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Osem
16-12-2009, 12:54
Hi. My elderly mum in law rang in a panic the other night to say her Sky+ box had frozen. She'd already been onto Sky who ran through a series of basic checks with her apparently and was then told she needed to book an engineer. He came today and managed to 'fix' the problem (not sure how as MIL didn't bother to find out exactly what was wrong!) but from what little I can understand he told her the problem was due to a lack of recording space on the HDD. Anyway what she's been told sounds odd to me because she didn't get any sort of warning message beforehand, the picture on the TV picture just froze as she was watching telly and the Sky+ box became unresponsive. I'm interested to know what may have happened because I obviously want to avoid her having a similar problem again and having to shell out for a 'fix' unnecessarily.

I will try to find out more later but, frankly, she gets so confused sometimes, that may not shed much light on what happened.

NoKnowledge
16-12-2009, 13:04
The picture shouldn't freeze even with 0% left.

Osem
16-12-2009, 14:34
The picture shouldn't freeze even with 0% left.

No I wouldn't have thought so but she's saying that's what she was told... :confused: I'll find out more later anyway.

NoKnowledge
16-12-2009, 14:52
I've been to 0% with my sky+ box ages ago and the picture was fine with no problems at all except the recording part obviously, the planner will automatically erase one recording to record another.

Paul
16-12-2009, 14:59
Sky+ boxes are always recording - thats why you can freeze the picture or go backwrds at any point.

Osem
16-12-2009, 15:02
I'm sorry to sound rude but, to be honest, if the engineer had told my MIL that the problem was caused by a faulty jam doughnut inside the electrical supply she'd probably have believed him. :D

Mick Fisher
16-12-2009, 17:06
There is an option in the settings for the sky+ box to automatically handle a disk full situation or not. Check the status of this setting.

I think it is wise to leave some disk space for overheads. With a PC 20% is recommended. I never let my sky+ go beyond 10%-15% full before I start deleting stuff.

Osem
16-12-2009, 21:26
OK I've spoken to her now and she told me that when the engineer came this morning he turned on the box and it worked straightaway. He told her the problem was probably due to glitch caused by the lack of recording space available and after having fiddled about with it and gone through some basic troubleshooting checks (such as she'd been through with the telephone support desk), charged her £65 before leaving.

All was well until this afternoon when the box again malfunctioned. It appears therefore that his diagnosis was wrong and she's going to have to call them out again. Hopefully this time they'll either fix or replace the box.

Paul
16-12-2009, 21:28
.. and refund the £65 since they screwed up first time.

Tezcatlipoca
16-12-2009, 21:28
I hope she won't have to pay *another* £65...

Osem
16-12-2009, 21:46
Unfortunately she's a bit of a soft touch so although I've advised her to complain, in no uncertain terms, I have a feeling she'll be fobbed off.

NoKnowledge
16-12-2009, 22:00
the £65 also gives her a 3 month warranty so I doubt she'll have to pay again.

Osem
17-12-2009, 09:53
Warranty aside I'd be very unhappy if they tried to charge her again for the same fault. We'll see anyway and I will report back here when we get to the bottom of this. Cheers guys :tu:

Osem
24-12-2009, 23:47
Just to update - Sky engineer finally came again yesterday and swapped the Sky+ box with no extra charge. MIL's happy for now so we'll stick at that!

Cheers everyone.

Osem
03-01-2010, 15:05
Hmmmm... Just to update. The day after her box was swapped MIL discovered that she was unable to record TV. She called the tech people and was taken through a process which seemed to cure the problem but the next day it happened again. She tried the tech support people again but the problem reappeared so she arranged for another engineer to call. He came yesterday and told her the replacement box had been wrongly installed!!! According to him, Sky have been using a lot of contract staff lately and they don't all seem to know what they're doing. Anyway the box has worked since yesterday so fingers crossed! Suffice it to say that I won't be joining Sky's 'family' any time soon.....

Peter_
03-01-2010, 15:09
Being charged for repairs is one of the reasons I would never go back to SKY again, was stung by them years ago and people moan about Virgins SLA for engineers when SKY's is a damn sight longer and they tell you what day he is coming no choice offered.

Pedro H
03-01-2010, 17:03
I had a problem with my Sky+ box and when the engineer finally replaced it, it only worked for a few hours. When he finally returned he told me that they are instructed to replace warranted boxes with reconditioned ones, which used to be repaired in the UK but believe it or not they now send them to China to be reconditioned, I insisted on a new one which he gave me but said he could get into trouble for giving me one, to which I replied they could stick their Sky+. Everything works perfectly now and I haven't heard a word from Sky.

Paul K
04-01-2010, 08:25
They are supposed to use recons for replacements but can use brand new if it is demanded by the customer I think. Last time we had an engineer out we were offered time slots which we could choose and the guy even rang up on the day to offer to turn up first thing in the morning in case we wanted to go out (it was a weekend call out).
Biggest problem is third party installers, if you get a pure "Sky" installer you should be fine, get lumbered with a 3rd party who only cares about the number of installs he can get done a day and things go wrong.

D_Skids
04-01-2010, 10:56
I had numerous problems with my Sky HD box and had it replaced a fair few times I always insisted on a new box as I had paid the full £250 but I since learnt that it is actually better to get a reconditioned box because the original components are pretty crap but when they recondition them they put better quality components in. My last box was a reconditioned box and it has worked fine for quite some time now

Tezcatlipoca
04-01-2010, 22:00
I had numerous problems with my Sky HD box and had it replaced a fair few times I always insisted on a new box as I had paid the full £250 but I since learnt that it is actually better to get a reconditioned box because the original components are pretty crap but when they recondition them they put better quality components in. My last box was a reconditioned box and it has worked fine for quite some time now

Thomson Sky HD box? The issue is with the capacitors on the PSU.

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/thom_psu.htm

http://www.satcure.com/accs/psu.htm

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=28320823&postcount=9

http://www.stevetowells.co.uk/


From what I have read, if you get a reconditioned/refurbished Thomson Sky HD box from Sky it will *not* have better quality capacitors, as allegedly Sky's "reconditioning" / "refurbishing" doesn't actually involve replacing the PSU's caps (or even looking at the PSU).

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=36840754&highlight=refurb#post36840754


Mine died after 2 1/2 years ("no signal" on random channels, failed recordings, etc... got worse & worse & became unusable). Opened it up... bulging capacitors on the PSU. Could have paid Sky £65 for a call-out & had the box swapped, but as that could have ended up having the same problem later on (if another Thomson), I had the PSU rebuilt instead using the Satcure mk2 capacitor upgrade. Cheaper & more reliable option. Works much better now (plus I also installed a nice new 500GB HDD too).

[Although one person at DS claims that installers aren't using Thomson refurbs now due to the failure rate: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=37067183#post37067183 ]