What can you do with old Sky +HD box?

[_Stretchie_]

We're currently with BT for phone, internet and TV and the TV is CRAP, it's horrible to use and not very reliable, we just don't like it, but to go back to Sky or go to Virgin it will cost twice as much to get the extra frills that we would want them for (movies, food channels, Discovery Shed and the like)

Been thinking about getting a free sat box with internet connectivity and subscribing to Netflix for movies and staying with BT for the phone and high speed internet (as they keep ringing me up and trying to get me to sign up to it), it's only the BT TV that we don't like.

SOOOO, just dug out the old Sky+ HD box and plugged it in to make sure the sky dish is working fine and found it gives us quite a few channels but we cannot pause, rewind, record or watch anything that we previously recorded to it.

I'm not after 'chipping it' or whatever and getting free channels but is there anyway to unlock the pause, rewind and record functionality or any other cool tricks mods that can be done?

If it helps, the box was last plugged in and used nearly 18 months ago and is a Samsung

[maviczap]

Gt a Freesat card for this Sky+ box, sky will charge you £27 for the card, but you should get some more channels.

But you won't get the pause, rewind or record function back.

Ge a freesat decoder box and plug that into the sat dish, as SKY & Freesat are beamed from the same satellite.

You can get Freesat boxes with a built in HDD drive, or one that records to a connected USB device. Handy if you've got any old external HDD drives or an old HDD you can put in an exclosure.

Sell the Sky+ box

[maviczap]

Or build a media centre PC with a satellite tuner card and have it connected the internet, so you can watch Netflix, Love film, BBCi player, ITV player Youtube etc

[muzikill]

You have to subscribe to activate the pvr.

[maviczap]

You have to subscribe to activate the pvr.

And impossible to hack a sky box I think :mad:

[gruntygiggles]

Neither of us would ever hack...just put BT box back on as we have become too attached to the ability to pause and rewind.

Really annoying thing though is that I have watched all of the equestrian events at the Olympics on the laptop...when if he had tried the sky box before, I could have watched it all on the tv :-(

Oh well, no matter...we won 3 golds a silver and a bronze so that kind of makes up for it! :-)

[maviczap]

You can pause and rewind using some of these satellite boxes too, and I can with my media PC.

Just unfortunate that Sky perfected it before anyone else

[NTECUK]

Humax do a nice but expensive sat pvr .

[maviczap]

But once you've paid for it, that's it, no more Sky payments

[NTECUK]

True but Dave and a few other good channels are missing on free Sat but on terrestrial free.
Unfortunately sky has you painted into a corner .

[maviczap]

Aye, its a PITA

[tigersaw]

Just unfortunate that Sky perfected it before anyone else

A few years after TiVo actually

[NTECUK]

Its interesting what was said about BT vision.
I have that system and its works well for us.
But £4.50 a month Its not super value.But the catch up don't eat in to out 40 gig download.(were as my sons PC game hosting ,X box and Yogs cast does)
But as we cant get high speed internet out in the bad lands its a case of picking a pig in a poke.

[maviczap]

A few years after TiVo actually

Aye, but Tivo didn't take off like it should have, until Virgin took it on?

[tigersaw]

Aye, but Tivo didn't take off like it should have, until Virgin took it on?

It was big in the states but not so over here, too far ahead of its time. It had to dial up to get the listings, had to control external tuners with infra red extenders, all a bit of a mess.
Those that have a modern TiVo speak highly of it

[maviczap]

My mum's got Tivo, the cable wasn't installed in my road by NTL, we're unlikely to get it too, so stuck with Sky or Freesat for the mo

[_Stretchie_]

Ok, cheers guys.

: )