Upgrading to Sky Q

ballyblack

i presume the software in the box reads the card to allow the box to play ur recordings
The card is authorised thru the sat connection

chrisw

I had a similar problem but just close your eyes and let the recordings go. Once they're gone you won't miss them and it's a bit of a weight lifted not having to try and find time to watch them.Sky Q is much better than Sky HD in my opinion and worth the upgrade despite the loss.

Neil_Jones

Were_Doomed said:

How does the box authenticate the viewing card? Is it via the satellite connection or actually via the Internet connection?

Neither.

A signal comes from Sky's system sent to your box (similar I believe to the "record this programme" notifications you can send from the Sky website) that activates/enables the card at the time of an upgrade/31 days later at a downgrade.  The software in the Sky+HD box will then regulate what you can and can't see depending on your subscription.

The "need a satellite connection to view recordings" thing above is not quite right - if the box has seen a signal in the last 12 hours, you can play your recordings.  So if a thunderstorm comes over and knocks the signal out, you can still use your box.  If you reboot the box before the signal comes back, you won't be able to play anything until  the box can see a signal again.

But regardless of this you need an active subscription to view any Sky+ recordings.  Simple as.

knightstyle

We did this a year ago, you will need a new LNB on the dish, make sure this is included in the free offer and when the engineer comes to do it tell him you still want to use the HD+ box and he will install a dual LNB with two pairs of cables one set to the Q box another set to the HD+ box.  Then in order to watch stuff recorded on the HD+ box you need to pay Sky £10 a month for freesat from Sky.
That is what we did for a few months.

sweetgirl2015

There is a solution, my hubby said you can take the hard drive out of the Sky HD box and connect it to a desktop computer and transfer the videos in file form and download special software which replicates the Sky box and watch and save them on the computer. 

neilmcl

Were_Doomed said:

How does the box authenticate the viewing card? Is it via the satellite connection or actually via the Internet connection?

Satellite.

neilmcl

sweetgirl2015 said:

There is a solution, my hubby said you can take the hard drive out of the Sky HD box and connect it to a desktop computer and transfer the videos in file form and download special software which replicates the Sky box and watch and save them on the computer. 

Unless you want to provide details to this "solution" afaik this isn't possible as the recordings on the disk are encrypted and there's no software available that can decrypt them.

sweetgirl2015

neilmcl said:

sweetgirl2015 said:

There is a solution, my hubby said you can take the hard drive out of the Sky HD box and connect it to a desktop computer and transfer the videos in file form and download special software which replicates the Sky box and watch and save them on the computer. 

Unless you want to provide details to this "solution" afaik this isn't possible as the recordings on the disk are encrypted and there's no software available that can decrypt them.

The programnes are recorded in a special video format he said, apparently you download a special software and it decrypts the file and transfers it into an AVI file he just told me which can be played on DIVIX does that makes sense, I am just typing what hes on about. 

Were_Doomed

DivX ... it's a video codec. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DivX

What's being asked above is "What is this special software?". A quick search suggests he may be talking about Copy+ ... skycopyplus.co.uk/

KeithP

@sweetgirl2015, can you please tell us more about this special video format and this special software?