SKY+ crash
 

Well, you can now add me to the growing list of people who have had a brand
new SKY+ box crash. Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Will let the group know how my dealings with SKY go.

--
John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

John wrote:
Well, you can now add me to the growing list of people who have had a
brand
new SKY+ box crash. Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Will let the group know how my dealings with SKY go.


**** poor customer service item #1. After calmly going through the 18 step
recording, get to a real live person who (Speaking with a very heavy Irish
accent), the special SKY+ team comes in at 8AM, and I will have to call back
in the morning. Well it is only 7 1/2 hours away. ( I got around the
standard Q&A session by telling her I had already power cycled it and I
could hear the HD clicking away)

John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

"John" wrote in message
...
John wrote:
Well, you can now add me to the growing list of people who have had a
brand
new SKY+ box crash. Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Will let the group know how my dealings with SKY go.


**** poor customer service item #1. After calmly going through the 18
step
recording, get to a real live person who (Speaking with a very heavy Irish
accent), the special SKY+ team comes in at 8AM, and I will have to call
back
in the morning. Well it is only 7 1/2 hours away. ( I got around the
standard Q&A session by telling her I had already power cycled it and I
could hear the HD clicking away)

A good tip.....

Pretend you don't have a touchtone phone and don't press ANY
buttons..Straight through to as to what'd describe as a Human :-)

John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you
get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

John wrote:

Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Maxtor click of death.
The one good thing that can be said about the Sky+ hard drive is that
it is very easy to replace and requires no special treatment, unlike a
Tivo and most other PVR type devices.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/tez5
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

=20
Pretend you don't have a touchtone phone and don't press ANY
buttons..Straight through to as to what'd describe as a Human :-)

Great 3 years ago but now it puts you to the back of the queue...

Andy

Jomtien wrote:
John wrote:

Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Maxtor click of death.
The one good thing that can be said about the Sky+ hard drive is that
it is very easy to replace and requires no special treatment, unlike a
Tivo and most other PVR type devices.

But, will lose everything on the drive

5 unwatched movies - Which I'm sure will be repeated.
3 episodes of Home Improvement being taped for a friend

Plus not having any SKY access for the week - Technician scheduled for the
5th. Well, time to start watching all those DVDs that have been piling up.

During a just shy of 10 minute call, including the 'press 1 if...' I quickly
convinced the minion at the other end that I had already done all the normal
troubleshooting, including trying to force a download just in case it hung
on one they tried to send, and that it was obviously a bad HD, as I can hear
it clicking at startup.

Here's what I don't understand. If, unlike a TIVO, the HD in SKY+ is
readily swapable (i.e. - doesn't contain the OS), why can't they design the
thing to allow it to funtion like a regular sky box when the HD fails. Just
pop up a message along the lines of 'Hard drive 0 not found - please call
for service' for a few seconds (or until acknowledged by pressing select),
and let me continue watching?

For those of you who have gone through this, did you have to call SKY and
ask for credit for time box down, or did they automatically credit account
for lost viewing time?


--
John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

"John" wrote in message
...
Well, you can now add me to the growing list of people who have had a
brand
new SKY+ box crash. Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Will let the group know how my dealings with SKY go.

My experience is that the people at the end of the phone are very helpful -
the problems start when the oik arrives to solves the problem. My problem
was/is intermittent and the drive obviously wasn't dead. The oik arrived and
took another (presumably recon) sky+ box out of an unmarked cardboard box
and started to swap the boxes. before he had got very far I asked him what
he was going to do, was he going to install a new box and fit the old drive
(which was full of programmes I hadn't watched or listened to) or was he
going to leave the old box so that I could watch the programmes and he could
pick it up at a later date.... and while I was at it I said "Is that a new
box". He said "No mate (which was odd because I'd never met him before and
even then could never imagine him being a "mate") you just lose the
programmes you've recorded - and no the box isn't new - you will never get a
new box" I suggested that had he considered that the problem may not be the
box but the LNB at which stage he said that could be the problem and
relectantly got the ladder out. Since he swapped the leads to the other two
LNB outputs I've had only one failed recording. My neighbour later told me
that he had heard him on his mobile to his boss moaning about me - and the
fact that it was late and he wanted to go home - presumably he had expected
it to be a 5 minute job.
I was however surprised to get a call later that evening from Sky customer
services asking me what had happened - I told them that if they were to swap
my box I would need to keep the old one for a while and they said that they
don't do that - "its just not possible". Personally I think that attitude is
appalling - they sell a computer system where customers store their data on
hard drive, they don't appear to sell any facilities for backing the data up
and expect us to accept that.

John W wrote:
"John" wrote in message
...

Well, you can now add me to the growing list of people who have had a

brand

new SKY+ box crash. Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Will let the group know how my dealings with SKY go.


My experience is that the people at the end of the phone are very helpful -
the problems start when the oik arrives to solves the problem. My problem
was/is intermittent and the drive obviously wasn't dead. The oik arrived and
took another (presumably recon) sky+ box out of an unmarked cardboard box
and started to swap the boxes. before he had got very far I asked him what
he was going to do, was he going to install a new box and fit the old drive
(which was full of programmes I hadn't watched or listened to) or was he
going to leave the old box so that I could watch the programmes and he could
pick it up at a later date.... and while I was at it I said "Is that a new
box". He said "No mate (which was odd because I'd never met him before and
even then could never imagine him being a "mate") you just lose the
programmes you've recorded - and no the box isn't new - you will never get a
new box" I suggested that had he considered that the problem may not be the
box but the LNB at which stage he said that could be the problem and
relectantly got the ladder out. Since he swapped the leads to the other two
LNB outputs I've had only one failed recording. My neighbour later told me
that he had heard him on his mobile to his boss moaning about me - and the
fact that it was late and he wanted to go home - presumably he had expected
it to be a 5 minute job.
I was however surprised to get a call later that evening from Sky customer
services asking me what had happened - I told them that if they were to swap
my box I would need to keep the old one for a while and they said that they
don't do that - "its just not possible". Personally I think that attitude is
appalling - they sell a computer system where customers store their data on
hard drive, they don't appear to sell any facilities for backing the data up
and expect us to accept that.



Apart from the £10/month charge, this is exactly why I'll never touch a
$ky+ box. They seem way too fragile and if something does go wrong, it
seems that $ky will fob you off with a reconditioned box. They have
muppets dealing with problems (though perhaps not: muppets do seem to
possess some intelligence) but at the end of the day, the customer
always comes off worse. It seems to me that the $ky+ box design is crap,
based on the number of hardware failures and software problems being
continually reported here.

I've used Maxtor hard disks many times and have never had a failure - I
suspect that the poor box design (nice one, Pace) simply cooks the drive
somehow. As I see it, unless there's a design change, this problem will
simply keep happening.

Create you own TV channel? Pah.


Clem

Clem Dye wrote:

Apart from the £10/month charge, this is exactly why I'll never touch a
$ky+ box. They seem way too fragile and if something does go wrong, it
seems that $ky will fob you off with a reconditioned box. They have
muppets dealing with problems (though perhaps not: muppets do seem to
possess some intelligence) but at the end of the day, the customer
always comes off worse. It seems to me that the $ky+ box design is crap,
based on the number of hardware failures and software problems being
continually reported here.

I've used Maxtor hard disks many times and have never had a failure - I
suspect that the poor box design (nice one, Pace) simply cooks the drive
somehow. As I see it, unless there's a design change, this problem will
simply keep happening.

Create you own TV channel? Pah.


Clem

If I could of figured out how to get my US TIVO to record/play PAL without
major effort, or could have found a UK TIVO, I would have gone that route.
But I've already spent the £200, so I will keep dealing with it until I move
back to the US. Fot the next 9 months, it's still under warranty, so I'll
make them come out and fix it.

I've got a high enough package that I'm not paying the £10 extra (For what?
you already get the EPG, which is what TIVO charges you for)

--
John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 10:27:18 +0000, Clem Dye wrote:


I've used Maxtor hard disks many times and have never had a failure - I
suspect that the poor box design (nice one, Pace) simply cooks the drive
somehow. As I see it, unless there's a design change, this problem will
simply keep happening.

Well My Tivo has got through several Maxtor drives! (No I don't keep
buying them they are warranty replacements) so its not just Sky+ that
does it.

"John" wrote in message
...
Jomtien wrote:
John wrote:

Hard drive is now clicking and won't come out of
standby. It lasted exactly 3 Months.

Maxtor click of death.
The one good thing that can be said about the Sky+ hard drive is that
it is very easy to replace and requires no special treatment, unlike a
Tivo and most other PVR type devices.

But, will lose everything on the drive

5 unwatched movies - Which I'm sure will be repeated.
3 episodes of Home Improvement being taped for a friend

Plus not having any SKY access for the week - Technician scheduled for the
5th. Well, time to start watching all those DVDs that have been piling
up.

During a just shy of 10 minute call, including the 'press 1 if...' I
quickly
convinced the minion at the other end that I had already done all the
normal
troubleshooting, including trying to force a download just in case it hung
on one they tried to send, and that it was obviously a bad HD, as I can
hear
it clicking at startup.

Here's what I don't understand. If, unlike a TIVO, the HD in SKY+ is
readily swapable (i.e. - doesn't contain the OS), why can't they design
the
thing to allow it to funtion like a regular sky box when the HD fails.
Just
pop up a message along the lines of 'Hard drive 0 not found - please call
for service' for a few seconds (or until acknowledged by pressing select),
and let me continue watching?

Mine did exactly that when (AFAIK) the hd failed. I got a message saying (in
effect)
'not possible to record at the moment call sky service on 08.....'

--
Tumbleweed

Remove theobvious before replying (but no email reply necessary to
newsgroups)

"Andy" wrote in message
...

Pretend you don't have a touchtone phone and don't press ANY
buttons..Straight through to as to what'd describe as a Human :-)

Great 3 years ago but now it puts you to the back of the queue...

Really?

Works o-k with most companies,Looks like Sky ensure you spend yet more cash
then keeping you hanging on the phone :-(

John wrote:

Here's what I don't understand. If, unlike a TIVO, the HD in SKY+ is
readily swapable (i.e. - doesn't contain the OS), why can't they design the
thing to allow it to funtion like a regular sky box when the HD fails. Just
pop up a message along the lines of 'Hard drive 0 not found - please call
for service' for a few seconds (or until acknowledged by pressing select),
and let me continue watching?

If you disconnect the drive the box will indeed function properly,
except for the personal planner feature. It doesn't like seeing a
faulty drive though, which is understandable.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/tez5
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

K wrote:

Well My Tivo has got through several Maxtor drives! (No I don't keep
buying them they are warranty replacements)

After a replacement Maxtor was found to be DOA I just went for a full
refund from the shop and bought another brand. Never looked back.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/tez5
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

Jomtien wrote:
John wrote:

Here's what I don't understand. If, unlike a TIVO, the HD in SKY+ is
readily swapable (i.e. - doesn't contain the OS), why can't they design
the
thing to allow it to funtion like a regular sky box when the HD fails.
Just
pop up a message along the lines of 'Hard drive 0 not found - please call
for service' for a few seconds (or until acknowledged by pressing
select),
and let me continue watching?

If you disconnect the drive the box will indeed function properly,
except for the personal planner feature. It doesn't like seeing a
faulty drive though, which is understandable.

Perhaps, but as it's still under warranty, and I don't have the proper
implement of destruction to open it up with out causing damage, I'll wait
for the techie to show up, shrug his shoulders, and replace the box. I
still have my AFRTS sat box with the TIVO, and a stack of DVD movies, so
I'll survive.

--
John
To reply, change @freeserve.co.uk -to- @yahoo.com
rant
Made the mistake of believing Freeserve ads 'Use the Internet as often as
you like, any time you like'
What they really mean is once in awhile, but not to often, otherwise you get
a nasty letter from

Keith Hawkins
Consumer Managing Director
/rant

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 10:27:18 +0000, Clem Dye wrote:

John W wrote:


Apart from the £10/month charge, this is exactly why I'll never touch a
$ky+ box. They seem way too fragile and if something does go wrong, it
seems that $ky will fob you off with a reconditioned box. They have
muppets dealing with problems (though perhaps not: muppets do seem to
possess some intelligence) but at the end of the day, the customer
always comes off worse. It seems to me that the $ky+ box design is crap,
based on the number of hardware failures and software problems being
continually reported here.

I've used Maxtor hard disks many times and have never had a failure - I
suspect that the poor box design (nice one, Pace) simply cooks the drive
somehow. As I see it, unless there's a design change, this problem will
simply keep happening.

Create you own TV channel? Pah.


Clem


There is no £10 charge anymore if you are subscribed to more than £30
worth of channels per month