Which Sky+ Box

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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After a bit of messing around and a few calls to Sky I have an engineer coming around on Friday to upgrade us from "Regular Sky" to "Sky+".
Sure not a major upgrade, but one I know will be handy.

In preperation for the box arriving I'm going to get my 250GB Hard Drive upgrade ordered so I can do the work over the weekend.
Included in the "Upgrade Pack" they put some printed instructions for your particular model of Sky+ box.
However of course at the moment I don't know which box I'm going to get.
I'm sure - having built computers since the year dot - that I won't need the instructions on fitting, but I thought I'd try to find out which box I am most likely to get.
So can anyone who has taken on Sky+ recently and got a brand new box (which I'm assured I'm getting as I haven't paid for a refurb) tell me which box they got?
As far as I can tell it will be one of the PVR3 boxes, however that leaves us with a choice of 3:

Pace TDS470N
Amstrad DRX280
Thomson DSI 8210CS

Thanks.
 
What box did you get mate?

I am going to upgrade to Sky+ which I should have done long ago, but I'm worried about the make of box that they will give me. I've always been a huge fan of Pace and have had countless problems with Amstrad in the past.

Thompson however, I know nothing about.

btw, how much was your upgrade? I heard its £100 for the box and £30 for the installation. Is that still the case?

I am tempted to buy the kit myself and install it but Sky's seem to work out cheaper especially if you threaten to leave and from some people, you can get the box for under £50 and a lot of the time for free.
 
I would vote pace, got the Thomson box in the house and altough no problems with it so far, its noisy really noisy.

The pace seem to have less problems.
 
So basically, you don't know what make of box you will get, its just what the engineer brings with him in his van?

btw, I was looking into purchasing a sky+ box from a store and for a few quid extra, I can get the Sky HD box. Could I buy this and use it without getting the HD part?

It's just that if I decide to go HD at some stage, I wouldn't need to buy an HD box cause I will already have it.
 
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My Sky+ was installed on Friday and the supplied box was....
Pace

Within 8hrs of ownerhsip I'd voided the warranty, taken the 160GB (80GB usable) drive out and replaced it with a 250GB (170GB usable) unit to give me approx. 85hrs
Seagate CE drive removed and Seagate CE drive fitted.

I already own a PVR (A Toshiba unit with 160GB HD and DVD Burner) however I wanted Sky+ for the dual channel feed.
I can now see that the Plus box is going to be doing nearly all the work with the Toshiba only coming into play when I want to burn something to DVD.
 
Alas I took the expensive route.
Because I was upgrading from Standard Digital to Plus I needed the second LMB fitting at the dish and extra coax cable running.
I know I could have done it myself (plenty of instructions on the net) but it just seemed easier getting Sky to do it all for me.
So it did cost me £129 all in direct from Sky - which got me the Pace box (didn't know it was going to be Pace until he bought it out to me) and all of the fitting, second coax run etc.

I'm not at home right this moment, however as I did pay what I did I know it is a new box and not a refurb.
It's also definitely a Pace PVR3 model - not 100% sure of the model number, I can confirm that this evening.
But no real reason why it wouldn't be the latest Pace PVR3.

Sky are really not open to negotiation on prices at the moment.
If you threaten to leave they will offer you a refurb Plus box for £49 and in some cases for nothing - but that could really be any make/model they happen to have around.
As I did want them to do the installation it just seemed easier al around if I just paid the bit extra.

Oh and the HD I used for the upgrade can be purchased for £38inc (I paid a lot more, but once I got it I googled the part code and found it in stock else where for a lot less Grrrrrr).

Response to question on HD box:
If you buy an HD box you can just use the Sky+ features for now (for free as long as you have a Sky subscription).
However you will need the dual feed (fine if your upgrading from Plus, you'll need to get this done if you're going from standard digital).
If you're sourcing the box from somewhere other than Sky you will need to call them up after you've bought the box as all Viewing cards are "married" to a particular box, so you'll need to ask them to swap over your details.
You could buy the HD box directly from Sky without an HD subscription, but it's £279 so not cheap.
 
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