Is Sky+ Worth The Hassle?

jaggiebunnet

ok guys - ready to take the plunge!

I have decided against multi room (paying another 15 a month is annoying - at least having sky sports channels gets the sky+ free each month) and so am looking for an installer in cork that would:

a) do me sky + for the price on the website + install charges
b) run another cable into the bedroom to hook up to the old sky box for my FTV card.

Can anyone recommend anyone?

Cheers
Robert.

jaggiebunnet

jaggiebunnet wrote:

ok guys - ready to take the plunge!

I have decided against multi room (paying another 15 a month is annoying - at least having sky sports channels gets the sky+ free each month) and so am looking for an installer in cork that would:

a) do me sky + for the price on the website + install charges
b) run another cable into the bedroom to hook up to the old sky box for my FTV card.

Can anyone recommend anyone?

Cheers
Robert.

So no one got any recommendations for an installer in Cork?

mickd

I would buy a DVDR e.g some of the Philips ones seem quite interesting. They have 160/400GB hard drives, pause live tv, Gemstar Guideplus, videoplus. One can record fav program etc then if I want to keep it, in 90 secs I can lash it on to a DVD.

jaggiebunnet

mickd wrote:

I would buy a DVDR e.g some of the Philips ones seem quite interesting. They have 160/400GB hard drives, pause live tv, Gemstar Guideplus, videoplus. One can record fav program etc then if I want to keep it, in 90 secs I can lash it on to a DVD.

Yeah did consider that, don't like the idea of being tied into sky with the + box. Problem is cost for a good one.

Mossy Monk

but those DVDR boxes dont allow you to watch one sky channel while recording another

jaggiebunnet

Mossy Monk wrote:

but those DVDR boxes dont allow you to watch one sky channel while recording another

hmm, good point. one of the main reasons for getting +, ie allowing me to tape the footie while my wife watches her programs....

..just need a recommendation now for an installer

watty

Mind you the non-Sky digital Sat PVR boxes with two (or four!) tuners, CI, card slots, up to 400GByte disk, PIP, mosaic, four channel recordind, PC link (variously firewire, USB2.0 and Ethernet depending on model) etc etc make Sky+ look very very basic. I taped the Dr Dish program on 1W but the dvd might be on www.dxandy.com.

Certinally the Microsoft Media Centre looks dead duck compared with new boxes that combine MP3, Sat, terrestrial, DVD play, DVD Record, HD up to 400G, Wifi, Bluetooth, ethernet etc, etc.

Though if you want Sky Pay channels, the SKY+ is only solution. The Dragon CAM in other PVRs or a Dreambox are not real solutions, but "hobbyist" experiments.

Unless EU forces Sky to make CAM available, it won't happen. The Fact that both BBC & ITV have decided to be FTA shows that they don't think an official CAM for non-Sky box is going to happen any time soon.

Really now I expect Ch4 and Five to join with BBC & ITV in medium term as obviously the "rights" issues can be solved and if the BBC/ITV promoted platform & FTA boxes generally become significant in UK the Advertisers will "force" them.

mickd

Mossy Monk wrote:

but those DVDR boxes dont allow you to watch one sky channel while recording another

Used to be the case but forthcoming ones have intergrated DVB satellite tuners with the trend towards FTA and premiership rights up next year subscription cards maybe be not as prominent

jaggiebunnet

Just had a look at the sky site and they seemed to have dropped the installation prices again to 75 euro for sky + if you take multi room... :eek:

ixtlan

Just a quick comment about Sky+ failures... if I dare...

The first thing I did when the Sky+ arrived was disable the "instant rewind" feature.

IDE type drives have a low recommended "duty cycle" time. People will debate what that is, 5-10-15-30%, but there's no way such a drive is designed for 100%, which is what instant rewind is doing. Drives in servers (SCSI and FCAL) are designed for 100% duty cycles, but IDE and SATA are not. Even "enterprise-class" SATA drives are classed at 30% duty cycle.

This is not to say you will have a failure, obviously some people have such drives running for years, but it's all about averages... Your odds of failure will surely be higher with instant rewind on.

Yes I know the drive is always spinning when the box is on, but that's not the same as being active, since the heads are not moving...

IMHO the best thing is to turn off instant rewind...

Ix

Mossy Monk

one of the highlights for me is the rewind