Sky+ HD (Sky HD)

Member Name: tor0908

Product:	Sky HD
Date:	25/10/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic picture quality, great choice of channels

Disadvantages: Recording takes up quite a bit of space, recording sometimes fail.

We decided to get Sky+ High Definition in our house when Setanta went bust earlier in the year and freed up £12.99 per month. We are currently with Sky so any other provider such as Virgin wasn't really an option as we are happy with the level of service.

It was choice between high definition Sky or ESPN for the football and after visiting my uncle's house who already had a HD box, the choice was made, and I was on the sky website booking the upgrade.

The deal at the time was the box for £49 which replaced our current Sky+ box, £30 for installation and one month's free subscription to the HD service which is normally £9.75 per month. The box is a nice sleek black colour which complements my nice black 32inch Samsung TV nicely.
It has (I think) 160 GB recording space on it, although obviously recording HD programmes takes up more space than standard definition ones. I have to say that we record a lot of programmes and haven't yet run out of space so there is quite a lot of room on the box.

In total Sky offer 34 HD channels, although this does depend on your subscription so if you don't pay for the movies or sports packs then you won't get the corresponding HD channel. Virgin offer 7 channels in total and FreeSat offer 2, so you are getting quite a choice with Sky even if you don't pay for movies or sport. My only niggle with the choice of channels is that you don't appear to be able to get ITV HD unless I'm missing something, and you don't get Living TV in HD either which is a shame because there are lots of popular shows on that particular channel.

The quality is fantastic though, the clarity of the picture is amazing especially when watching football or tennis. I love watching older movies in HD as they look so much better than before.

My only complaint is that we have had a few HD recordings fail for no apparent reason at all, but I don't know if that is just bad luck or what.

For £9.75 a month plus a reasonable setup and box fee I think taking the plunge and upgrading was definitely worth it.

Summary: Well worth the money