Sky+

[Nordic]

Our old Amstrad sky box seems to have given up with all the crap that it is forced to watch.

We want to upgrade to Sky+ but see its £99 plus £30 to instal from sky. We can get a 2nd hand one from ebay but am not sure if it would work or not as we dont have a sky+ card.

Is it worth it or would I be better off going thru Sky?

[jpchenet]

Unfortunately I don't think you can Rup as IIRC Sky+ needs a different LNB with two cables running to the Sky+ Box.

There are quite a lot of offers around to move to Sky HD for £49 at the moment. Not sure if that includes the install or if it's only to new customers or not but probably worth a try.

[DelBoy]

To use the full facilities of Sky+ (eg watch one channel and record another), yes, you do need two LNBs (and two cables), but it will work on only one LNB - the dish I use in the caravan has only one. 

You can purchase a card from Sky for a one off £20 (IIRC) which will give you all the FTA and FTV channels.  Sky are desparate for customers, so if you want to use the full facilities of Sky+, and get the other channels, then take out a contract with them for whatever mix you want. 

Give them a call and see what they say.  Argue negotiate with them - they will adapt.  I had a problem 12 months ago, and they said they wanted a minimum of £80 to send an engineer round.  I told them I would cancel the service, and an engineer appeared FOC on the doorstep next day.  Another time, I got hold of another Sky+ box for the 'van, but as the card is configured for each box, it didn't work very well.  They said I would need to take out a second subscription but, after I again said I would cancel, they fixed it that both boxes would work
with the same card.  My argument was I could only use the card in one box at a time - what difference was it to them if it was in two different boxes!

Del

[mike(liverpool boys)]

Phone them and say you want to leave sky. When they ask why tell them you have a better deal elsewhere. Then when they basically beg you to stay and ask if there is anything they could do to make you stay tell then you fancy Sky+. Thats how I got it for £50 with free installation. And make sure you get your new dish out of the installer because it should be included with your new box.

[JPS Beemer]

I don't know about the technical side, but I can say that Sky+ is amazing.

I only got it in the last year but it is worth every penny.

It is £49 and no install costs for HD but you do have to pay an extra £10 per month.

[Nordic]

Thanks for the guidance.

Pretty sure I will go down the sky+ route, even if it costs £££, the alternative seems to be to watch Mama Mia or Hairspray with a bit of Take That 'live' on dvd for the upcoming evenings.

I knew those xmas presents would come back to haunt me.

[Nordic]

Cheers for all the help, happy to report that in these days of sh*t service sky did themselves proud.

A phone call on Easter saturday to the helpline resulted in a engineer visiting on easter Monday, (he could have come sunday but we were out). the engineer found the thing on the dish had failed which had caused the box itself to fail.

A quick trip to the van resulted in a new box and dish all FOC.