It can detect if you are trying to add a program to your planner that will clash with two existing programs but it cannot detect if it does it itself due to scheduling changes and Next Series additions. I myself use the app in conjuction with MySky reminders to add programs to my Sky boxes without disturbing what the family is watching on the TV right now.
You can also delete programs and browse channels without bringing menus up on the TV. To remove clashes just start the app and connect to your Sky box and it will tell you about any clashes and will present you with options on how to resolve, which might entail moving a few programs around. I find that 8pm to 10pm Monday to Friday is when most clashes occur as this is the primetime TV slot.
I record so much TV that I tend to switch a lot of my series recordings to the early hours when clashes are unlikely. Both HD and non-HD programs are repeated in the early hours so you can still get your programs without having to make sacrifices. Avoiding clashes means that you do not have to download the programs later or have to wait for the next repeat of a missed program if you have no or slow broadband. One point worth mentioning that I myself have experienced multiple times living in rural Britain is that the Sky boxes are susceptible to power fluctuations when recording.
And when you press 'i' for more info it says it failed due to a power cut. What power cut you ask yourself? Your clocks are not flashing , and all electronic devices reported no outages. Chances are it lasted less than a second but to your sensitive Sky box it was enough to fail your recording. I've tried surge protectors with no luck.
When the lights flicker in our house we quickly check the Sky boxes and sometimes we get lucky, but often not. If you have a solution then let me know. For now I continue to check my recordings for any FAILURE messages once a week in order to download the program that failed before it is removed from the list of available programs.
After a planner rebuild or software update your Sky box may take some time to refresh. During this period you may notice that your planner shows scheduled programs as time and dates and not by name.
Don't worry, what you are seeing is the link to the program in the planner. Your TV guide has yet to fully update so it does not know the name of the program that it is scheduled to record at 9pm next Tuesday, yet, but it will once it has completed downloading the TV guide.
If you go into the TV guide and press the button to advance 24 hours you will see that the TV guide is still updating.
Once this process is complete your planner will correctly show the names of the programs that it is scheduled to record. Sometimes a failed recording usually due to a 'technical fault' refuses to be deleted.
You can delete other recordings but not this one. The reason is that there is no actual file to delete. This could be because when the recording was attempted it failed immediately before recording even one-second of the program to disk, or because the first attempt to delete it worked but it failed to remove the entry in the planner. Either way, what you are left with is a ghost entry. The only way to get rid of it is to force the system to check what is actually on the hard drive, which means performing a planner rebuild.
After the rebuild the ghost entry should no longer be present. Some people have reported that some recordings just won't delete but when they download or record the same program again or another in the series and delete the nested programs the recording is finally deleted.
Sometimes your Sky box will just crash. The general symptom is a frozen picture on the screen and no response to the controls, whether via the remote or facia, or a channel or recording is playing but the system won't respond to any commands. If you were playing a recording from your planner the blue circle lights may still be animated on the front facia and pressing the remote results in LED flashes on the front of the box but there is no response on screen.
There is only one course of action with a system crash: power the box off then on again. Turn the power off to the Sky box for at least 30 seconds then power it on again. It may take ten to twenty minutes before your box will respond as normal without informing you that it is initialising or being generally slow to respond. You can backup your recordings to DVD in SD format using the play and record method outlined in your user manual. Here is a list of the failure codes that I have encountered so far, along with the common problem associated with the fault code and suggestions for resolving.
Note: These codes may now be out-of-date due to recent software updates. You could try the Sky on-screen error message lookup tool. This is a bug in R of the Sky firmware that leaves you unable to access your deleted items folder. You will get the message "This section is currently unavailable as multiple programmes are being deleted.
Once completed you'll be able to view the deleted programmes and restore them to your Planner if required". This has been fixed with R of the firmware.
To check if you have the update press Services then select Settings, scroll across to System Details and look at your Model Number. If you still have the R version you can force R onto your Sky box by performing a System Refresh.
Your box will now let you access your deleted items folder and should correctly report the amount of free space you have left. Some mature content recorded or downloaded may also require the PIN to access but it can be hit or miss in that it won't be for everything.
You'll find that your little ones with access to the remote can access any non-adult channel 9xx range or anything in your planner without restriction. You can up the security level by moving to the Ratings tab and setting Restrict on PG to 18 certs. Although the description says for movies only this also works for anything with a certificate set.
A more advanced option is the Channels tab. You can set every channel to require a PIN after 8pm or at any time. Note that this can become really tedious after a while and if you set both the Channel and Ratings lock you can double-PIN some channels. All that PIN entry is going to wear out those number buttons that your PIN uses making it easier for the little ones to guess your PIN or they can just watch you entering it over and over again.
Until Sky improve their parental controls your only real option towards protecting your little ones from mature content and offensive language is to hide the remote and set the channels and playback for them. You'll have to put up with them coming to you asking you to change the channel or to start another recording but it is far less tedious than having to lock every channel and non-U rating in order to lock down your Sky box.
You may notice that your Sky box appears active overnight but there are no new recordings in your planner. The reason for this is that Sky are pushing downloads overnight to your box via the dish not broadband. The content they are pushing is popular shows and movies that you 'may' wish to view or purchase. It is pre-downloaded to save time downloading it on demand later. Scroll through the More Top Picks suggestions until you see a program with the playback icon already present.
Select it and select the option with the playback icon and press the 'i' information button. It will tell you when it was downloaded and the size of the download. This download is stored in a hidden partition on your hard drive. When you select to view or buy the download is moved from the hidden partition into your planner. If no listings are available then the first thing to do is to check the signal strength of your satellite feed.
Try a planner rebuild first and if that fails to resolve the problem force a software update. For a Sky box this is day one.
This is the equivalent of a PC's on-board battery running out of juice and therefore being unable to remember the date and time. For a Sky box seeing this generally means that your box has suffered a software failure. View answer in the context of this discussion. Best Answers. Topic Author. Mark39 Thanks for your suggestion - a full reboot sorted my problem View this Answer within the discussion. Post 5 of 5. Did this answer not help you? All Replies. Post 2 of 5.
A free phone no is a wonderful thing! We have a pace n stuck in standby. I switched off elec to save leaving stuff "on" whilst on holiday and now its half term, no TV.. Im popular. Posted by: liz February 15, AM. He told me that he as taken on of these boxes apart and the disc is not an 80 gig disc but infact a gig disc with 2 80gig partitions. I searched the internet and found your article so I tried the fix.
It worked just fine and saved the money and hassle of hanging around for an engineer and having the day off work! Posted by: Paul February 18, PM. Posted by: Tim February 19, PM. Even if i remove the mains, the scarts and the LNB cables the humm is still there on the phone line The box is about 18 months old so out of guarantee.
The odd thing is that the phone part of the box is still working so not that critical as yet but a fear it will eventually fail.
My best receiver a Pace PVR2 was replaced because of the buzzing big mistake. I should have put up with it as the Amstrad that replaced it was rubbish. I have so far had one AMSTRAD box failing every third or fourth recording and a picture quality that was near on unwatchable when there was any action going on you could not even tell that Halle Berry was a woman as she walked out of the sea on James Bond-Die another Day.
I used to get up some days and it would be on channel which was not too much of a problem but would turn itself off once a day in the middle of a program. It took 30 seconds or so to turn back on. Only unplugging it for 10 seconds would get it working again. This was annoying because recordings would fail when this happened. I have even had the engineers twice replace my box with one that was no good off the van remember that all replacements are refurbished.
One had a stuffed modem and the other had no LNB2 signal. After all the phone calls, complaints, engineer visits, I was given the freephone number. By the way, just before my warranty ran out, I phoned about audio and picture breakup problems to be told that a software update was due that would fix it and to wait for it to be downloaded.
When this update did not cure the fault, I phoned back to be told I would have to pay as it was now out of warranty. I persuaded them to see the error of their ways and now have another 90 days warranty on this new box, another Pace PVR2. The second unit has been playing up for weeks locking up etc and finally all access to the planner failing. Not looking forward to the hassel of arguing with Sky i followed your advice and how it works prefectly.
Paul, thanks for this. I found your comments yesterday and followed the procedure you described above, and it's worked. My sky box is working perfectly now, no thanks to the useless b s at Sky. Thanks - You're a star! Posted by: Roo February 24, AM. Rang to get sky engineer to visit.
Telephone operator was then mysteriously able to talk to supervisor and get me a free visit! Be persistent and don't pay! Posted by: Mary February 24, PM. Hi I am having the system fault that you describe and have just tried the fix that you recommend but unfortunately I am still having the same fault. The box functions fine for viewing but I am unable to rewind or record anything.
It just gives the System Fault message. Any further ideas? Posted by: Darryl February 24, PM. I'm glad everybody seems to be finding the 'how to fix Sky Plus' advice useful, and thanks to those who have added their own tips and stories We seem to be unable to watch anything we have recorded We have only had sky installed since dec05!
Also if they have to replace the sky box we will loose all recordings,unless we copy onto dvd. HELP how do we do that? Posted by: anne-marie dean February 25, PM. Many many thanks. Really appreciate it. Sky have given instructions how to restart the box,but as per earlier thread we would then loose all we have recorded just trying to gte them back agaain, really pi ed off with them at moment. Posted by: richard February 27, PM.
Wow - deja vu I was so happy to find your site as I, also, had a new box put in Dec 05 and have had nothing but problems with it since then. Many thanks again. Fantastic im not alone! Please call for assistance so i to went through the process of calling customer services and after they talked me through various ways of resetting the box and updating the software version but only to end up worse off as now the box wouldn't even switch on. I decided on the cheeper option for now and rang Sky customer services and explained the situation and without even mentioning possible known issues i was offered a free of charge visit and if the fault was unrepairable the box would be replaced with a new one also free of charge.
Happy days!! Ah the power of the internet, such a useful source of information. My sky plus box starting playing up around the time we started recieving updates. The final straw was when it decided to wipe all our recourdings and switch it's self off. A call to Sky resulted in the reset process being applied, but after a few short hours the sky plus box failed again.
I found this web site and applied your recommend fix. It worked great for 24hrs and then failed again aagggghhhh. The box only started displaying a fault since the updates and changes ocurred to the sky planner.
I pay a hefty full subscription cost to sky 3. Simply stated it is reasonable to expect the product to continue to work beyond the 12 month period. For the box to fail only a few months out of warranty is, in my view not reasonable. So stay calm, state your case along with the facts. Mention your legal rights and Skys need for you to have a working system to continue receipt of your subscription and they "Will" listen and recieve the message loud and clear.
Posted by: Graham March 7, AM. I have had the same problem with a PACE box but have found an easier way to reset the system. If you press the services button and go into the System set up menu, press 01 on you remote handset and then select. You should now be presented with a new hidden menu. At the bottom of the list is 8 Full system rebuild. If you hit this, the system will clear the hard disc and shut down the box. Wait a minute and then turn the power back on and the system should be up and running as before.
Also on the menu is item 7 Rebuild system which is useful when you hard disk is saying you have little space left but it looks like you should have. Normally if you look at the bar along the top of the planner screen you will notice that as you go down through your programs that it shows how much space each program uses.
If there are spaces then you can rebuild it to reclaim the space. This option does not remove items from the planner. Now I have to stop the engineer arriving, he is coming in the morning!
Thank you very much for all the information provided on this subject. Posted by: Steve March 9, AM. When I got back from work a friend waited in for the engineer I found that my recording was fubared. It seems very convenient that this just happens to occur just after the 12 month warranty is up Thanks for the fix - I'll try it when I get home.
Posted by: Maffu March 9, AM. Posted by: amanda March 9, PM. MY pacesky plus download latet update started shutting itself down done full reset on hardrive anywhone got any ideas cheers mark. Posted by: mark shoebridge March 10, AM. Posted by: Nigel March 10, PM. In our experience the faults occured originally in this order: 1] playback sound and vision stuttering as Nigel describes , 2] playback fails on some recordings, 3] recording, live pause, and playback on all recordings fail.
Applying the fix detailed above should sort the problem out, but you will lose all your recorded problems, and the error could re-occur at any time so if you record something you definitely want to see, watch it soon! Posted by: David March 12, PM. I called for an engineer,and demanded there be no charge and it worked!! Posted by: marie March 14, PM. Posted by: nick March 14, PM. Its great technology if it worked!! I also got a free call out by an engineer,i was told it was a one off on this occasion,but i have read loads on-line from people who have got the call out for free,so why cant it atleast be free when the boxes are so expensive in the first place.
Posted by: anne March 14, PM. Last year I had the box replaced and just over a year later it has started to refuse to record, and is very slow through the menus. Eventually the error messages have started saying that the disk is full, when I regularly delete my viewed programs. I would advise anyone to follow the guide here to do the reset of the system, just follow the steps, its simple.
I've literally just completed the reset. Last year I spent ages on the phone to sky, only to have to call the 3rd party installer to fix it. If your box is out of warrenty follow the guide here to resolve its issues. I've fixed it again but now I know it's only temporary. This is great i got my box at ebay and after reading about your free call out when your box is broke did work for 6 months gave them a call and said i couldent aford the cost and they are sending an engineer free of charge Posted by: emma March 16, PM.
I thought I had got lumbered with a rogue one until I found your excellent site and realised I'm just one of many. The next time it plays up as seems certain I will try the Services menu method outlined by Andrew Chandler. Posted by: Pete March 16, PM.
There was nothing wrong with it so i didn't. Then about a week later it all started going wrong. Just a coincidence I am sure. The usual resets worked and although annoying I was able to live with it. Then the sound went on Sky Movies 1 2 and 3 from this Jan to begining of March. Sky said it was not their fault and it must have been my AMP. Oddly my amp did not mind the other channels that went through it. Then someone let slip when i phoned up to moan about it yet again that it was a problem that they were aware of and working on.
I have tried running a full reset and even the tips on this site. I have to conclude that the box is well and truely nackered. I wish I had seen the comments before arranging an engineer as despite arguing my case AND threatening to cancel my subscription altogether, all I got was" I am sorry you feel that way, when would you like it to take effect from" obviously did not take that far enough i have now parted with 65 quid to have an engineer come out and tell me the obvious.
And I am sure he will try and get more out of me when he eventually turns up. And they say AOL is bad. Yes i have got that too I will phone and cancel my subscription tomorrow. Maybe I will save myself a load of money in the long run. Anyway, has anyone else been offered an extended warranty and refused, only to see the box self destruct weeks later!!!
Posted by: andy March 16, PM. Tried the fix to no avail, playback of recorded programs is now so bad we can't use it as it stutters and starts losing picture and sound! They did not appear to want to go further and i did't want to end up cancelling my subscription! Posted by: David March 17, AM. Posted by: Jim March 17, AM. Posted by: Andy March 18, AM. We got a new Amstrad box on Thursday our third since December and recorded 3 programmes to watch on Friday night and tho and behold all 3 had picture and speech missing and were unwatchable.
They still said tuff. Would love to cancel Sky but would not be able to get the football if i did so i'm stuck with them and their lousy product. Posted by: Alan March 18, AM. Having exactly the same problems as you have described. You can add my name to those of unsatisfied customers.
Best of luck with your crusade. Posted by: Barry March 18, PM. My Pace box has suddenly decided to jump into standby after its been on for about a minute. It plays recorded programs with no problem but a minute after switching back to live tv it packs up again. Any ideas? If I have to call Sky I'll be using the "I'm gonna cancel. It continually crashes and deletes recorded programmes.
It used to work again after a rebuild or a reset but now its totally gone. Posted by: Adrian March 19, PM. I won't go into details, but have had a long couple of conversations with Sky tech help. I was astonished at the unsympathetic, almost confrontational stance taken by the tech team, this before I had even started to complain. Admittedly I sounded annoyed, but so would anyone be who had recorded a couple of films, and a lot of episodes from serials, only to find that puzzling message on the TV screen.
What an innocent I was. I am also disappointed about time spent on telephone, money spent on telephone, going through the rigmarole of the solution procedure faulty info as it happens after reading your article , being told if this didn't work to tel next morning for engineer call-out, being told that there were no records of these conversations, and therefore no call-out allowed unless i went through the procedure again. More money, more annoyance, more stress, more astonishment at the farce that is officially known as "Sky tech help".
We can hopefully make this the non-future of Sky, as I for one will be taking it further with their bigwigs. Had all the problems listed above, most irritating is the sound drop out when playing back programmes. More worrying is the system freezing and switching itself off. I was offered yet another Amstrad box but refused it as the guy couldn't tell me if there would be an improvement!
Tech help have taken me through the processes a million times and I've just called for a 4th engineer visit on the understainding that if it can't be fixed once and for all I will be cancelling my subscription or at least asking for discount or free months.
I'm holding out for a Pace box as Tech just told me the sound issues are only on the Amstrad boxes and that there was a shortage of Pace ones - is that because they're in high demand by any chance??! Add my address to your list of disgruntled customers please!! Thanks for the reset tip. Gave it a try and it seemed to work I think it's time to shout at Sky again because when my husband spoke to them previously and he commented that the problem had really begun after their recent update with the new planner they said they were aware of it but couldn't give a definite date of when it would be sorted.
But from things I have read on the internet it sounds as if they have had these issues since at least Nov so I don't think they are actually bothered about sorting out the problem. I do remember a friend who works in the television business telling me that Sky Plus had all sorts of problems and to hang off getting it until it was sorted This fix has been well documented on a number of satellite forums,but There are a couple of other fixes that can be used. Stuck in standby,failed recordings etc can also be due to a loose IDE cable or a faulty Power Supply.
So check the IDE cable if the problem persists,also there are a number of companys out there that sell replacement Power supplys or Power supply upgrade kits. Hope this helps. Cheers Kieth. Posted by: Kieth March 20, PM. Posted by: caz March 21, PM. Been having problems with sky plus since the software upgrade. Basically can't watch any recordings as they all stutter too badly or turn the box off. Tried the above fix but unfortunately no better. Last time I called Sky I was told they were planning to get a new software fix out by the end of March.
Don't know how often these plans change though. Had problems after the software upgrade last year too though not as bad and they were sorted out remotely eventually. Hoping this means that there is nothing wrong with the box - seems a waste of time getting an engineer out. I think it's just a case of waiting for them to fix it centrally. Could try for some money back for lost service though. Posted by: Jenny March 22, AM. Sky have abandoned the freephone number, it now tells you to phone when you phone it.
Posted by: Andrew March 22, PM. Posted by: darren brewer March 24, AM. I've updated the article to say that once you've had an engineer callout even a free one , your box is under warranty again for 3 months, making further callouts during that time free.
I've also added how to do the full system reset thanks for commenting about this, Andrew Chandler. Any idear when it will be safer to take the plunge? Posted by: Neil March 26, AM. It's a fairly old model - had it since summer 03 and it got a bit odd last autumn and finally packed up in November. Rang the tech guys, who to be fair we're pretty nice and did talk me through some of the reset procedure but to no avail I got really fed up last night, searched Google found this site and used the fix.
However it did take a couple of goes and I left the box disconnected from the mains overnight. So I would suggest to those people who don't get a result first time to persist. Interestingly the interface was different 2nd time around.
Do they queue updates? Just adding my name to the list, started having playback problems about 2 month ago just after my warranty ran out. Going to have to try the reset now despite having loads of stuff I don't want to lose, looks like I'm gonna have to fork out on that DVD recorder. The locking up is getting worse. I'll report further on the outcome. Tried to ring Sky today to report the fault on my Sky Plus box see previous posting Used the standard Sky phone number but was told to ring back on another number as they are having new software installed.
Rang the number given to be told that they cannot help because their system will be down until Friday and they cannot access any customer accounts. They did give a direct technical number which was simlilar to the last mechanical voice but I managed to speak to someone call Neil who advised me that he couldn't either help because their new system was being updated and he couldn't access my account until Friday - same story. He did say that I would be re-imbursed for any losses!
Hows that for service - five days before thay can even check my account so I can report the problem. What an absolute shambles. I'll try again on Friday. Just a thought, if they are using the same software on their internal systems as they use on the Sky Plus boxes we'll have to re-boot them half way through our telephone conversations. In the past few months we get sound dropouts on Ch4, Sky1 but most channels work ok - shame it's those channels we record from the most ;-.
Done reset etc. Issues can go away if we switch box off and on and press record when show on rather than series record etc. Clearly a software issue that wasn;t there a few months ago. I will be putting old drive back and getting sky to fix but don't feel very reassured this will happen given what I have read here and elsewhere. I set up series link to record My Name Is Earl, and IT Crowd as well as others and barely have seen any of them due to the stuttering sound and picture that plays back.
I spoke to an engineer today and they confirmed Pauls point above that E4 and C4 are problematic channels although others seem to be fine - does anyone know why? Going to try the hard-disk reset now though and hope for the best Good luck with the campaign.
Because I'd had a free callout last month my digibox was still under the 3 month warranty, and the replacement also now has a 3 month warranty. Fingers crossed that it doesn't develop any faults this time! I got a Thomson box in January which was noisy and kept having failed recordings, two weeks later it was replaced by an Amstrad which was quieter and worked fine for a while.
Now we get sound dropout on Dolby Digital recordings, the planner cannot be acessed sometimes without unplugging the box and turning it on again, we get failed recordings and the box turns itself off whenever it feels like it.
Called Sky and was told to wait for a software update at the end of March, called again this morning Saturday April 1st and was told an engineer would be out to me on Sunday???? I demanded a replacement box and asked for a PACE box. Yeah Right. Posted by: marie April 3, AM. Add my name to the ever increasing list First box was a Pace, current box is Amstrad.
How do they get away with this behaviour towards their customers. If only there was cable in my street Can someone please help. I turned off a mains, turned on pressing the buttons but then nothing happened at all after 20 secs. I have a PACE box and it is 2 yrs old now. I have been having problems for ages now. Have done all what Sky say to do ie rebuild, total system reset etc and still I have problems.
Posted by: Pete April 3, PM. I have just had sky plus installed yesterday 5th april All went well its an amstrad 80gb when the engineer left we noticed that the Broadband internet access had failed Eventually worked out that shutting the whole lot down by the mains and re putting the phone line in again whilst it was disconected from the power solved it. Later decided to record a programme and set the record time, as soon as the box started recording the broadband went again.
When i unplug the sky plus box the broadband works fine so it must be the box. Has anybody else had this problem? Failing all that im going to ask them to remove it and re install my 6 year old amstrad box that never had a days problem!! Posted by: phil shears April 6, AM. On my fifth box now. Lost everything we recorded over Xmas and countless other times.
If you have an old Sky box and a satellite dish, you should be able to watch these free-to-air channels. The recordings will remain stored on the hard drive of the box but you will be unable to watch them due to a change of equipment on the dish that is needed before your Sky Q box can be used.
You can send us old equipment to recycle. Whilst it is true there is no way to move a HD recording from SkyQ box to another box and retain the HD quality, it is possible to save recordings if you accept the drop in quality.
Yes you can watch a recorded program on your Sky hard drive without your sat wire stuck in. Its stored on the drive so when you want it look in your planned programs and play back. Not true. You need to get a signal first and then if you lose it you can still play recordings. You can use the USB port to charge a device, but data transfer is not enabled, so copying files to a USB stick is not an option. Get Sky on the phone via or via its online chat service and point out that their website actively promotes great deals, offers and bundles for existing customers renewing.
0コメント