Warning - SKY £75 Pay Once Watch Forever problems

spike7451

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Did you only one get one replacement card though? And soes that mean you are still waiting for the second replacement card?

When I wrote to them I only included the card number from the bog standard box & not the Sky+ one.I'm getting the HD in a couple of weeks (a friend of mine sells Sky & they have some new offers coming out next week) as my new job means I work late.
(Also the Sky+ is a reco replacement Thompson as my first one went t*ts up & this one up to Sky's usual standard of repair,9v power on RF2 is !!!!!!ed & one of the transponders dodgy)

J3man

Another success after three weeks of emails sent to those recomended by NGM my new veiwing card has arrived. So it your still waiting keep those emails flowing they will eventual crack and send you one.

Jon

harz99

Just popped in to say hi everyone, and thanks to NGM for keeping up the good work.

When I started this thread I never imagined it would still be going 2 years 3 months later!:mad:

NonGeographicalMan

harz99 wrote: »

Just popped in to say hi everyone, and thanks to NGM for keeping up the good work.

It seems that Sky have now finally changed their encryption system so that the old cards no longer work at all. I just inserted my old card and immediately got a message on Fiver saying "This programme is not available" and saying that I needed to "go to www.sky.com/replacecard" to get a new viewing card. As no one has posted in the thread to complain I assume that everyone here was able to get a new viewing card out of Sky without having to pay them a £20 or £25 card replacement fee?:T:rotfl:

When I started this thread I never imagined it would still be going 2 years 3 months later!:mad:

But what exactly made you think that the Sky leopard was ever likely to change its spots?;):p:D

harz99

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

It seems that Sky have now finally changed their encryption system so that the old cards no longer work at all. I just inserted my old card and immediately got a message on Fiver saying "This programme is not available" and saying that I needed to "go to www.sky.com/replacecard" to get a new viewing card. As no one has posted in the thread to complain I assume that everyone here was able to get a new viewing card out of Sky without having to pay them a £20 or £25 card replacement fee?:T:rotfl:



But what exactly made you think that the Sky leopard was ever likely to change its spots?;):p:D

An inbuilt (and since gone) desire to see the best in everyone!!!!

NonGeographicalMan

harz99 wrote: »

An inbuilt (and since gone) desire to see the best in everyone!!!!

Surely even the most positive thinking types amongst us have to make an exception when it comes to Sky, Ryanair, Microsoft or many of the larger institutions in the financial services sector.

cornerstone13

Hello, I posted on this thread a couple of years back (see post 47) and since then we have been happily watching Freesat and even got the new card without jumping through hoops.

However, we now have a problem where the screen has started to freeze after 10 minutes of watching Freesat through Sky and nothing we do gets things moving again, other than switching everything off for an hour or so. Then we switch back on, get another 10 mins of viewing and it freezes up again.

Just wondering if any other Sky Freesatters have had a similar problem recently. I'll be calling Sky shortly to see what their solution is and am not looking forward to the expected lack of help/knowledge from Sky

davemurgatroyd

cornerstone13 wrote: »

Hello, I posted on this thread a couple of years back (see post 47) and since then we have been happily watching Freesat and even got the new card without jumping through hoops.

However, we now have a problem where the screen has started to freeze after 10 minutes of watching Freesat through Sky and nothing we do gets things moving again, other than switching everything off for an hour or so. Then we switch back on, get another 10 mins of viewing and it freezes up again.

Just wondering if any other Sky Freesatters have had a similar problem recently. I'll be calling Sky shortly to see what their solution is and am not looking forward to the expected lack of help/knowledge from Sky

What make and model of Sky dodgibox - usually on back or white sticky label underneath? Particular makes and models have specific faults common to them. Sky will charge you £65 for an engineer visit and as you are not a subscriber - no way out of that but for that fee will replace anything necessary to get your system working, although replacement receivers will almost certainly be refurbished boxes. It may well be cheaper to call a local installer and second hand Sky boxes are around £5 at car boot sales or free on freecycle.

cornerstone13

The box is an Amstrad DRX100.

We called Sky tonight and spoke to their "dedicated FreeSat" dept ....... who could find no trace of us whatsoever, apart from our "old account" which had "expired long ago" (yup, as per post 47!!) Because we are "not on their system", they can't run any diagnostics to our box. This despite the fact that earlier this year they sent us the replacement viewing card - but they have no record of the replacement viewing card number and goodness me, how did they get our address to send the card.

What's that film called again - Groundhog Day, wasn't it.

NonGeographicalMan

You could force your Amstrad box to wipe and redownload its firmware following the procedure listed at www.stevelarkins.freeuk.com/sky_tv_guide.htm#Sky_Digibox_Firmware_Upgrade If the firmware in your box is corrupted in some way this might conceivably resolve the problem. Only use this procedure if your Signal Strength and Signal Quality shown in the Services menu are both 50% or better.

More likely is that either the LNB on your dish or your Sky box has a component fault of some kind that is showing up. Do you not get the message about having inadequate signal strength and only the pixellation on its own? If the box knows it has insufficient signal it should stop showing a picture and give you the signal strength message in the current firmware.

The only way to be sure it is your box is to substitute a working one for it. If the working one is fine then you know there isn't a problem with your dish or cabling. May be a neighbour or friend or work colleague has a disused standard Sky box they have upgraded gathering dust that they could sell or lend you to test this?

Depending on whether you would miss Sky Three, Fiver and Five USA (these are so called FTV stations so have no subscription but need a Sky box and a valid Sky viewing card in the slot to watch them) you could also consider getting a brand new BBC/ITV Freesat box as Argos are currently selling the Bush SD model for only £29.99 (Argos product code 532/1557) On the other hand if you keep an eye on Ebay you could probably get a working standard Sky box for about £20 to £25 including the delivery. Although there are endless second hand Sky boxes around due to all the Sky+ and Sky HD upgrades posting one will usually cost most people £8 or more so its hardly worth their while selling unless they get £10 or £15 on top. The Bush Freesat box also has the upside of cutting out all those annoying Sky channel numbers you can't view but it comes down to whether you would miss those three reasonably mainstream Sky Freesat channels.

Some secondhand Sky boxes will be much older than others. I can't understand why exactly you have an Amstrad DRX 100 if you are a Sky Pay Once Watch Forever customer as these are Sky's original earliest digital boxes and are at least 10 years old or more. Did you allow them to install a so called factory refurb unit when you first had the system installed (they shouldn't have done on a new install) or accept a refurb as a replacement under warranty for your originally installed Sky Pay Once Watch Forever box?

As the Amstrad box is so old it is highly likely to be the box that is faulty on the whole. Although having said that my 10 year old + Pansaonic TU-DSB 20 is still running absolutely fine..............