Sky HD+ box to Sky Q

GibbsRule_No3.

Sky keep contacting me to change to Sky Q for free, as Sky HD+ box will not be getting any upgrades. I have not bitten the bullet yet as I am waiting for a response from my housing association, who supply a communal dish for the 12 bungalows in my Close. I don’t think the dish meets the requirements for Sky Q reception. In the meanwhile friends have had their Sky Q installed, private house, but all their pre recorded shows have disappeared, they knew that would happen but were told they could redownload them. When they tried to do that they are now being asked to pay extra for the privilege. Is this correct or should they contact Sky and ask for a free option while they get back the missing programmes?  I don’t often have a backlog of pre recorded shows but they seldom watch anything as it goes out.

la531983

I didnt even think that was an option tbf, the programmes would have been on the Sky+ hard drive, with no obvious way for Sky to retrieve them to "send" to a new box.

basill

Films, box sets etc. you have paid for will be saved in your Sky account and can be downloaded again onto a new box without extra cost.  
Everything recorded was stored locally on the old hard disk and cannot be transferred to a new device.  If you are lucky some of the old recordings might still be available from catch up.

prowla

Sky Q uses different LNBs (the little widgets the cables plug into at the back of the dish), so they need to be changed.

Sky Q only needs two of them to allow 4 programmes to be received simultaneously (eg. record 3 others whilst watching one).

These new "wideband" LNBs are not backwards-compatible with the HD box, but there are 3rd party dual-mode ones which can do both if you were to want to keep it running (for Freesat channels).

As per other comments, the downloaded programmes on the HD box are acquired when the programme is broadcast and can't be transferred; i think your existing viewing card stops working when the new Sky Q one is activated, so you don't get any crossover time.

I think Sky Q is a nice system, but; I ditched it because of the price rises and I now have a Freesat recorder which is nearly (but not quite) as good.

JSmithy45AD

GibbsRule_No3. said:

Sky keep contacting me to change to Sky Q for free, as Sky HD+ box will not be getting any upgrades. I have not bitten the bullet yet as I am waiting for a response from my housing association, who supply a communal dish for the 12 bungalows in my Close. I don’t think the dish meets the requirements for Sky Q reception. In the meanwhile friends have had their Sky Q installed, private house, but all their pre recorded shows have disappeared, they knew that would happen but were told they could redownload them. When they tried to do that they are now being asked to pay extra for the privilege. Is this correct or should they contact Sky and ask for a free option while they get back the missing programmes?  I don’t often have a backlog of pre recorded shows but they seldom watch anything as it goes out.

It's possible (probable even) that they've recorded stuff which just isn't available any more from the free catch-up apps. If the content is only available from (say) Disney+ or Amazon Prime or The Discovery channel then they would need to subscribe to that.

It may also only be available from the Sky Store perhaps which is a paid 'Buy to keep' service. As the recordings are local (and not cloud based) and stored on the hard drive you will always lose all of them when changing the box for any reason. All of your scheduled recordings will also disappear but any previously purchased content from the Sky Store can just be downloaded again.

GibbsRule_No3.

The programmes that cannot be found are programmes, that with the old Sky HD box you could do a search at top of screen, after pressing tv guide on old handset, type in a programme, so nothing special that needed paying for. Also on old handset the coloured buttons had red catch up , green planner, yellow +24 hours, blue -24 hours. New handset does not. Progress we expected a better service not a worse one. I’m still waiting for my HA to get back about the dish capabilities.