Sky HD on its way....

[dave87]

....which means I've just made the leap from freeview to Sky HD goodness. Deal through work means I get SkyHD, 4 mixes + Movies 1 & 2 for a more reasonable sum than the 46/month that they would normally want for it.

To say I'm well pleased is an understatement - should be good.

Should be installed on the 11/03, so a little wait, but hopefully worth it

Anyone else got SkyHD? What do you think, and what's the best bit - having never had Sky in any way shape or form before, I'm an utter novice, so any help much appreciated.

[bigblue]

It's fantastic IMO. Especially if you've never had it before, you'll have square eyes (well... rectangular...) before a week is out.

Did you have any PVR functionality with your Freeview ? If not, you'll be blown away. Sky, Sky+ aaaand HD (And anytime counts too I suppose) ?! Too many toys to take in !

People moan about the price, but in the last 24 hours I've watched three HD movies, two HD TV shows, and two HD footy matches. Anything that lets me do that is good value in my book.

Just make sure you try and track down a showing of Aquariavision, your jaw shall be well and truly dropped. BBC HD is rather impressive too, but can be a bit hit and miss sometimes. Sky's own HD channels are even more hit and miss PQ wise, but at least there's a fair bit of content (for a new viewer anyway).

The best bit ? Simply being able to have HD content whenever you want it. The wonders of Sky+ mean you can have stuff ready and waiting on the box whenever there's nowt on TV. The worst bit ? You'll soon run out of space on the box's HDD, especially if you're a movie fan. There is a way of upgrading the HDD, but not with Sky's blessing, though there are rumours they'll be activating the (currently crippled) SATA port to allow external HDD connection.

Anyway, enjoy

[r_j_k_p]

how much are paying for it dave?

[dave87]

Wouldn't you like to know

Lets just say it was a good enough offer that I couldn't resist.

BigBlue - looks like it is definitely worth looking forward to What's the sky anytime? and is it HD?

[Gr44]

SkyHD is great!! So easy to record content and a great system all round.

Anytime is just a selection of movies/programs that i downloads and stores for you every few days. Some content is HD, some isn't. Most of it will be though, all the movies certainly will be.

Really enjoy it and I dont regreat getting it at all :-)

My only moan if you can't record / watch 2x HD things at once. You technically can, but the recording will be rubbish as the HDD can't write that much data at once so will keep jumping. If you use 5.1 it keeps cutting out and is horrible

[bigblue]

Sky Anytime is a kinda controversial feature. It's programming that's downloaded automatically to your box, so you can watch it "Anytime". It's a mixture of HD and SD programming.

The Anytime shows are put on your box whether you like it or not. As such, it steals some of the HDD, which annoys people as often there's nowt interesting on Anytime, but you can't use it's space for other stuff you may actually want to record.

To appease people (mainly AV nerds to be fair ) they sometimes premiere shows on Anytime, rather than on one of the channels. They did it with Lost (HD) a couple of weeks back, which appeared on Anytime on Sat morning, before the show was aired on Sunday night. There's also some movie premieres on it, but I imagine that'll stop shortly as they're bringing out a new movie channel called Premiere HD.

There's also Anytime PC, which allows you to download stuff to your PC, if you don't mind hogging your bandwidth for a few hours or so !

[dave87]

Hmm, sounds like fun.

Première HD? I'm guessing if you have the movie package and HD you will get it automatically? Any idea when it is likely to come out?

Oh, and do you know how often the box has to be plugged into the phoneline? Cause there aint a phoneline in the room I'm putting the box

[Gr44]

dave87,

Yup, you will get the new HD Channels for your select mixes and movies. You won't get them for sports and anything outside your selection mixes.

If you're only using 1 Sky box, I don't think you actually _need_ to plug it in at all... it's only if you use 2 or more. Under the contract they can phone you and ask you to though, but I never had that issue.

Only thing you can't do without the phone line is some of the Interactive features ( basically all rubbish if you have a PC anyway ) and also buy Sky BoxOffice movies - you can do this over the phone but it's a sleek service with the phone line plugged in!

[dave87]

Ah poo. Looks like I might have a cable running down the stairs....

[Gr44]

I don't know the technical reason but with more than 1 box ( assume you're getting 2? ) you _can_ get some syncing issues if they aren't connected over the phone line.

That said we have 2 boxes now and they have been unplugged for upto 3-4 months and never had any issues on either. I wouldn't worry too much, but if you get any problems with the box, consider that before you ring up ranting and raving at their customer support

I'm sure if you check around the AV forums it will contain more information on that issue though!

[dave87]

I'm just going for the single HD box - but I want it on my HD telly in my room, rather than on the Standard CRT that I put in the Kitchen/Lounge.

I'm sharing a house with housemates, so as it is me that is choosing to have Sky, I'm having it installed where I want it. I did offer to give them the box downstairs for the Multiroom fee (as I'm already paying for the other part) but they didn't want it.

Odd, as I'd jump at having 4 mixes + Sky Movies 1 & 2 for a tenner a month. Ah well, different priorities I guess.

Does anyone know how big the hard disk is in GB? I seem to get conflicting reports of anything from 160 to 300?

[Gr44]

Errr....

I *think* it's a 300GB drive, but you can only use 160GB ( rest is reserved for software,cache and anytime )

Either way, you can record a lot of content. a non-HD movie takes around 2-4% up. HD movie is around 10% but tbh you always end up watching the HD stuff first because it looks so good so no big worries really!

[bigblue]

Yup, it's a 300Gb drive, with 160gb for your use

Re. the phone line issues, you may or may not have problems with one box, but you almost definitely would if you had 2 boxes. Simple reason, to stop people taking multi-room out then using that multi-room card on another box at another location. People used to do that and it was an easy way for your mate to get the whole package for £10 a month. So now both boxes have to report back from the same phone line.

You are supposed to have it connected, permanently, for the first year at least. The installer will NOT fit the box if there's no way of hooking it up to a phone line. He will however run a cable for you, he'll usually just ask where the socket is and get on with it, whether or not you wanted a cable run round your skirting ! Pretty sure there's a section in the T's & C's about this, along the lines of... "if you want-a the box, you take-a the cable... Capice ?!"

Re. recording 2 HD channels at once, I have no issues doing this. I used to have problems taping two channels and watching something from the planner at the same time though, so now I just leave the box switched to one of the channels I'm taping.

If you defrag the box once in a while (housekeeping menu) and keep it updated, you get fewer issues

[dave87]

Ah sounds good bigblue - all they mentioned to me was having a 'fixed an operational phone line' which I do, but is on a different floor. Ah well, the fun and games.

I would have thought with 10m of cable I could probably get a phone line up here, but the builders obviously failed to see that anyone could ever consider needing a phoneline in the master bedroom....

Oh, and do Sky provide the HDMI cable for use with the box? or have I got to get one of them sorted myself?

[Gr44]

Sky ship it with a HDMI cable...

[Butuz]

Have had Sky+HD for a year and have cancelled it now (but stil kept the HD box).

To be honest there are not enough channels to make it worth the money currently. I'll wait another year or two then go back to it. It does look damn good though - am gonna miss the image quality

Butuz