable anytime programmes, which is still a lot less than I had previously.

And yes, of course I knew that the full Anytime+ requires broadband. I assumed that the Sky engineer who came yesterday would have set this up, seeing as that is what was promised in the original promotional letter, or at the very least explained about it. My objection is that at no stage, either by Sky or the Engineer, was I told that I'd need to spend an extra £60 on a wifi adaptor (the network cable option is out as I'd need a 40ft cable running through two rooms and down a flight of stairs).