Sky + to Sky HD

J1234

J1234

J1234

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16 Oct 2005
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I currently have Sky + on multiroom in my bedroom. I want to upgrade this to Sky HD.

Can it be done as simple as buying a HD box from eBay (Cheaper), putting in the card that is in my + box, ring Sky and tell them I have upgraded, then pay £20 a month instead of £30?

Thanks in advance.
 
It should work doing it like that, is it £10 extra a month? Like it used to be for SKY+ on top of what you pay now.
 
New Sky HD boxes from Samsung and Pace are starting to be seen in the wild, so you might want to hang fire a bit.

Given the number of issues that have been reported with the current Thompson HD boxes I'm waiting to see how these new ones are before I go for the upgrade.

The installation can be done like you said, but I don't understand what you mean about paying £20 instead of £30. It's still going to be a multi-room setup so you'll be paying the same as before, but you'll have to pay an additional £10 for HD.
 
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Whoops, that's an error, it should say "£20 instead of £10".

Thanks for the advice, when are these new boxes due?
 
Rumour has it that Samsung have delivered to Sky and they should be going out to the ASAs (Approved Sky Agents) for retail sale in June. Retail will have them before Sky themselves start giving them out so ebay will probably be the first place they pop up.
 
And what are the advantages of these new boxes over the current ones?

And also, to the people that have Sky HD, is it worth the extra £10 a month (Ignoring the initial purchase of the box).
 
Justin said:
And what are the advantages of these new boxes over the current ones?
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It's unknown at the moment as no-one has really seen them. It's hoped that they don't turn out to be complete dogs; rife with bugs and issues like the Thompson boxes. However, since most of the issues tend to be software related, the improvement may not actually be that great.

however, since it's only a month or so, I'm hanging on to see what they are like.
 
Justin said:
And what are the advantages of these new boxes over the current ones?

And also, to the people that have Sky HD, is it worth the extra £10 a month (Ignoring the initial purchase of the box).
Click to expand...
If you've not got Sky World (full £45 package), then no. BBC HD & Channel 4 HD are free anyway. If you haven't got the initial package to get the extra channels (e.g. you won't get Sky One HD if you don't already get Sky One, you won't get Sky Movies HD if you don't get Sky Movies and so on) then you won't get much else.

You can use the box as a straight Sky+ box (with the added benefit of the free HD channels) without paying the extra £10 sub.
 
Justin said:
And what are the advantages of these new boxes over the current ones?

And also, to the people that have Sky HD, is it worth the extra £10 a month (Ignoring the initial purchase of the box).
Click to expand...

I would definately say so, yeah. £10 isnt exactly a lot of money and you do get a fair amount of HD footage. The box itself is a lot nicer than the sky+ box's too and is more convinient with its HDMI output.

You could also do as above, keep yourself off HD but benefit from the free HD channels, nicer box, and HDMI out.
 
Justin said:
And also, to the people that have Sky HD, is it worth the extra £10 a month (Ignoring the initial purchase of the box).
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Depends on what content you like and how much you intend to watch. For me it's worth it for all the HD sport and movies alone, the documentaries and drama series are like a nice bonus (but get repeated a lot). If you don't have the sport and movie packages then I'd probably recommend waiting for now.

Also I should warn you that after getting used to HD television, your tolerance for SD will get much lower and your standards for acceptable picture quality will be higher!
 
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Are Sky planning on bringing the cost of the boxes down? I still think it's a bit steep really.
 
Tute said:
Are Sky planning on bringing the cost of the boxes down? I still think it's a bit steep really.
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Not as far as I know.

This time last year I was working in Sky's Consumer Division doing IT for their Marketing. The have what they call a 10 / 10 target, which is 10m customers by 2010 (not sure if that is the beginning or the end), and just before I left they changed their overall strategy from one of grabbing market share though discounts to one of selling the overall value of the product at full price.

At the moment it's still very difficult to get a discount even if you threaten to leave. They have some pretty sophisticated analysis going on measuring customer behaviour and general lifecycle management in order to tell if you are really going to leave or not. Sometimes they get it wrong, but for the most part they know who will stay no matter how much they complain.

The thing is that they are acheiving their goals without having to discount and now that everyone is going out buting HD TVs they know that sooner or later sufficient people will buckle and pay the £300.
 
The Samsung and Pace boxes should be out shortly, currently being beta'd just now. I would definatly wait for one of those as the Thompson boxes are crap.
 
Begbie said:
The Samsung and Pace boxes should be out shortly, currently being beta'd just now. I would definatly wait for one of those as the Thompson boxes are crap.
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How? Not had any major problems with mine, Had the SkyHD box now for 3months and the thing hasn’t crashed or the like, it’s also much quieter than my Sky+ Box which is down stairs; the box is also much quicker at going through the menus and changing channels. If you are on the top package the £10 HD sub is excellent and you get loads of HD content! When you get it you will be very impressed with the HD broadcasts I can’t watch another football game in SD its shocking compared to the HD feed :D
 
Ive had Sky HD since the first day it was released (nearly 2 years ago) and haven't had any major problems with my box, we have the main package apart from Sky Sports and think the £10 extra per month is worth it for the amount of HD content you get .
 
As usual, it's only when people have problems with something that you hear about it.

If you pop over to AV forums there are threads littered with accounts of:

1. Missed recordings because the internal clock jumps 24 hours forward and thinks it's missed what it was meant to record.

2. The ffwd / rwd bug where the system actually moves at half speed when set to x30 and will then suddenly jump 10 minutes making it difficult to find the bit you want to.

3. Boxes just crashing.

It's hard to gauge how serious the issues are as you never get positive responses.
 
Yep I read quite a lot on there don’t post much mind, its defiantly not a case of the box is crap though, as always you get much more people moaning about the box if problems arise.
 
I am also interested in upgrading my sky to sky+ HD.

At the moment I have just regular Sky and only realised Sky+ no longer needs a monthly subscription when reading this thread!

Is anything else needed to run Sky HD other than the Sky HD box? I read somewhere that another cable is needed from the Sky dish...?

I think I will wait for the new Samsung Sky+/HD boxes to be released.
 
fothsn said:
How? Not had any major problems with mine, Had the SkyHD box now for 3months and the thing hasn’t crashed or the like, it’s also much quieter than my Sky+ Box which is down stairs; the box is also much quicker at going through the menus and changing channels. If you are on the top package the £10 HD sub is excellent and you get loads of HD content! When you get it you will be very impressed with the HD broadcasts I can’t watch another football game in SD its shocking compared to the HD feed :D
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The major flaw with it, according to AV forums is something to do with the power pack on it which causes pitcure break up. Not sure what it is, briefly read it on AV forums.

Inherit fault with the boxes that after getting on my box, and it correcting it self 4 months later, I asked Sky for a replacement box after talking to a few folk telling them it is an inherit problem. They advised it is not and their tech team had not found any such problem with it and it would be chargable to get replaced.

Just a pity I couldn't threaten to cancel :p

I would definatly wait for a Samsung or a Pace box, altough their is no way you will be able to tell how good they are.
 
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