dtriggs

My Sky plus box keeps crashing and turning itself off. I then cant get the thing to come back on - until abt 10 mins later it turns itself back on. But what it was recording is lost.

Sky say it just needs a defrag of the hard drive and reformatting - is this the case or should they be giving me a new box ?

Any experience of this type of thing ?

TonyFlow

Only time mine turns itself off is when it has been updated remotely with new software. Does the same as you say (i.e. can't turn on for a little while afterwards)

Geezer

I thinkn Sky+ is the dog's danglies, but the hardware is woeful. We are on our third box, and we actually have taken out the insurance now because it works out at less than the cost of a new box per year, and it WILL fail. (it has started making ominous noises in the last few days actually, so money well spent IMO as we now out of the Sky warranty period).

If you are still in the warranty period, just get Sky to come out, they always replace as the engineers are unable to fix any problem, they just go back to the manufacturer.

The only downside of that is you lose whatever you had recorded at the time. We lost 18 hours worth last time

Geezer

Chris L

If yours is the Amstrad box then they do suffer from over heating (look at the number of cooling vents on the box) - make sure there is sufficient air flow around the box. Try not to put anything on top of it that could block ventilation.

Might be worth looking at AV Forums - they have a dedicated area for Sky +

OllyK

Ahhh defrag and re-formatt - I see the need for some of this to recover the rapidly dissapearing hard drive I seem to have!

Scoobychick

iTrader: (1)

Amstrad or Pace boxes? We've got the Amstrad Sky+ box which has failed to record once or twice due to 'no signal being received' which I guess means it crashed as it was ok after the power was switched off and on again.

Then the other day the LNB failed on the dish and we had to have a new one. Both the box and dish are less than two months old!

I guess this is the start of the slippery slope downhill...

Incidentally how annoying is it that Sky digital doesn't use PDC but records from the Sky Guide which is only as reliable as the info that's put into it? It's especially annoying when trying to record the WRC on Eurosport who never ever show it at the time in the Sky Guide At least with our old analogue tv and video set to PDC we knew we'd get to see both the start and the end of all the programmes we recorded. I wonder how long it will be before Sky uses a PDC type system?

TonyFlow

Had our box well over a year now, and not had any problems (touch wood).

dtriggs

Seems I have to go along with the refomatting bollox and no doubt it still wont work and I'll have to get them out. Its a Pace by the way.

Thnks yr info guys.

p.s. I have already looked at AV Forums - and seems like loads of boxes have been replaced.

class_A

The EPG (Sky Guide) has replaced PDC and it can be updated in real-time by the broadcaster or it can be set to a change at a particular time (for the cheap/lazy). Blame Eurosport for not spending the £ to update the EPG properly

Scoobychick

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for that. It doesn't surprise me that Eurosport won't spend any money on it - hopefully they're saving up to spend it all on a course in how to run a good tv channel and how to not cut programmes off in the middle of a sentance for the ad breaks

Scooby-Doo

I'm on my 4th box and it appears heat has been my problem all along. The box has now been removed from the cabinet and placed behind the tv where the case remains at room temperature rather than "fry an egg" temp.